WAAW Csound

TL;DR

This paper presents WAAW Csound, a WebAssembly-based implementation of Csound for web audio processing, discussing its development, platform support, and potential applications.

Contribution

It introduces WAAW Csound, a novel WebAssembly implementation of Csound utilizing Web Audio API's AudioWorklet, enhancing cross-platform web audio synthesis.

Findings

Initial system examples demonstrate potential applications.

Discussion of platform support issues for WebAssembly audio.

Identification of fundamental challenges for WASM-based audio computing.

Abstract

This paper describes Web Assembly Audio Worklet (WAAW) Csound, one of the implementations of WebAudio Csound. We begin by introducing the background to this current implementation, stemming from the two first ports of Csound to the web platform using Native Clients and asm.js. The technology of Web Assembly is then introduced and discussed in its more relevant aspects. The AudioWorklet interface of Web Audio API is explored, together with its use in WAAW Csound. We complement this discussion by considering the overarching question of support for multiple platforms, which implement different versions of Web Audio. Some initial examples of the system are presented to illustrate various potential applications. Finally, we complement the paper by discussing current issues that are fundamental for this project and others that rely on the development of a robust support for WASM-based audio computing.