Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] Re: Nicola Bernardini's sound file library comments
From: Erik de Castro Lopo (erikd_AT_zip.com.au)
Date: ti elo 17 1999 - 06:14:12 EDT
Nicola Bernardini wrote:
>
> Dear Erik, dear all,
>
> I absolutely did not mean to start a *competition* over which is the
> best sound library available, and even less than that state some
> 'rules' on how to develop audio software on linux. Rather,
> I was personally thinking that writing
> an audio library is enough of a humble and boring task that nobody would
> want to do that anyway and I was amazed that several people had already
> written some.
Its not as boring as you might think. Getting both Microsoft and IMA
ADPCM encoded WAV files working was quite an interesting challenge.
> I am all the more amazed (and delighted) that you defend
> (rightly so) the work you've done: that's very good. Now the important
> part is that we converge on your library, since you are eager to continue
> developing it and maintaining it: as far as I'm concerned I have no
> objections even if I have'nt seen your library yet (the nice part of
> open-source is that there's no point in lying on features :), and
> on the other hand I'm sure that Bill Schottstaedt won't
> mind at all. And let me add immediately that I certainly don't mean
> that *all* audio applications *should* use this library - what I'm
> saying is that they *could*, and it would make life easier for them.
Yes, I'm afraid I over-reacted. I have put a lot of work into
libsndfile and wouldn't want it to be overlooked. I'm sure other
software authors have similar feelings.
I started work on libsndfile when I couldn't find a library that
allowed me to read samples as double precision floating point numbers.
On modern processors, FP arithmetic is as fast or faster than integer
arithmetic so it makes sense to do audio processing using FP.
<snip>
> Another feature that could
> make it win over other libraries is some kind of compatibility with
> the audiofile library to make easy portings between SGI and linux.
> I reckon that this would throw the name space pollution attentions
> out the window, but it could be selected optionally in the configure process
> (adding just a header for equivalences, or at worst a file of
> function conversions).
Is there documentation on SGI's implementation somewhere?
Erik
--
+-------------------------------------------------+
Erik de Castro Lopo erikd_AT_zip.com.au
+-------------------------------------------------+
The government everybody loves to abuse sues the company everybody loves
to hate. Throw in a bunch of faceless lawyers cross-examining techies
[with] all the charisma of a video driver and you've got a spectacle of
thoroughly miniscule proportions.
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