Learning to work with audio in C++ [closed]

Answer 1

If you do decide to use C++, then The Synthesis Toolkit is worth noting. I use it for a schoolproject and it is very usable, developed at stanford university, crossplatform (win, mac and linux), free and opensource. An extract from the wikipedia page on it:

Versions of the STK instrument classes have been integrated into ChucK, Csound, Real-Time Cmix, Max/MSP (as part of PeRColate) and SuperCollider

They have a lot of testcode included + on the site are some tutorials to get started with their library. (But you do have to know some C++ of course)

STK has some classed to read/write audio files (and matlab files), realtime audio/midi io, some basic algorithms (usage based on similar functions out of matlab), ...

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Another obvious option and probably THE most used environment to learn/test dsp stuff is Matlab (or free octave, but i havent used it before). I sometimes test stuff out in Matlab before implementing it in C++.

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EDIT: In the past year I've been using JUCE which is a pretty cool C++ library centered around C++ audio programming, though its more leaning towards something like QT. One of their developers (Timur Doumler) has a nice talk about real time audio with C++ and JUCE on CppCon 2015, definitely worth checking out, even if you don't end up using JUCE: https://youtu.be/boPEO2auJj4

Answer 2

Is C++ the right language? That depends entirely on the context. If you need to plug your code into another application, framework or whatever else, you probably have to use whatever language that framework is made for.

If you're making your own free-standing app? Probably not. There are several reasons why I'd suggest you go with another language:

• C++ isn't well suited for beginners. If your goal is to learn programming through these projects, go with a language that is more amenable to "learning by doing". C++ is full of pitfalls and things that "seem to work", until one day they don't. Add to this a horribly complex syntax and some pretty complex idioms and techniques you have to master to work around quirks of the language that simply are non-issues in pretty much any other language, and you have a good source of bugs and frustrations, and not much more.
• C++ has no concept of "audio". C++ doesn't come with any kind of support for recording, processing or playing audio, loading or saving audio files or anything else. Most modern languages have some form of audio support built into the standard language (at least the ability to load and play mp3 files and other such basics). In C++, all of this will have to be done through third-party libraries and OS-specific code.

If you have a real choice in language, I'd say go for something like Python or C#. They're easier to learn, come with a lot more functionality out of the box, and make it a lot harder to shoot yourself in the foot. I wouldn't recommend C++ to someone who isn't already an experienced programmer.

Answer 3

Lots of good suggestions in here. In addition I'd suggest looking at the Jack Audio Toolkit, the JUCE framework, and learn how to port the C code from synthesis libraries like Csound. The "Audio Programming Book" is good too for that.

Re C vs C++, I think you'll find that in audio work, the C++ part is often really just chrome for code management. The DSP bits are all low level procedural math on signals, so it's likely to be C calls and it really doesn't matter for that side of things whether you use C or C++. A lot of C++ audio projects are essentially just C in the audio guts.

hth!

Answer 4

To answer your second question, you should check out this book: Designing Audio Effect Plug-Ins in C++: With Digital Audio Signal Processing Theory by Will Pirkle.

The book goes through some basic DSP and walks you through how to make audio plugins. You'll code in C++ but it won't be hard because the book suggest you download a framework, RACKAFX, which handles all GUI events. All you'll have to do is focus on writing the formulas and storing the data in the right channels.

Good luck!