Re: looped music/web

[Kim Flint <kflint@chromatic.com>]

At 11:37 PM 4/28/97 -0400, you wrote:
>Hi folks,
>
>I didnt mean to start up a PC vs. Mac war over a few loops. {:+/

well, we were tired of the beyond-fripp vs. jamman debate anyway....


>Also I dont believe that you have to encode a file into Headspace's RMF
>format to get Beatnik to play it back. The readme that comes with Beatnik
>claims that it plays all standard formats plus its own RMF and that it
>should be backwards compatible with Liveaudio (NS).

I think that's right. I think the Headspace authoring tools are for 
creating
their RMF format audio files. That is primarily oriented at people creating
interactive audio for multimedia and games and such. Just about any audio
files work with Beatnik. On my mac at home I've got Netscape set to use
beatnik for just about every audio format possible. I've got LiveAudio
totally off. 

Also, it seemed like most of the interactive stuff I tried with Beatnik was
done with java scripts. So it should be possible for anyone to set up
beatnik-aware websites. (assuming you are java-aware, of course)


>I think this test would be a simple matter of just using the Beatnik
>plug-in to play back any audio file loop (wave, au or aiff) on the web and
>listen for a difference between its playback and Liveaudio's playback.  I
>am assuming that liveaudio does not bypass the MCI controls and as a 
>result
>puts in a gap of silence inbetween each repeat of the loop.  Beatnik since
>it bypasses the MCI controls should play the loop seamlessly.
>
>Unfortunately, I cannot test this myself because I dont have access to a
>PC.  Have I got anytakers out there??? or would you all rather drop the
>matter????

I'd be surprised if it didn't work. I know the guy in charge of engineering
there - he's one of the best people I've worked with. I'd like to hear 
other
people's experiences if they try it, since this could be a really
interesting new way to compose interactive music. I'd test the pc stuff for
you myself, but despite the fact that I work at one of those hot silly-con
valley multimedia wizbang companies, I don't have any multimedia hardware 
in
my pc. Go figure.....

kim
_______________________________________________________
Kim Flint                       408-752-9284
VLSI Systems Engineering        kflint@chromatic.com
Chromatic Research