[Harp-L] The One Harmonica to rule them all

[Chris Hofstader]

> 
> I only wish it was more Android friendly.  Not all of us have iPhones (or
> Macs).   I know that's not the developer's fault that Android lags behind
> iPhone (no pun intended) in the midi department.  I'll be searching for an
> Android-friendly portability solution when I get my DM48.

cdh: While I may be the least accomplished harp player on the list, the Android versus iOS/OSX audio question is kind of core to my life these days. Plain and simply, the Android audio stack based in GNU/Linux continues to rely on some very old technology for all things audio. MIDI itself is a simple protocol that could run efficiently on a circa 1990 Timex digital watch so it’s not the gating factor. The real problems are a few layers deeper into the operating system and are why Microsoft and Apple products do so much better with 3D audio in games and such than the Google products. 

cdh: Some other forks of Android that differ increasingly from the Google branded or generic versions (Amazon’s Fire and Samsung’s fork) are replacing the ancient audio layer on their systems and are using a thing our little company (3 Mouse Technology <http://www.3mousetech.com/>) is announcing to the general public at a conference in Cambridge next month wrote and are giving away as free (as in freedom, not as in free beer) audio layer that can withstand the pressures of a modern audio production program. 

cdh: It’s not the fault of Google as they chose to go with GNU/Linux at its core before audio was a real big deal on mobile devices. But, replacing that layer can’t be done without disturbing a whole lot of other parts of the operating system. It’s good enough to stream music and video, those who want to invest in really expensive libraries designed for game hackers can do it on Android but multi-channel audio on Android in its current state will suffer from a lot of lag due to the core audio functionality at the operating system level.


cdh: If any of you care to learn about this hardcore math and audio nerd stuff, hit me off list as this isn’t a computer science discussion group :-).


HH,
cdh