Apologies for cross-postings

Fifth Annual Web Audio Conference - 2nd Call for Submissions

https://www.ntnu.edu/wac2019

The fifth Web Audio Conference (WAC) will be held 4-6 December, 2019 at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim, Norway. WAC is an international conference dedicated to web audio technologies and applications. The conference addresses academic research, artistic research, development, design, evaluation and standards concerned with emerging audio-related web technologies such as Web Audio API, Web RTC, WebSockets and Javascript. The conference welcomes web developers, music technologists, computer musicians, application designers, industry engineers, R&D scientists, academic researchers, artists, students and people interested in the fields of web development, music technology, computer music, audio applications and web standards. The previous Web Audio Conferences were held in 2015 at IRCAM and Mozilla in Paris, in 2016 at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, in 2017 at the Centre for Digital Music, Queen Mary University of London in London, and in 2018 at TU Berlin in Berlin.

The internet has become much more than a simple storage and delivery network for audio files, as modern web browsers on desktop and mobile devices bring new user experiences and interaction opportunities. New and emerging web technologies and standards now allow applications to create and manipulate sound in real-time at near-native speeds, enabling the creation of a new generation of web-based applications that mimic the capabilities of desktop software while leveraging unique opportunities afforded by the web in areas such as social collaboration, user experience, cloud computing, and portability. The Web Audio Conference focuses on innovative work by artists, researchers, students, and engineers in industry and academia, highlighting new standards, tools, APIs, and practices as well as innovative web audio applications for musical performance, education, research, collaboration, and production, with an emphasis on bringing more diversity into audio.

Keynote Speakers

We are pleased to announce our two keynote speakers: Rebekah Wilson (independent researcher, technologist, composer, co-founder and technology director for Chicago’s Source Elements) and Norbert Schnell (professor of Music Design at the Digital Media Faculty at the Furtwangen University).
More info available at: https://www.ntnu.edu/wac2019/keynotes

Theme and Topics

The theme for the fifth edition of the Web Audio Conference is Diversity in Web Audio. We particularly encourage submissions focusing on inclusive computing, cultural computing, postcolonial computing, and collaborative and participatory interfaces across the web in the context of generation, production, distribution, consumption and delivery of audio material that especially promote diversity and inclusion.

Further areas of interest include:

• Web Audio API, Web MIDI, Web RTC and other existing or emerging web standards for audio and music.
• Development tools, practices, and strategies of web audio applications.
• Innovative audio-based web applications.
• Web-based music composition, production, delivery, and experience.
• Client-side audio engines and audio processing/rendering (real-time or non real-time).
• Cloud/HPC for music production and live performances.
• Audio data and metadata formats and network delivery.
• Server-side audio processing and client access.
• Frameworks for audio synthesis, processing, and transformation.
• Web-based audio visualization and/or sonification.
• Multimedia integration.
• Web-based live coding and collaborative environments for audio and music generation.
• Web standards and use of standards within audio-based web projects.
• Hardware and tangible interfaces and human-computer interaction in web applications.
• Codecs and standards for remote audio transmission.
• Any other innovative work related to web audio that does not fall into the above categories.

Submission Tracks

We welcome submissions in the following tracks: papers, talks, posters, demos, performances, and artworks. All submissions will be single-blind peer reviewed. The conference proceedings, which will include both papers (for papers and posters) and extended abstracts (for talks, demos, performances, and artworks), will be published open-access online with Creative Commons attribution, and with an ISSN number. A selection of the best papers, as determined by a specialized jury, will be offered the opportunity to publish an extended version at the Journal of Audio Engineering Society.

Papers: Submit a 4-6 page paper to be given as an oral presentation.

Talks: Submit a 1-2 page extended abstract to be given as an oral presentation.

Posters: Submit a 2-4 page paper to be presented at a poster session.

Demos: Submit a work to be presented at a hands-on demo session. Demo submissions should consist of a 1-2 page extended abstract including diagrams or images, and a complete list of technical requirements (including anything expected to be provided by the conference organizers).

