[fluid-dev] floats or doubles?

[Pedro Lopez-Cabanillas]

Hi,

The old autotools build system defaults to using single precision floating 
point numbers in DSP calculations and buffers (symbol WITH_FLOAT defined in 
config.h) but there is an alternative, if the user provides to the "configure" 
script the argument "--with-doubles=no", that in despite of logic has the 
effect of undefining WITH_FLOAT in config.h, enabling double precision 
floating point numbers. 

The new CMake build system uses by default double precision floating point  
numbers, but there is an option ("-Denable-floats=yes" as a command line 
argument) that defines WITH_FLOAT in config.h forcing the usage of single 
precision floating point numbers in DSP buffers and calculations.

Double precision real numbers are bigger, and probably have worse performance 
than single precision floats, but maybe they can produce better sound in some 
circumstances. Floats are probably safer because they have been tested more 
deeply, as the ticket #87 has shown.

So, what do you think? leave doubles as default in CMake, or change the 
default to floats, like in the old autotools?

Regards,
Pedro