Benignly Designed Sound Manager

[vrld]

Because the one thing I like about Flash/ActionScript3 is how they handle audio playback and seeing new lovers often have trouble understanding love's audio architecture, I sat down and tried to emulate the AS3 behavior. The result is the
Benignly Designed Sound Manager

BDSM overwrites love.audio.newSource, love.audio.play and love.audio.stop, so that one source can be played multiple times.

love.audio.newSource(what, how)
Returns a new bdsm source. The parameters are the same as for the old love.audio.newSource().

love.audio.play(source) and source:play()
Plays the source and returns a handle to the player. The player is the same as love.audio's Source object. In contrast to love.audio, you can safely ignore the handles.

love.audio.stop(source) and source:stop()
Stops all instances of source. If source is omitted, it will stop all the sources.

The source code is rather short: Warning: OLD CODE

Code: Select all

local newSource = love.audio.newSource
local stop = love.audio.stop

local function remove_stopped(sources)
	local remove = {}
	for _, s in pairs(sources) do
		remove[s] = true
	end
	for s, _ in pairs(remove) do
		sources[s] = nil
	end
end

function love.audio.newSource(what, how)
	return {
		play = function(self)
			remove_stopped(self.handles)

			local s = newSource(what, how)
			s:setLooping(self.looping)
			s:setPitch(self.pitch)
			s:setVolume(self.volume)

			self.handles[s] = s
			s:play()
			return s
		end,

		stop = function(self)
			for _, s in pairs(self.handles) do
				s:stop()
			end
			self.handles = {}
		end,

		setLooping = function(self, v) self.looping = not not v   end,
		setPitch   = function(self, v) self.pitch   = tonumber(v) end,
		setVolume  = function(self, v) self.volume  = tonumber(v) end,

		looping = false,
		pitch = 1,
		volume = 1,
		handles = {},
	}
end

function love.audio.play(what)
	assert(what.handles, "Can only play source objects.")
	return what:play()
end

function love.audio.stop(what)
	if what and what.stop then return what:stop() end
	stop()
end

Example code:

Code: Select all

require 'bdsm'

function love.load()
	music = love.audio.newSource('music.ogg', 'stream')
	music:setLooping(true) -- set default value for all players
	music:setVolume(.3)
	love.audio.play(music) -- the handle can be ignored

	woosh = love.audio.newSource('woosh.ogg', 'static')

	love.graphics.setFont(30)
end

function love.draw()
	love.graphics.print('Press a key!', 20,20)
end

function love.keypressed()
	local h = woosh:play() -- same as love.audio.play(woosh)
	h:setPitch(.5 + math.random() * 3) -- set pitch for individual players
end

Can you see yourself using this?
If not: why?
What can be improved?

Edit:
This is now on github: https://github.com/vrld/Stuff/tree/master/bdsm

[Taehl]

I like it (I'm assuming it works fully, rather than testing it). About the only reason I could see myself using TEsound instead of this is for two features: Sound tags (so you can set the volume or pitch of many different sounds together, thus enabling things like a "sound effect volume" option) and being able to pass it a table of sounds and it'll choose one at random. Also, lovely name.

[adnzzzzZ]

I have been playing with sound synthesis using LÖVE and I have designed something very similar to what you have here (I think, maybe: https://github.com/adonaac/love/tree/master/ss). But for what I'm doing I still have some problems with emulating a buffer and/or pop/click noises at the end and start of sources (although I think this has to do with the way I'm handling the samples)...

Regardless, your solution to my problems look a lot better. I will use this soon and report on what I think of it. Thanks!

[Robin]

Very interesting, I might want to use that (seems perfect for Jams, for example). The only thing is that I might want to distinguish between BDSM Sources and regular old Sources.

[headchant]

In combination with your proxy stuff this could extremely simplify the whole sound managing business.

[T-Bone]

Great name. Will check it out.

[kikito]

I like this very much! (IMHO this is how LÖVE should handle all sound, I've already talked about this)

What can be improved?

Only two things:

• Put it on github (or some other public repo). Or put a link on the forum, if it's already there.
• newSource creates a lot of functions nearly identical. Wouldn't it be possible to extract them to a metatable?

[vrld]

Late reply, but better late than never. Thanks for the feedback

two features: Sound tags (so you can set the volume or pitch of many different sounds together, thus enabling things like a "sound effect volume" option)

That is a great idea! Tags can be played/stopped/pitched/whatevered by using love.audio.tags.tagname.foo, e.g. love.audio.tags.effects.setPitch(0.6). Doing stuff on tags will act upon all sources and their playing instances in that tag. By default, all sources are members of the 'all' tag, so you can act on all sources via love.audio.tags.all.