Performances: Submit a performance making creative use of web-based audio applications. Performances can include elements such as audience device participation and collaboration, web-based interfaces, Web MIDI, WebSockets, and/or other imaginative approaches to web technology. Submissions must include a title, a 1-2 page description of the performance, links to audio/video/image documentation of the work, a complete list of technical requirements (including anything expected to be provided by conference organizers), and names and one-paragraph biographies of all performers.

Artworks: Submit a sonic web artwork or interactive application which makes significant use of web audio standards such as Web Audio API or Web MIDI in conjunction with other technologies such as HTML5 graphics, WebGL, and Virtual Reality frameworks. Works must be suitable for presentation on a computer kiosk with headphones. They will be featured at the conference venue throughout the conference and on the conference web site. Submissions must include a title, 1-2 page description of the work, a link to access the work, and names and one-paragraph biographies of the authors.

Tutorials: If you are interested in running a tutorial session at the conference, please contact the organizers directly.

Important Dates

March 26, 2019: Open call for submissions starts.

June 16, 2019: Submissions deadline.

September 2, 2019: Notification of acceptances and rejections.

September 15, 2019: Early-bird registration deadline.

October 6, 2019: Camera ready submission and presenter registration deadline.

December 4-6, 2019: The conference.

At least one author of each accepted submission must register for and attend the conference in order to present their work. A limited number of diversity tickets will be available.

Templates and Submission System

Templates and information about the submission system are available on the official conference website: https://www.ntnu.edu/wac2019

Best wishes,
The WAC 2019 Committee

Here's my understanding of the situation:

The [pd~] process plugs in its own special scheduler to essentially do its own, deterministic version of "batch" processing. So technically speaking [pd~] will process multiple blocks of audio as fast as it receives them (i.e., faster than realtime).

The constraint is that the Pd process it communicates with sends it audio on a regular schedule. So you can only set the number of blocks of audio you want pd~ to process "faster than realtime" with the "-fifo" flag. And the number you set is bound by the maximum size allowed by your OS for the pipe between the Pd and pd~ process.

Plus the fact that you can only get the output from [pd~] on the regular schedule determined by block size, sample rate, and the latency from the value you gave to the "-fifo" flag. So while pd~ technically processes blocks "faster than realtime" (it would be pointless if it couldn't), you can't actually receive data from it faster than your current audio rate allows.

Now, one could design an [batchpd] object that spawns a separate Pd process which runs in batch mode and pipes Pd messages back to the original Pd process before it dies. But you'd either have to make the output of [batchpd] block (i.e., wait) until the subprocess dies, or deliver output at an arbitrary future time. The former would cause dropouts if you're trying to compute audio, and the latter would be non-deterministic.

Hello community!

My main question is: how to deal with the i/o-errors, pd chronically suffers from?
I get them on many occasions:

• resizing a table
• sending and processing (routing, splitting into packages) messages/lists of mediocre length
• sending/receiving messages from many objects
• updating gui elements

It's a pain in the ass! processing long messages is a quite basic feature for realtime audio.
Of course the I/O-Error comes with an audio click, which is inacceptable in a live situation.
(I am using pd with jack. There is no xrun in jack, by the way)
Fun fact: pd also prints the I/O-Error message if audio processing is switched of.

My impression is, the problem lies in pd's basic design:
Messages and audio processing is being handled in the same single main loop.
So if message processing takes a little longer, audio gets out of sync.
(Of course this can happen easily on message bursts, e.g. if you want to synchroniously control many objects.)
Can anyone confirm this?

What are the common practices to deal with this flaw on the USER SIDE?
Somewhere I read that I should keep audio processing and gui/message processing in seperate patches/pd instances.
However, this is only possible to some degree.
However, how could this be achieved? How can I force the gui patch to use a seperate thread? do I have to run it in a seperate pd instance?

From the PROGRAMMERS ANGLE: are there any efforts to improve pd's design? (e.g. calculate messages and audio processing concurrently, e.g. in sperate threads). Since this flaw has annoyed me since I have started to use pd, and since I have some experience with programming, I would like to offer my help to fix it!
Has this problem been solved in any of pds "forks" yet?
I love pd, but it still has profound issues, in my humble opinion.

