50 lines
2.1 KiB
Markdown
50 lines
2.1 KiB
Markdown
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This is just a little experiment to explore some ideas for the kind of API that I would build if I
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was building my own operation system. The name "osaudio" means Operating System Audio. Or maybe you
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can think of it as Open Source Audio. It's whatever you want it to be.
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The idea behind this project came about after considering the absurd complexity of audio APIs on
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various platforms after years of working on miniaudio. This project aims to disprove the idea that
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complete and flexible audio solutions and simple APIs are mutually exclusive and that it's possible
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to have both. I challenge anybody to prove me wrong.
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In addition to the above, I also wanted to explore some ideas for a different API design to
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miniaudio. miniaudio uses a callback model for data transfer, whereas osaudio uses a blocking
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read/write model.
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This project is essentially just a header file with a reference implementation that uses miniaudio
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under the hood. You can compile this very easily - just compile osaudio_miniaudio.c, and use
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osaudio.h just like any other header. There are no dependencies for the header, and the miniaudio
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implementation obviously requires miniaudio. Adjust the include path in osaudio_miniaudio.c if need
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be.
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See osaudio.h for full documentation. Below is an example to get you started:
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```c
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#include "osaudio.h"
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...
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osaudio_t audio;
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osaudio_config_t config;
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osaudio_config_init(&config, OSAUDIO_OUTPUT);
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config.format = OSAUDIO_FORMAT_F32;
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config.channels = 2;
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config.rate = 48000;
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osaudio_open(&audio, &config);
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osaudio_write(audio, myAudioData, frameCount); // <-- This will block until all of the data has been sent to the device.
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osaudio_close(audio);
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```
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Compare the code above with the likes of other APIs like Core Audio and PipeWire. I challenge
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anybody to argue their APIs are cleaner and easier to use than this when it comes to simple audio
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playback.
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If you have any feedback on this I'd be interested to hear it. In particular, I'd really like to
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hear from people who believe the likes of Core Audio (Apple), PipeWire, PulseAudio or any other
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audio API actually have good APIs (they don't!) and what makes their's better and/or worse than
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this project.
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