DEV Community

Cover image for Hello, Gwion!
Jérémie Astor
Jérémie Astor

Posted on

Hello, Gwion!

Hello, Gwion!

I've been posting about Gwion here for a while, but never explaining quite clearly what the project could do.
I'm hoping this post while help people have an idea of that.
At the end of this tutorial, you should be able to hear sound generated by Gwion in your browser 😄

Dependencies

Please make sure all these are installed on your computer:

  • A C compiler. Gwion is tested with gcc and clang
  • make
  • a terminal emulator. (I use kitty)
  • libwebsockets
  • Soundpipe. The original repo has been removed, but you can still find copy on github. You can try this one

Now you're all set, let me suggest you first follow instructions in
this short post and get back reading here, it'll save you most of the burden (as in just read 😄)

Gwion

First we need to get gwion, we'll follow the basic procedure,
but we will also need some plugins, so we add plug to the submodule update command

install_gwion.sh

git clone https://github.com/fennecdjay/Gwion
cd Gwion
git submodule update --init util ast plug
make
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Building the plugins

For this project we need a few plugins.

Let's build them too.

plugins.sh

cd Gwion/plug/Soundpipe
make
cd ../Modules
make
cd ../WebSocket
make
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

The browser part

Now, since the goal is to hear Gwion's audio output from the browser,
we'll need some javascript and html

gwion_ws_test.js

const URL = "ws://localhost:1111"
const BUFLEN = 512;
const NCHAN = 2;
var ws;
var scriptNode;
var audioCtx;
var outsamples = new Float32Array(BUFLEN);
var volume = 0.5;

function gwionWsSetVolume(value) {
  volume = value;
}

function gwionWsFillBuffer(audioProcessingEvent) {
  ws.send("next");
  var outputBuffer = audioProcessingEvent.outputBuffer;
  for (var channel = 0; channel < NCHAN; channel++) {
    var outputData = outputBuffer.getChannelData(channel);
    for (var sample = 0; sample < BUFLEN; sample++)
      outputData[sample] = outsamples[sample + channel*BUFLEN] * volume;
  }
}

function gwionWsOnOpen()  {
  audioCtx = new (window.AudioContext || window.webkitAudioContext)();
  console.log(audioCtx.sampleRate);
  scriptNode = audioCtx.createScriptProcessor(BUFLEN, NCHAN, NCHAN);
  scriptNode.onaudioprocess = gwionWsFillBuffer;
  scriptNode.connect(audioCtx.destination);
}

function gwionWsOnMessage(e)  {
//  if(e.data instanceof ArrayBuffer)
  outsamples = new Float32Array(e.data);
}

function gwionWsOnClose()  {
  if(audioCtx) {
    scriptNode.disconnect();
    audioCtx.close();
    alert("Connection closed");
  }
}

function gwionWsInit() {
  ws = new WebSocket(URL);
  if(!ws)
    alert("Web socket server not found at url: " + URL);
  ws.onopen = gwionWsOnOpen;
  ws.onmessage = gwionWsOnMessage;
  ws.onclose = gwionWsOnClose;
  ws.binaryType = "arraybuffer";
}

function gwionWsOnLoad() {
  if ("WebSocket" in window)
    gwionWsInit();
  else
    alert("WebSocket NOT supported by your Browser!");
}
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

gwion_ws_test.html

<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html>
  <script src="gwion_ws_test.js"></script>
  <body>
  <p><button onclick="gwionWsOnLoad();">Connect</button><p>
  <p><input id="volumeSlider" type="range" min="0" max="1" value="0.5" step="0.01" oninput>
  </body>
</html>
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Contributing

You quite probably have a better knowledge of javascript than me.
Feel free to share your improvements and submit a PR.
Using Web assembly and switching from ScriptProcessor to AudioWorklet
would be great additions!

Some life-easing script

Now we got all the pieces.

We just need to assemble all this.

ease.sh

# create a 'libs' directory to store our plugins
mkdir libs
# copy all the plugins we built into 'libs'
cp Gwion/plug/*/*.so libs
# '-s 44100' as most browsers will output sound at that samplerate
# '-p libs' tell gwion where to look for plugins
# '-d ws' use 'ws' (aka WebSocket) driver
# '$@' pass all arguments to gwion
echo './Gwion/gwion -s 44100 -p libs -d ws $@' > run.sh
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

A sound synthesis Hello World

The sound synthesis equivalent of hello world seems to be 5 seconds of a sine generator, at 440 hertz.

Let's just do that.

hello_sine.gw

#! Create a Sine generator and connect it to audio output
var SinOsc s => dac;
#! let five seconds pass
5::second => now;
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

test.sh

# do nothing without a BROWSER variable
if [ -z "$BROWSER" ]
then
  echo "please set BROWSER environment variable"
  exit 1
done
$BROWSER gwion_ws_test.html &!
bash run.sh hello_sine.gw
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

You might now see the test page in your browser.
Click the Connect button and you might here something! 🍾

More to come

Hopefully this post will get some support, and it'll motivate me to continue.
I think the second episode will demonstrate a simple but interesting psycho-acoustic experience,
and the third should show how to build a simple melody.
Since Gwion can obviously do so much more, there might be a ton of follow-up articles 😄

Top comments (2)

Collapse
 
ender_minyard profile image
ender minyard • Edited

It would be great if you explained what Gwion is and why someone would want to use it before you tell them to download it?

For introducing a project to dev.to, these are good examples of what article format can be like:

Both of these explain the purpose of the project in the title and the opening of the post.

Collapse
 
fennecdjay profile image
Jérémie Astor

I missed your answer 😕
Thank you very much for the tips!