Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] jMax audio processing workbench / AGNULA audio processing

[Robert Kelley]

I've been looking at signal processing software (mostly intended for audio
effects processing) with the same ideas in mind.  Check out ecamegapedal,
ecawave, ecasound, and see LADSPA  http://www.ladspa.org/

On Sun, 11 May 2003, John Gilmore wrote:

> There's a digital signal processing software system being worked on
> in France that might benefit from GNU Radio integration.
>
> It has a nice graphical interface for plugging together components,
> which GNU Radio lacks.
>
> I haven't run it, don't know how the guts compare, etc.  But it would
> be interesting to see, particularly if interfaces can be built between
> the two packages, so that all the audio-related DSP code that runs in
> jMax can be run under GNU Radio.
>
> I've appended the summary of jMax that came from Georg's Brave GNU World.
>
>       John
>
> http://www.gnu.org/brave-gnu-world/issue-49.en.html
>
> jMax
>
> As regular readers of the Brave GNU World should know, the Free
> Software Foundation Europe is partner in the AGNULA project, [10]
> which aims at putting together an entirely Free Software GNU/Linux
> distribution for professional audio users.
>
> Another partner of the AGNULA project is the "Institut de Recherche et
> Coordination Acoustique/Musique" (IRCAM) ? the center of music of the
> Centre Pompidou in Paris, France. One of the applications written by
> IRCAM is jMax, [11] a graphical development environment for
> interactive multimedia applications.
>
> Audio applications traditionally had the problem that they were often
> written for specific hardware and therefore very platform
> dependent. Because of the rapid development in hardware, programs had
> to be rewritten every three years for a new platform, otherwise the
> music written for these programs was in danger of getting lost.
>
> This motivated the development of a pure software solution that would
> not depend on a specific platform.
>
> The paradigm employed in jMax allows creating creating and/or
> combining certain basic elements like frequency generators, signal
> filters, effects, input- and output-modules, sliders, DSPs and
> amplifiers with each other and assembling them to so-called "patches."
>
> These patches integrate their components and can be combined into
> almost infinitely complex constructs, making it generally possible to
> implement any kind and type of digital signal processing, effect or
> synthesizer.
>
> One implementation of this paradigm that is rather well-known among
> musicians is the proprietary "Max." In 1995 jMax started out with the
> intention of creating a platform independent version of Max. In
> mid-1999 it was then released as Free Software under the GNU General
> Public License (GPL).
>
> The IRCAM jMax team working on the project consists mainly of François
> Déchelle and Patrice Tisserand. François, who also filled out the
> Brave GNU World standard questions, sees the main advantages of jMax
> in its platform independence ? it runs on GNU/Linux, Mac OS X and
> Windows ? and the higher flexibility when compared with other
> implementations of the paradigm, such as Max or PD.
>
> One of the key advantages is also that jMax consists of two
> components. The central component is a server, a real-time engine
> written in C, which does all the work. This allows running the engine
> with GUI, writing alternative GUIs or integrating the engine into a
> plugin environment (LADSPA).
>
> Normally, this server is controlled via a client written in Java. Java
> was chosen to make sure that the client would run on as many platforms
> as possible with the minimum amount of problems. Unfortunately the
> situation of Java is not unproblematic with reference to to Free
> Software.  Java dependencies
>
> The problem of Java is neither its technical specification not its
> implementation. Although some people have different opinions about
> them, they are not the cause of the problem for Free Software.
>
> The cause of the problem is how Java itself is developed and
> distributed, since there are essentially only two wide-spread
> implementations, both of which are proprietary: one is maintained by
> Sun, the other by IBM. Although these may be distributed without
> licensing cost, they do not offer the freedoms necessary to make them
> Free Software.
>
> In consequence every application running on these platforms ? even
> software that is under a Free Software license ? is putting the
> freedom of the user at risk. A situation not unlike Free Software
> running on Windows.
>
> There are some approaches and initiatives to implement Java entirely
> in Free Software (see "GNU and the Java language" [12]). But since the
> dominant reference implementations are proprietary, the free projects
> always need to reimplement the features the proprietary versions have
> come out with.
>
> Not every developer likes participating in such a biased race that
> cannot be won. Free Software is put at a disadvantage and therefore
> offers a smaller degree of functionality.
>
> When developers of Java applications make use of the more advanced
> features of proprietary Java implementations, these can usually not be
> run on Free Software Java implementations anymore and in consequence
> are dependent on the proprietary platforms. A situation not at all
> unlike Free Software only running on Windows that cannot be used on
> any Free Software operating system.
>
> This is precisely the problem of the jMax client. And since adding
> proprietary software into AGNULA is out of question for all partners,
> AGNULA may not be capable of including jMax with a fully functional
> GUI.  pyMax
>
> "After none of the alternatives seemed very likely to resolve the
> problem in time ? more information is available on the FSF Europe home
> page [13] ? it was now decided to do without Java entirely and
> reimplement the client in Python.
>
> The choice for Python was influenced by its platform independence,
> which is comparable to Java, and the fact that it allows rapid
> development while (naturally) being entirely Free Software.
>
> It is not clear whether IRCAM will be capable of finishing that client
> in time, though. Therefore they are looking for volunteers that can
> help them writing the Python-client for jMax.
>
> According to François, IRCAM cannot make large promises, but they
> offer to provide priority support to people working on the Python
> client and guarantee a response time of 24hrs during working days. So
> if you are interested in this, you could take a look at the jMax
> developers mailing list. [14]
>
> [10] AGNULA home page http://www.agnula.org
> [11] jMax home page http://www.ircam.fr/jmax/
> [12] GNU and Java home page http://www.gnu.org/software/java/
> [13] AGNULA Java issues http://fsfeurope.org/projects/agnula/java.html
> [14] jMax developer mailing list http://listes.ircam.fr/wws/info/jmax
>
>
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