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Show HN: SOUL Language 1.0 – A platform for writing and running audio code

soul-lang.github.io

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Re: Show HN: SOUL Language 1.0 – A platform for writing and running audio code

#11

Post by rectang »

A few questions which spring to mind:

* Can I use SOUL to create freestanding interactive performance environments a la Pure Data?

* What prospects are there for beefing up hardware to run more DSP and bring down latencies? Are there, or will there be open-hardware DSP projects which run SOUL, or open-source runtimes which achieve high performance on standard issue CPUs? If the company behind SOUL goes under (Roli, I think), what happens?

* Could I write a program in SOUL that does real time beat detection given an audio signal, say a steady drum beat (to make things simple)?

Re: Show HN: SOUL Language 1.0 – A platform for writing and running audio code

#12

Post by cesaref »

QuadDamaged wrote: post #10
rectang wrote: post #7

https://soul-lang.github.io/SOUL/docs/SOUL_FAQ.html > What is the licensing/business model? > Our intention is to make SOUL entirely free and unencumbered for developers to use. All our public source code is permissively (ISC) licensed. We’re currently keeping some of our secret sauce closed-source, but the EULA allows use of it freely to encourage its adoption in 3rd party hardware and software. Ultimately, we plan…

been bit by another audio engine that had the same license and pulled a bait and switch. No thanks.

Hi, one of the developers here.

How would it be possible to allay your concerns? I think we've tried to be as clear as possible with our intentions - how could we rule out such possibilities with our license agreement?

Re: Show HN: SOUL Language 1.0 – A platform for writing and running audio code

#14

Post by julesrms »

rectang wrote: post #11

A few questions which spring to mind: * Can I use SOUL to create freestanding interactive performance environments a la Pure Data? * What prospects are there for beefing up hardware to run more DSP and bring down latencies? Are there, or will there be open-hardware DSP projects which run SOUL, or open-source runtimes which achieve high performance on standard issue CPUs? If the company behind SOUL goes under (Roli, I…

> Can I use SOUL to create freestanding interactive performance environments a la Pure Data?

SOUL does have a JIT compiler and you can live-code it, and you can certainly use it to write programs that generate musical patterns etc.. So sure, the language could be used like that.

Our background and focus has always been more from the pro-audio side of things rather than performance, though, so the tools we've built so far aren't really targeted at performance use-cases, it's more about development of apps and plugins.

> What prospects are there for beefing up hardware to run more DSP and bring down latencies? Are there, or will there be open-hardware DSP projects which run SOUL, or open-source runtimes which achieve high performance on standard issue CPUs? If the company behind SOUL goes under (Roli, I think), what happens?

Right now we've not had the resources to get stuck into that side of things deeply yet - hoping to be able to do more on it this year. (And ROLI aren't going to go under, ha!)

> Could I write a program in SOUL that does real time beat detection given an audio signal, say a steady drum beat (to make things simple)?

Yep, totally the kind of thing we're expecting people to do with it.

Re: Show HN: SOUL Language 1.0 – A platform for writing and running audio code

#15

Post by julesrms »

jarmitage wrote: post #13

Congrats Jules :) What's the latest on using SOUL with platforms like Faust and Bela?

We've had it running on Bela for ages now. This year we'll be releasing the SOUL network protocol, so that we can properly control remote "SOUL venues" on hardware like Bela (our current Bela network is a bit of a bodge to get it running).

Faust has also had SOUL support for a while. Not sure what's new over there but maybe Stephane will see this and comment :)

Re: Show HN: SOUL Language 1.0 – A platform for writing and running audio code

#16

Post by cesaref »

jarmitage wrote: post #13

Congrats Jules :) What's the latest on using SOUL with platforms like Faust and Bela?

Hi there, the faust binaries include a faust2soul command which from faust dsp generates a soulpatch. We include a bela build of the soul command line tool (it's basically a tech demonstrator of the JIT and a backend). So at this point, the bits are all out there to take a faust.dsp file and JIT it on Bela.

Re: Show HN: SOUL Language 1.0 – A platform for writing and running audio code

#17

Post by Tade0 »

Current tools for audio coding are complex and non-portable

Thank you for addressing this. I was meaning to get into making VST plugins of my own, but currently in order to do that one has to jump quite a few hoops and often as the work grows in complexity so does the required expertise.

Re: Show HN: SOUL Language 1.0 – A platform for writing and running audio code

#18

Post by jarmitage »

cesaref wrote: post #16
jarmitage wrote: post #13

Congrats Jules :) What's the latest on using SOUL with platforms like Faust and Bela?

Hi there, the faust binaries include a faust2soul command which from faust dsp generates a soulpatch. We include a bela build of the soul command line tool (it's basically a tech demonstrator of the JIT and a backend). So at this point, the bits are all out there to take a faust.dsp file and JIT it on Bela.

Ah, I wasn't thinking of combining Faust and Bela like that, but that raises an interesting possibility.

So you're saying it should be technically feasible to live code/hot reload faust.dsp on Bela with no glitching?

Re: Show HN: SOUL Language 1.0 – A platform for writing and running audio code

#19

Post by cesaref »

rectang wrote: post #11

A few questions which spring to mind: * Can I use SOUL to create freestanding interactive performance environments a la Pure Data? * What prospects are there for beefing up hardware to run more DSP and bring down latencies? Are there, or will there be open-hardware DSP projects which run SOUL, or open-source runtimes which achieve high performance on standard issue CPUs? If the company behind SOUL goes under (Roli, I…

> Are there, or will there be open-hardware DSP projects which run SOUL, or open-source runtimes which achieve high performance on standard issue CPUs?

The binary release includes a build of the soul command for Bela, which is a very cool low latency board + OS for audio (https://bela.io/) based on xenomai. It's probably as close as we get to open hardware for DSP, and it puts you in the sub millisecond latency range.

Re: Show HN: SOUL Language 1.0 – A platform for writing and running audio code

#20

Post by cesaref »

jarmitage wrote: post #18
cesaref wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi there, the faust binaries include a faust2soul command which from faust dsp generates a soulpatch. We include a bela build of the soul command line tool (it's basically a tech demonstrator of the JIT and a backend). So at this point, the bits are all out there to take a faust.dsp file and JIT it on Bela.

Ah, I wasn't thinking of combining Faust and Bela like that, but that raises an interesting possibility. So you're saying it should be technically feasible to live code/hot reload faust.dsp on Bela with no glitching?

Yes, the soul command when playing a patch watches for updates and recompiles when changes are found (then it switches across from the current DSP to the new one when compilation is complete). This isn't totally seamless, as although parameters are retained, any state held within the DSP code (say delay lines) will be reset to initial conditions, but it's pretty good.

So then, update your faust code, re-run faust2soul and the soul command will see the updated patch and recompile.

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