Thanks for the info @Pierre-Guillot!
@Pierre-Guillot said:

Hi @alfonso.santimone

I argue that adding external is just a matter of incorporating them in libpd.dll. Am I right?

Yes but the libpd used by Camomile is the static library (.lib/.so/.a) that why libpd is embedded in Camomile.

1. In fact, I guess that some of the external libraries are already compatible with multiinstance support because it depends on what parts of the Pd API the libraries use. But to ensure the multiinstance support you must use the C flags -DPDINSTANCE=1 (and -DPDTHREAD=1) while compiling the library or libpd and avoid all the static variables (except if they use thread local storage and you ensure to init them well on each thread). Here is one of the 1st posts by Miller about it: https://lists.puredata.info/pipermail/pd-dev/2017-04/020980.html

So i guess i have to remove directly from the external code all the static variable, so basically remove the "static" keyword from the variable declarations.
How can i compile libpd as a .lib/.so/.a and not .dll?
Should i use those flags in the various makefiles or just as a fleg in the command line? (assuming working with msys2 on Win64)

2. The same way you did it for the "standard" approach.

So it's enough to use a x64 compiler and a x64 target?

3. Including an external library with libpd is pretty straightforward (as long as, in this case, the library has the multiinstance support). See this: https://github.com/libpd/libpd/wiki/Adding-Pure-Data-external-libraries-to-your-project. And if a library is included in libpd it will also be included in Camomile.

So you also have to compile libpd then Camomile (all the instructions are on the Github repository - I updated it a week ago https://github.com/pierreguillot/Camomile/tree/dev/v1.0.6-lv2#compilation - or just do the same steps as on Travis and Appveyor and I can help if needed).

Cheers

I don't really know what Travis and Appeveyor are. I have to check them out.
How to include the static pthread lib for Win compilation? You mention it the Camomile build process readme.

PS: Another approach would have been to ship the libpd dynamic library next to each plugin. i need to try this but I afraid that, on Windows and Linux, the DAW think that the libpd library is another plugin try to load it.

I guess that most hosts have an avoid list for specific .dll. At least Reaper have a config file where is possible to remove a specific .dll from being scanned as a plugin.

thanks!

Hi @alfonso.santimone

I argue that adding external is just a matter of incorporating them in libpd.dll. Am I right?

Yes but the libpd used by Camomile is the static library (.lib/.so/.a) that why libpd is embedded in Camomile.

1. In fact, I guess that some of the external libraries are already compatible with multiinstance support because it depends on what parts of the Pd API the libraries use. But to ensure the multiinstance support you must use the C flags -DPDINSTANCE=1 (and -DPDTHREAD=1) while compiling the library or libpd and avoid all the static variables (except if they use thread local storage and you ensure to init them well on each thread). Here is one of the 1st posts by Miller about it: https://lists.puredata.info/pipermail/pd-dev/2017-04/020980.html

2. The same way you did it for the "standard" approach.

3. Including an external library with libpd is pretty straightforward (as long as, in this case, the library has the multiinstance support). See this: https://github.com/libpd/libpd/wiki/Adding-Pure-Data-external-libraries-to-your-project. And if a library is included in libpd it will also be included in Camomile.

So you also have to compile libpd then Camomile (all the instructions are on the Github repository - I updated it a week ago https://github.com/pierreguillot/Camomile/tree/dev/v1.0.6-lv2#compilation - or just do the same steps as on Travis and Appveyor and I can help if needed).

Cheers

PS: Another approach would have been to ship the libpd dynamic library next to each plugin. i need to try this but I afraid that, on Windows and Linux, the DAW think that the libpd library is another plugin try to load it.

