colugomusic

Blockhead dev log #9

I changed all the effects because I didn't like the way parameter values were being smoothed.

A month or so ago I changed the entire engine to process all audio in 64-float blocks, because on certain CPUs this makes processing massively faster. Due to the way the effects were originally written this meant that parameter values were now only updated once every 64 frames.

It's not a very noticeable problem but if you listen carefully enough while doing filter sweeps and stuff it int...

Blockhead dev log #8

Work on effect modulation is slow but I'm getting there. Loads of bugs to iron out. The back end part of it is almost done. Meanwhile there is a massive number of little UI related things that need to come together for everything to feel right and not be annoying. Some of it will definitely change in the future as the scope of effects and blocks changes but I have an initial set of features I want to get working for the beta release.

Much of the relevant UI code is in dire need of a ref...

Blockhead dev log #7

I have been working on effect parameter modulation! Unfortunately it's all work-in-progress back end stuff so nothing much to show until it's actually working. I delayed thinking about effect modulation for a long time and a lot of the existing code wasn't written with it in mind, so there's a bit of restructuring to be done. I will probably stop trying to write a development log every day when I'm just doing boring stuff like this.

I also fixed a few bugs, including a big one that I fo...

Blockhead dev log #6

I was woken up by noisy neighbours and felt terrible all day! I decided to give myself a weekend since I think my last one was about 2 weeks ago. I was still thinking about these dev logs though and it feels good to write something down every day.

So instead of working on anything that requires real brain power I decided to think a little about MIDI input and investigate what might be involved in adding it. Well it turns out Godot already supports MIDI input (but not output) out of the ...

Blockhead dev log #5

 I started working on effect modulation and got sidetracked again debugging a crash related to data synchronization across threads. In the process I ended up creating a new set of classes for performing lock-free synchronization of audio objects which should be a lot easier and safer to use than what I was doing before, and more versatile. I added these classes to my work-in-progress DSP library here:

2020-09-08 17:42:40 +0000 UTC View Post

Blockhead dev log #4

I can now modify sample modulation envelopes without causing clicks. From now on modifying anything in the workspace while it's playing back shouldn't cause any major clicking artifacts at all. The size and complexity of the code to get this all working was ridiculous and there's probably some errors in there which will lead to problems in the future. I'm not sure it was worth the time and effort and I'm pretty happy to move on to something else.

I'm now finally working on adding automa...

Blockhead dev log #3

I spent the entire day trying to get the declicking mechanism to also work with the sample modulation envelopes. The entire thing is really complicated.

Audio programming falls under the umbrella of something called "real time computing" which is something I had to learn about for this project. One of the things that makes it so challenging is that the audio thread has a number of stipulations that it must adhere to, the big ones being that it's is never allowed to allocate or deallocat...

Blockhead dev log #2

Today I managed to resolve the remaining clicking artifacts which occurred while moving blocks around, including when blocks are dragged quickly out of chunks. I then spent some time cleaning up all the code I added to achieve this clickless playback.

There's still one source of clicking I still need to address which happens when the pitch modulation enveloped is modified while the block is playing back in classic (non-granular) mode. Up until now I have covered up this click by having ...

Blockhead dev log #1

Hello to my three patrons,

Thank you! I do feel a bit weird about accepting money from people without being able to offer anything in return. I am working towards a beta release which hopefully will be ready before the end of the year, and I'll likely make it available exclusively to donators.

In the meantime I thought I should try to keep you up to date which what I'm actually working on though i might not be super good at remembering to do this. Hopefully then it feels less like...