[PD] Pd on Android

[Spencer Russell]

Seconding the dissatisfaction with real-time audio support on Android in
general.

I've only recently jumped on the android train (Samsung Droid Charge) and
I've noticed that the only audio apps that are usable are of the sequencing
/ drum machine variety, because they don't depend so much on low-latency.
Any apps where tapping on the screen is supposed to generate a sound exposes
serious latency issues.

I've heard that gingerbread made some changes to the available audio API,
but supposedly they didn't substantially improve things. According to the
"people who know" many of the latency issues are low-level (drivers and
actual hardware limitations) that have as much to do with the device
manufacturers as Android itself. One of the downsides of an open platform
that runs on a wide variety of devices. I haven't had a chance to survey the
situation with common audio CODECS being used on these devices and whether
the drivers are available open-source, and/or could be hacked for better
latency.

I haven't been able to test much with libpd yet. So far any time any
libpd-based app tries to access my microphone I get this crazy noise
(actually sounds kind of cool, but definitely not the intended sound). I
haven't tried building the latest from the repo, I didn't realize the
binaries were substantially out-of-date (I didn't bother to check any
timestamps).

If that doesn't fix the issue I'll be sure to get in touch with the devs and
see where the issue may lie.

-s

On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 4:54 PM, Hans-Christoph Steiner <hans at at.or.at>wrote:

>
> Hey Dan,
>
> I agree, Android's downfall is the poor audio implementation on the
> devices.  How many have you tested?  Can you post that data anywhere?
> It would be good to start collecting this.  I think there are starting
> to be some Android devices with solid audio performance, so it would be
> good to have a source of data on this.
>
> .hc
>
> On Mon, 29 Aug 2011 16:30 -0400, "Dan Wilcox" <danomatika at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > I have to disagree with you. iOS is a better mobile os for running
> > applications using libpd (aka RjDJ, Nodebeat, etc) since it has a low
> > latency audio api. Android can't give you anything better then 20ms or
> > so. If you want to build a realtime, I'm afraid you have to stick to iOS
> > for now ...
> >
> > This is why I'm targeting iOS for the upcoming robotcowboy app ...
> > although I'd rather use a much freer platform.
> >
> > On Aug 29, 2011, at 11:21 AM, Pierre Massat wrote:
> >
> > > Hi all,
> > >
> > > I plan on buying my very first smartphone in the next few days. I want
> a phone running Android since it appears to be the best platform to run Pd.
> I m just not quite sure about the way Pd can be used with a smartphone. Can
> we run Pd-extended, or just use the patches, or is it just some sort of an
> API that can be used when developping an app? I m totally new to this, so
> please excuse the (possibly abyssal) silliness of my questions.
> > >
> > > Cheers!
> > >
> > > Pierre
> >
> > --------
> > Dan Wilcox
> > danomatika.com
> > robotcowboy.com
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Pd-list at iem.at mailing list
> > UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management ->
> > http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> Pd-list at iem.at mailing list
> UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management ->
> http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.puredata.info/pipermail/pd-list/attachments/20110829/94396838/attachment-0001.htm>