neindaw

Some kind of DAW for 9front? An ongoing effort. Each instrument and filter is a filesystem. On top of that idea a DAW is supposed to be built, the UI is optional and is based on the files exposed by each instrument or filter.

Besides the usual C interfaces, neindaw uses Faust to build instruments. Here, watch this:

→

Wow.

Installing

Clone the repo, run mk install, check out ls /bin/daw.

Testing

contrib directory contains a script o that provides an easy way to run neindaw with ORCΛ.

More details about ORCΛ coupled with neindaw as a live-coding environment under Plan 9: piper.

Here a basic example of using neindaw manually is shown.

So far three instruments are available: a simplified kick drum, AY-3-8910 and a piano.

daw/kick_drum -m /n/kick
cd /n/kick

Allocate one instance.

cd `{cat clone}
cd K*

Check the A oscillator frequency, the order is type value initial min max step. It's different for different UI elements.

cat A/Frequency/ctl
vslider	100	100	10	200	5

Raise frequency to 160Hz.

echo 160 > A/F*/ctl

Pipe sound to /dev/audio in background.

audio/pcmconv -i f32c1r44100 < ../data > /dev/audio &

Set B oscillator parameters and enable it.

echo 400 > B/Frequency/ctl
echo 0.001 > B/Attack/ctl
echo 1 > B/Enable/ctl

Do a kick.

echo clear > ../ctl
echo 1 > Control/Gate/ctl

Run cfg to configure the kick drum in a GUI.

daw/cfg /n/kick

TODO and random notes

• add input proccessing
• buffer computated data if data is opened more than once so every reader gets the same data at its own pace?
• use llvm-generated object or asm instead of C? that would be having to add Plan 9 target to llc I guess, or some kind of conversion tool for asm
• renaming/removal of instance IDs and controls via Twstat and Tremove
• <fs>/watch to watch the changes, add frame offset as well to know when it actually changed
• optional frame offsets for all commands, running and stopping computations at specific offsets will make it possible to apply changes correctly
• reset command for groups
• writable metadata: allow adding new key/values to metadata
• add some way to read and write the whole configuration of an instance in an easy way, so instances can be cloned, or configs saved to disk as presets
• make all of that compile and run on OpenBSD as well?
• "sampler" that can be used to buffer generated audio in memory/files to be reused without running computations every single time
• slicer
• <id>/from and <id>/to to connect all the objects together, should be controllable through daw/cfg.
• mixerfs with channels
• full MIDI support
• OSC support
• changes of controls can be monitored through a 2D plot in GUI
• every control can be used as an input of another control