[SoundComp-Develop] Don't panic...

[<js...@ya...>]

--- mfwimi chonya <jun...@gm...> schrieb am Sa, 8.1.2011:

>Anyways, I am writing to let you know I finally managed to start going through the glossary! It is a very interesting topic I must say. Never figured acoustics was this interesting! 

I am glad you find this interesting as I do :-)

> The bad news is that i have forgotten so much i actually need to download some maths books to freshen up! my mind has been decaying since my graduation last year so will need some time before i can do something solid. hope this will not pose a problem seeing as you want something to be done and some kinda progress made!

I do not think so in your case - as the part that I suggested you to take the challenge is not something that is needed that early. The main thing that is needed "right now" is a working parser for a good preliminary language specification - that is what I am looking at the next weeks.
Everything else can come later as most of it will get easily integrated.

And coming to the math part - yes, you will need a bit of it, but I think not too much in your specific case. You first will have to investigate the patent stuff a while to avoid trouble though. A web search on "PSOLA +patent" should give some starters. I just think that the main barrier patent is from 1989 and thus should have expired 2009, and the rest should be something that we should be able to work around. AFAIK some patents are held by open source organizations - if absolutely necessary, one might possibly get cost free licenses there for an open source project. Better would be to avoid any potential conflict at all by implementing it in a non-conflicting way, if possible.

Should you find out there is no way of implementing a PSOLA without patent conflicts and cost-incurring licenses, then we would have to drop that part (which I would really regret as it gives good options) and you would have to do something else (enough tasks to take :-). 

If you find there is already an open-source C/C++ implementation that is somewhat LGPL-compatible and definitely patent-conflict free, we might link to that as an external library (SoundComp should have a generic external library interface anyway at some point). I would rather like to have it on our own, though.

Best regards

Jan