SOUL: A New Efficient, Portable, Low-Latency Audio Programming Language

Re:SOUL: A New Efficient, Portable, Low-Latency Audio Progra... by grawprog on Friday December 07, 2018 @05:45PM (#18632396)

I'm not too sure I really understand what this is and how it's different than say the Jack2 api?

http://jackaudio.org/api/

>SOUL unlocks native-level speed, even when used within slower, safer languages. The SOUL language makes audio coding more accessible and less error-prone, improving productivity for beginners and expert professionals.

This part confuses me. Is it a language or a library or both?

I'm sorry if they explain this in the keynote i'm at work and can't watch it and their site seems to be lacking in information.

From the comments here I understand it's trying to be the glsl of audio...but that doesn't really make sense to me. Audio doesn't really work like video shaders.

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Re:SOUL: A New Efficient, Portable, Low-Latency Audio Progra... by charlesism on Friday December 07, 2018 @07:16PM (#18632867)

    Audio doesn't really work like video shaders.

I get the impression it will include a grab bag of common DSP functions, transcoding, etc. So if you have hardware that supports a function, it runs accelerated. The project looks fantastic to me. I don't know why there is so much negativity in the comments here.

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Re:SOUL: A New Efficient, Portable, Low-Latency Audio Progra... by grawprog on Friday December 07, 2018 @08:12PM (#18633181)

I wasn't trying to be negative. I was genuinely curious. As I said the website has very little information. It sounds like something i'd be interested in. I just don't entirely understand the purpose of it and what features it will have over existing solutions.

Or even whether it's a language or a library. It says it's a language but that it can speed up higher level languages. I don't understand that statement. Will they provide bindings for other languages to link to or use? Will you have to write your own for your language of choice? Do you compile your SOUL binary first and link to it like a .so or .dll? Do you write standalone programs with it? It's fairly unclear.

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Re:SOUL: A New Efficient, Portable, Low-Latency Audio Progra... by breck on Saturday December 08, 2018 @03:29PM (#18637342)

+1 for this.

It sounds more like a library than a language. And yet it's called "SOUL Language"....Docs would be nice.

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Re:SOUL: A New Efficient, Portable, Low-Latency Audio Progra... by julesrms on Sunday December 09, 2018 @02:08PM (#18642615)

It's a language + API. And no, you don't compile it natively, it's more of a JIT/VM solution. But yeah, more docs are needed, and on the way soon!

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Re:SOUL: A New Efficient, Portable, Low-Latency Audio Progra... by awalton on Friday December 07, 2018 @07:23PM (#18632902)

> I don't know why there is so much negativity in the comments here.

Probably because as of right now it's vaporware with a marketing budget. Drumming up hype for something you haven't released yet is a pretty good way to get mixed reactions.

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Re:SOUL: A New Efficient, Portable, Low-Latency Audio Progra... by julesrms on Sunday December 09, 2018 @02:10PM (#18642628)

That's true, but actually we've seen very little negativity, which given the expected grumpiness and cynicism level of developers is a good sign!

(I wish we had a marketing budget!)

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Re:SOUL: A New Efficient, Portable, Low-Latency Audio Progra... by julesrms on Sunday December 09, 2018 @01:44PM (#18642454)

JACK is mainly just a way of connecting audio devices with streams. SOUL is a way of deploying code to run on other devices/processors.

It's a language AND an API for deploying it to appropriate devices.

We'll release more textual docs soon - sorry there's not much on the website yet (still writing it) but the keynote is probably the best source of info if you want to know more right now.

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