Re: [fluid-dev] New development

[Josh Green]

On Thu, 2009-01-29 at 00:12 +0100, Pedro Lopez-Cabanillas wrote:
> > Seems to me like it is definitely worth improving the existing PortAudio
> > driver.  Any idea what this would entail?
> >     Josh
> 
> Briefly:
> * Detect and define PORTAUDIO_* in the build system. I've done that using 
> pkg-config portaudio-2.0 >= 19. Allow to disable compilation of this driver, 
> maybe disable it by default?

I think if portaudio is found, it just be included as a driver.  If its
installed, chances are the user wants to use it.

> * Implement new2() and call new2() from new() as it is usual in most other 
> audio drivers. Or leave that for a later version/never?

The new2 drivers are used by QSynth and perhaps some other applications
to intercept the audio.

> * Register the setting "audio.portaudio.device" to list/select detected 
> devices and backends as reported by Pa_GetDeviceCount() and 
> Pa_GetDeviceInfo().   
> * Maybe more settings? Some backends would require special ones?
> * PortAudio API functions changed: Pa_OpenStream(), PaStreamCallback, ...
> * Testing: ASIO in Windows, but it should also work for other 
> platforms/backends...
> 
> Regards,
> Pedro

After looking at the fluid_portaudio.c and seeing how small it was, I
decided to take a crack at it.  Checked in is the new PortAudio driver
using PortAudio API 19.  I added device enumeration, but it still needs
some improvement.  It is using the device names for the setting
audio.portaudio.device, but these look like they can be rather long and
I'm not sure if there is any guarantee that they will be unique.  I also
am using the string "default" to try and select the default device,
which I was assuming would be device 0, but I'm not sure about that and
this would also conflict with the ALSA "default" device name.

PortAudio selects its devices based on index.  Perhaps specifying the
device numerically would be better, though it would be nice to be able
to see the names in a drop down list in applications as well.

Other improvements would be the addition of a new2 driver.

Anyone willing to try this with ASIO on Windows?

Best regards,
        Josh