@cuinjune I tried to compile the lissa seq patch. but when i open the executable it opens only a small empty window.
i also tried to compile a help patch for testing, with the same result.
but your example works fine(Win32Example).

i want to start with libpd to build more efficient guis than with pure data alone.
pure data is my first programming language but i am willing to learn something else for using libpd.
it would be nice if i cannot compile only mobile versions but also for windows, linux or mac os.
so i thought libpd with processing could be a good starting point.
but its not as easy to get started as mentioned on the github page:
"If you just want to use libpd with Processing, then you can unpack the file pdp5.zip into the libraries folder of Processing. On my Mac, that folder is Documents/Processing/libraries."
https://github.com/libpd/puredatap5
especially ProtoDROM sounds interesting: https://makezine.com/2012/09/24/protodrom-prototyping-with-pure-data-and-processing/
does anybody run puredatap5 on a windows os, and knows how to make it work?
or is there a programming language/enviroment like unity or android studio that works better/easier on windows with libpd?
here is some additional information i found about libpd and processing.
https://forum.pdpatchrepo.info/topic/9814/pd-processing-in-android-mode-is-it-possible
http://robertesler.com/libpd-with-processing/
https://forum.pdpatchrepo.info/topic/6741/how-do-you-package-pure-data-with-processing/4
http://futurewerk.tumblr.com/

Eighteen-year-old Shen Qiang says he soon thereafter began winning Canadian contests, and came in Canada in 2004. He will be a proud representative of the Canadian Olympic team this summer. While he didn't immigrate explicitly to further his table tennis career (he came with his family, who live in Toronto), he's happy with Table Tennis Canada's sports app, and is looking forward to the autumn opening of this new 24-hour training centre in Ottawa, so that he can work harder on his sport. Produced in northeast China, Shen first picked up a paddle at nine. He quit college to proceed to Harbin, a town 300 kilometers away, to train full-time and represent the province of Heilongjiang and had left home. The contest in China was extremely intense, '' he states. https://ok.ru/group/53953306755154/ The athletes trained five days a week, six hours a day; they were paid to train fulltime and compete, he says. "In China, it is very competitive because in the event you do not make results then you will be removed from the team, and if you don't have table tennis without a school, there is no future for you."

@johnwbyrd I have never looked at the source code, but I run a live performance with Pd....... 30 input channels, 8 out..... with live mixing and using [readsf~] for up to 15 minute backing tracks, and I have never had Pd hang even momentarily.
I use extended for that although I doubt the [readsf~] implementation is different.
However, I use windows7....... and is it possible that Pd and the OS treat disk access slightly differently on other systems? I doubt that.

[readsf~] requires an "open" and a "start"...... so it is not forward looking as it might be in an audio editor. However if you program the "open" in advance.... or even at load, then the start is instantaneous (in ram) and you can emulate an instant player.
If Pd is stumbling during playback..... look elsewhere for the problem....... not in [readsf~]......

A multi-GHz processor with rapid disc access should not have problems with audio or Pd...... they use a paltry fraction of the resources available.

Yes..... Pd prioritises audio..... like all programs that use audio.... over video, screen drawing...... everything. So if your patch is struggling in any way you could see the Pd gui stumble.
Check thoroughly your audio and latency settings.... any mismatch with the capabilities of the soundcard could cause what you are seeing.
More here about setting up your computer for audio......... https://forum.pdpatchrepo.info/topic/10125/audio-and-video-why-do-i-have-problems ..... with a link to a good read for problem solving!
You often just need to tell your OS to do as instructed......"and I mean it!"........... Otherwise it prefers to go and peruse it's Facebook page for likes!

Maybe, otherwise, use FL studio or something similar.
Programs written specifically for audio application will have been written in assembly language and be more appropriate for your purposes.
Communication with Pd is usually facilitated through at least midi or OSC messaging.
David.

Again C74 shits on your users, as he makes enough with Pluggo.
Arbitrary changes and are not consulted frequently, but a change of license which means C74 owns everything that is created in Gen development tool, it really is a gesture of usury only expect from a corporation like Microsoft.
Many users have been developing in Gen since leaving, and read attentively the license before investing money, time and other resources to learn and develop.

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Anyway
My return to Pd...