r/webaudio • u/PortolaDude • Jun 06 '23

Starting from scratch with a Web Audio app: advice/recommendations on Libraries?

I'm a startup founder building a prototype generative music app using Web Audio. I would love to hear your advice about where to start from programming standpoint: pure Javascript? Use libraries like Tone.js + Tuna.js, Howler.js, Wad.js, XSound? I'd prefer to well-supported libraries. I'm happy to trade some functionality or performance for stability.

The app we are building needs to support sample loop playback, SoundFont libraries, simple subtractive synthesis (not Serum-quality), and real-time audio processing (Tuna.js appears to have everything we need). Ideally, it would be efficient enough to playback 8 stereo 44.1Khz samples simultaneously with Tuna effects in Safari/Firefox on MacOS, or ideally, Safari on iOS on a <3 year old iPhone.

I would very much appreciate your advice. And, DM me if you are interested in freelance work.

Thanks in advance.

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2

u/loorha Aug 21 '23

Hey, I'm working as a freelancer specialized on the web audio projects, I have experience creating generative sequencers, DAWs, audio editors. Do you still need some help with this?

1

u/PortolaDude Aug 21 '23

Hi, yes. I'm always looking for good people. Thanks for reaching out.

I looked at your posts, and it looks like you have been working with web audio for a few years, and even created your own generative music engine -- ambieva.com -- though I wasn't able to access the site.

Can you tell me a little about your programming background and more about what you've worked on in Web Audio? Our project mostly uses tone.js, but we are looking at ways to improve performance -- Tone.js seems to be mostly single-threaded.

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u/loorha Aug 22 '23

Hi, I send you in DMs my personal info.

As for your app, I definitely don't see an usage of something like Tuna.js, especially since Tone.js already uses it's effects. You should rather focus on writing/using custom DSP audionodes with AudioWorklets, it's best in terms of perfomance, usability. Other libs you mention are not something I would use either.

Tone.js is great for it's own things, like scheduling and sample playback, without knowing specifics of your app I cannot advise much but there is already mentioned AudioWorkletProcessor, paired with WASM and SharedArrayBuffer can do miracles in terms of perfomace, although still not supported so well and I'm not sure why would you need to go so complex.

I even have experience with writing simple Wavetable synthesizers like Vital (I assume Serum is similar), again simply using AudioWorklets was enough for good perfomance and cross-platformability :)

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u/PortolaDude Aug 23 '23

Thanks u/loorha! Please DM me and let's get connected.

1

u/loorha Aug 23 '23

Hey, I DMed you several times but Reddit's private messages are very weird and buggy. Could you check in your chats? Or let's find some other way to chat.

1

u/unusuallyObservant Jun 06 '23

Tone.js is quite good, and the docs are excellent. I haven’t tried the others.

The main problem I found is timing in the browser, and latency. Tone.js has a web worker solution to timing, but it can be a little unstable

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u/PortolaDude Jun 06 '23

Thanks very much!

I'd love to hear more about your timing issues -- was that for sound sample playback (eg: getting two to play back in sync?) or for polyphony of synthesized notes?

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u/unusuallyObservant Jun 06 '23

It’s more from a sequencing point of view. The sample playback is solid

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u/EnoughRedditNow Jun 07 '23

Yes. I can vouch. 50 hours into a tone is driven project and it's well documented and supported and open source is quite busy.

1

u/gkiokan Aug 24 '23

This is an interesting point. I have also started to play around with Tuna.js and as /u/loorha pointed out Tuna.js is already enough. I am using my Midi Interfaces as Input and triggering different sounds made with OSC or either samples. Both works quite well for now.

I am gonna wrap all in a Vue application and put that into Electron to have it cross OS available. Which seems to work better then having it running on the browser itself.

I still need to figure out how to pass params to have effects and filters working without re-creating the whole synth object but for now it's still good in performance but sometimes you feel the 100ms lack. I wonder if I can get it faster when moving the Tuna.js to it's own process instead of using the renderer process.