[q-lang-users] New q-faust module

[Albert G. <Dr....@t-...>]

Hi all,

For the DSP buffs around here: I've just imported a new module into Q 
CVS (http://sourceforge.net/cvs/?group_id=96881): q-faust. (Probably 
still needs some time until it shows up in anonymous cvs and the cvs web 
interface.) There is no file release yet (and I've only tested it on 
Linux so far), but if anyone wants to have a tarball (which also 
includes the SWIG-generated wrapper file, so you don't need Q-SWIG to 
compile it) just let me know and I'll send it to you.

The Q-Faust module lets you load and run Faust-generated signal 
processing modules in Q. Faust ("Functional AUdio STream") is a 
functional programming language for real-time sound processing and 
synthesis developed at Grame (Lyon, France, see http://www.grame.fr, the 
same guys who have also written MidiShare, which Q already uses for its 
MIDI interface) and distributed as GPL'ed software. Faust is based on an 
algebra which includes the necessary basic operations for describing all 
the usual kinds of block diagrams. It allows you to specify DSPs in a 
very concise and elegant manner. A closer description of Faust can be 
found on http://faudiostream.sf.net.

What this basically does: You can create your digital signal processing 
algorithms in the Faust programming language, compile the DSP to a 
shared module, and then load this module into a Q script at runtime and 
use it to process digital audio signals in realtime. The Faust compiler 
itself actually produces C++ code, and includes some clever 
optimizations, so that the generated DSPs can compete in terms of 
execution speed with carefully handcoded ones.

Right now only a simple test example is included in q-faust, but you can 
also use the *.dsp examples in the Faust distribution (which includes, 
e.g., a freeverb implementation and a Karplus-Strong synth) with the 
examples/faustui.q script to try it out (see the comments at the 
beginning of examples/faustui.q for instructions on how to do this).

Enjoy!

-- 
Dr. Albert Gr"af
Dept. of Music-Informatics, University of Mainz, Germany
Email:  Dr....@t-..., ag...@mu...
WWW:    http://www.musikwissenschaft.uni-mainz.de/~ag