Whenever such an interruption occurs, there's always a chance-and sometimes a certainty-that a buffer deadline will be missed which will result in an audible glitch, crackle, pop, skip or repeated section of audio. The problem for the software architect is that-on Windows at least-as soon as you operate with minimal buffering throughout, your application becomes susceptible to delays and interruptions that are a normal part of life on a non-realtime and preemptive multitasking operating system such as Windows. Quite simply, you can't have both! The rub time-scaling and other transforms or effects). If it doesn't, then it's shortchanging the user experience in some other way, such as not providing near-zero levels of latency, or not allowing the full manipulation of media items (eg. they can be made to be very stable without any extra work or clever engineering.Ī realtime audio application like a fully-functional DJ software suite, or any playout system that provides instantaneous and comprehensive media control and manipulation is not in the same class and must operate with minimal output buffering. A basic media player, waveform editor, web-based audio, or any number of other general purpose audio apps can tolerate substantial output buffering and hence do not face this dilemma-ie. In the typical case this is because user interface controls need to be able to be operated with their effect or influence on the audio heard immediately-not in ten seconds, two seconds, or even half-a-second. This is a much more specific type of audio application-one where output delays and generous buffering are not acceptable. Significance of realtime audio applications on audio stabilityįirst, we should clarify what we mean by realtime audio application. As a general purpose operating system-as opposed to a realtime operating system-it was never designed with hard realtime limits as part of its architecture, yet this is the very thing a realtime media (particularly audio) application needs in order to guarantee absolute stability. Unfortunately the Windows operating system is not known as being friendly to applications in this regard. It's probably not overstating things too much to suggest that a playout system or DJ software application is nothing if not stable and reliable! Meet Windows-your best friend! A white paper by Ots Labs founder and OtsAV creator Adam Ots
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
March 2023
Categories |