genish.js
A library for generating optimized, single-sample audio callbacks in JavaScript. Inspired by gen~ in Max/MSP.
try it out
http://www.charlie-roberts.com/genish/playground
genish.js should run in all reasonably modern browsers; however, it runs best in Firefox, Edge, and Chrome due to their support for AudioWorklets. Other browsers will fallback to using a ScriptProcessor node, which runs on the main thread and thus may result in glitches.
what?
A little more detail: genish.js will compile per-sample callback functions from a graph. Given the following code to create a sine oscillator and scale its output:
mul( cycle( 220 ), .1 )...genish will generate the following sample processing loop (reading from a wavetable) inside of an AudioWorklet node:
for( let i = 0; i < len; ++i ) {
var phasor2_value = memory[2]
memory[2] += 0.004988662131519274
if( memory[2] >= 1 ) memory[2] -= 1
if( memory[2] < 0 ) memory[2] += 1
var cycle4_dataIdx = 3,
cycle4_phase = phasor2_value * 1024,
cycle4_index = cycle4_phase | 0,
cycle4_frac = cycle4_phase - cycle4_index,
cycle4_base = memory[ cycle4_dataIdx + cycle4_index ],
cycle4_next = ( cycle4_index + 1 ) & (1024 - 1),
cycle4_out = cycle4_base + cycle4_frac * ( memory[ cycle4_dataIdx + cycle4_next ] - cycle4_base )
var mul5 = cycle4_out * 0.1
memory[0] = mul5
left[ i ] = memory[0]
}use
To use genish.js, you need to create an AudioContext and an AudioWorklet node that will run the functions genish.js creates. Genish includes a utilities object that provides convenience methods for these tasks. The following example performs the necessary setup and starts a sine oscillator running:
<!doctype html>
<html lang='en'>
<head>
<script src="https://gitcdn.link/repo/charlieroberts/genish.js/master/dist/gen.lib.js"></script>
</head>
<body></body>
<script>
// wait until genish.js has loaded...
window.onload = function() {
// optionally put all genish object in global namespace
genish.export( window )
// schedule our audiocontext to be created when a user
// interacts with the page... this is required by browsers
utilities.createContext()
window.onclick = ()=> {
// now our audiocontext has been created and we
// can create an audioworklet...
utilities.playWorklet( cycle( 330 ) )
}
}
</script>
</html>More standalone examples are also available in the examples directory. You can either use the prebuilt library in the dist folder, or use a version served by GitCDN.
develop & test
The build script is a gulpfile. With gulp installed, run gulp js or gulp watch in the top level of the repo. gulp test will run the testing suite (mocha).
