Hi all,
The test release of my 'saolc' test implementation of
SAOLC is now available from my web page,
<http://sound.media.mit.edu/~eds/mpeg4>.
Here is the README file:
---------
README for first release of public-domain saolc interpreter
for WIN32, Alpha, and SGI.
The "manual" is not part of the code distribution; it's the
language specification, and you can find it at
<http://www.cselt.it/mpeg/documents/w1631.zip>.
I'm making this code available so that people have a chance
to play with the language, help me find bugs, and give
feedback on the syntax/semantics of the language. The
interpreter is not yet finished, and please understand that
before you start to play with it - I don't want to mislead
anyone into thinking this is "production" quality software
yet.
On the other hand, I've fixed almost all the bugs I've
found, and large portions of the language seem to be
functional. I aim to do another release approximately July
1, and then maybe one more six weeks after that.
Besides bug reports and discussion on the language standard
itself, I'm interested in having builds for other machines
(Linux, Macintosh, etc) available - if you have the skills
to do this, everyone will be appreciative, I'm sure.
It should be straightforward to compiler on almost any
platform (I hope) -- compile all the .c files except for
lex.yy.c which is included in y.tab.c, and then link
everything with the math library (see the Makefile for
hints).
I'm also interested in compositions which make use of SAOL in
interesting ways; I'm not a composer, but I've been giving a
lot of talks about SAOL and MPEG-4 audio and would love to
play your music to audiences all over the world as part of
my demo presentation.
The interpreter runs from the command line. The syntax is
"saolc -orc <saolfile> -sco <saslfile> -out <aiff file>".
You can also use "-text" for debugging your orchestras; it
dumps all the sample values out to the screen.
The current limitations of the interpreter are:
* only AIFF soundfiles are supported for input/output; no
realtime capability, .au files, etc.
* there is no MIDI support, only score files are allowed
* the following opcodes aren't implemented yet:
pluck, fof, port, chorus, flange, reverb compress,
spatialize
* the following wavetable generators aren't implemented yet:
expseg, cubicseg, spline, polynomial, buzz, bessel,
cheby, concat
* the `sequence' instruction isn't fully supported
* you can't put `tempo' or `table' lines in the score
Some things have changed between this implementation and the
last official document
(http://www.cselt.stet.it/mpeg/documents/w1631.zip):
* `ipoissonrand' doesn't make any sense
* the `instr' statement takes a duration as the first
argument
* the `fft' prototype is now
fft(asig in, table t, [ivar length, ivar fftsize, table window])
(fftsize has been added)
* the `ifft' prototype is now
ifft(table t[, ivar length,ivar fftsize, table window])
* `output' may only take an a-rate expression
* you need to tag `control' and `table' lines in the
score:
time [label] control varname value
time table tname gen p0 p1 .
* `gain' and `balance' both take an optional length
parameter for the window length to use for
normalization
And I know about one bug:
* non-powers-of-2 ffts and iffts don't work.
* there might be an endian problem for soundfile reads
on SGI
Discussion about the language itself (the standard) is
welcome on the SAOL developers' mailing list. Send email to
<saol-dev-request@media.mit.edu> to be added. I'd prefer to
keep bug reports off that list; just send them to me at
<eds@media.mit.edu>. The mailing list is archived, and you
can read old postings from the MPEG-4 structured audio
homepage <http://sound.media.mit.edu/~eds/mpeg4>.
I'll also be keeping an archive of SAOL orchestras, instruments,
and opcodes you want to share with the world. Send them to me,
and I'll put them up on the web page.
Best of luck with this first test implementation, and happy
music-making!
Eric Scheirer, 23 May 1997
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| Eric Scheirer | A-7b5 D7b9 | G-7 C7 | Cb C-7b5 F7#9 | Bb | B-7 E7 |
| eds@media.mit.edu | < http://sound.media.mit.edu/~eds >
| 617 253 0112 | A A/G# F#-7 F#-/E | Eb-7b5 D7b5 | Db | C7b5 B7b5 | Bb |
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