Likewise, modifying a source's pitch, volume or looping behavior will effect all playing instances of that source. So be careful with that.

and being able to pass it a table of sounds and it'll choose one at random.

Not quite sure what that means: Playing a shuffled playlist, or just choosing a sound to play, i.e.:

Code: Select all

sounds = table.shuffle{'foo.ogg', 'bar.ogg', 'baz.ogg'} -- doesn't exist
source = love.audio.newSource(sounds[1])
souce:play()

But for what I'm doing I still have some problems with emulating a buffer and/or pop/click noises at the end and start of sources

Just to clarify: This lib has nothing to do with sound synthesis, and it will not remove the clicking sounds. These are caused by your sound not having zero crossings at the beginning and end. To get rid of them, make sure the last sample you write is 0.0, either by using an envelope, or by making the sound duration a multiple of the wavelength of your wave function. On a side note (haha, get it? ), you might be interested in Moan.

The only thing is that I might want to distinguish between BDSM Sources and regular old Sources.

Doable, but hackish:

• function isLoveSource(s) return type(s) == "userdata" and s:typeOf("Source") end
• function isLoveSource(s) return s.instances ~= nil end
• function isLoveSource(s) return love.tags.all[s] ~= nil end

Put it on github

Done: https://github.com/vrld/Stuff/
The name will probably change in the future, since there already is bdsm for LÖVE.

newSource creates a lot of functions nearly identical. Wouldn't it be possible to extract them to a metatable?

Good point. Also done.

Put it on github

[Taehl]

Sounds tags are in? Awesome.

and being able to pass it a table of sounds and it'll choose one at random.

Not quite sure what that means: Playing a shuffled playlist, or just choosing a sound to play, i.e.:

Code: Select all

sounds = table.shuffle{'foo.ogg', 'bar.ogg', 'baz.ogg'} -- doesn't exist
source = love.audio.newSource(sounds[1])
souce:play()

Choosing a sound to play. What I enjoy doing are things like:

Code: Select all

-- in love.load or content.lua
sounds = {
	growl = {
		"sounds/growl01.ogg", "sounds/growl02.ogg", "sounds/growl03.ogg", "sounds/growl04.ogg", "sounds/growl05.ogg", "sounds/growl06.ogg", "sounds/growl07.ogg", "sounds/growl08.ogg",
	},
}


-- somewhere in my game's code
-- This plays one growl sound at random
TEsound.play(sounds.growl)

-- That's functionally equivalent to, but much nicer to type, than
TEsound.play(sounds.growl[math.random(#sounds.growl)])
-- or in this case,
love.audio.play(love.audio.newSource(sounds.growl[math.random(#sounds.growl)], "stream"))

Also worth mentioning is that if you loop a random sound like this in TEsound, it'll choose a different sound each time. So you could very easily play a random list of music, for example. Would that be possible in BDSM?

... I don't think you mentioned how to add tags to sounds in BDSM...

[slime]

Sounds tags are in? Awesome.

and being able to pass it a table of sounds and it'll choose one at random.

Not quite sure what that means: Playing a shuffled playlist, or just choosing a sound to play, i.e.:

Code: Select all

sounds = table.shuffle{'foo.ogg', 'bar.ogg', 'baz.ogg'} -- doesn't exist
source = love.audio.newSource(sounds[1])
souce:play()

Choosing a sound to play. What I enjoy doing are things like:

Code: Select all

-- in love.load or content.lua
sounds = {
	growl = {
		"sounds/growl01.ogg", "sounds/growl02.ogg", "sounds/growl03.ogg", "sounds/growl04.ogg", "sounds/growl05.ogg", "sounds/growl06.ogg", "sounds/growl07.ogg", "sounds/growl08.ogg",
	},
}


-- somewhere in my game's code
-- This plays one growl sound at random
TEsound.play(sounds.growl)

-- That's functionally equivalent to, but much nicer to type, than
TEsound.play(sounds.growl[math.random(#sounds.growl)])
-- or in this case,
love.audio.play(love.audio.newSource(sounds.growl[math.random(#sounds.growl)], "stream"))

Also worth mentioning is that if you loop a random sound like this in TEsound, it'll choose a different sound each time. So you could very easily play a random list of music, for example. Would that be possible in BDSM?

... I don't think you mentioned how to add tags to sounds in BDSM...

Is it really that hard to do the random stuff yourself? I don't see it being an essential part of a sound library.