Hello SAOLlers,
I have been on the Csound list for ages, and have finally got round to
joining the SAOL list despite knowing about it for quite a while now. In
fact, I even know people who know people who contributed to the MPEG-4
specification (at PACT, in Bristol, UK), so I can bask in some
distantly-reflected glory.
Despite the fact that my professional training is as a musician
(flute-player and teacher, and even a flute-maker years ago), I am a
'core developer' for the Composers Desktop Project (CDP - url below),
which is a large suite of programs for processing sounds, in the sorts
of ways favoured by experimental electro-acoustic composers. Much of our
most interesting stuff has been developed by Trevor Wishart. We started
on the Atari ST, and our main platform is now WIN32; also SGI. CDP is
also a non-profitmaking organisation (though we are now trying to become
a little more commercially-oriented, out of necessity - I want to do
this full-time!), with a strong focus on education and 'outreach'. We
put a great deal of work into our documentation, for example. My main
activity these days is developing new graphical tools, in addition to
general development and maintenance work.
I am intersted in SAOL not only as a compositional tool with a more
modern face than Csound, but also in its potential as an educational
tool. In both cases there will be a need for integrated graphical
support, and my impression is that the more structured and modular form
of the code will make it relatively easy to incorporate into a graphical
environment. Given that, unlike Csound, there are (so far as I can see)
no opcodes specifically for displaying data, graphic code will have to
be linked to saolc at a fairly deep level. I will also be keen to see
saolc on the PC reach real-time performance commensurate with Csound,
and will be happy to contribute to development as my skills and time
allow.
One of my pet issues at present is multi-channel audio; specifically,
the use of multi-channel soundfiles with soundcards. SAOLlers may be
amused to visit my Soundcard Attrition Page, where I list cards known to
support m/c files, and provide some example files. I have been in
occasional contact with Martin Puryear at Microsoft, with regard to the
new Extended WAVE formats (available from my site), and I would like to
add support for those to saolc as soon as the new formats are finalised.
That's enough from me for now...
Richard Dobson
-- Test your DAW with my Soundcard Attrition Page! http://wkweb5.cableinet.co.uk/rwd CDP homepage: http://www.bath.ac.uk/~masjpf/CDP/CDP.htm
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