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Csound file formats are a BIG problem. At the risk of provoking
controversy and dispute, I don't think Csound really has ~any~
fully-defined file formats apart from WAVE and AIFF for soundfiles
themselves. Even the adsyn format is desperately under-specified -
byte-order is undefined, and it uses shorts(!!!) for everything - I have
had to reprogram everything using longs just so I can work with sounds
extending beyond 32.766 seconds. Of course, Hydra can no longer read
it...so I am running two distinct versions of Csound now!
With so many people wanting to produce graphical and other tools which
support and complement Csound, there is a urgent need to rationalize all
the major file formats, especially for pvoc, which has a significant
life outside Csound - not least, in CDP (we are currently using both
WAVE and AIFF formats for pvoc data).
Formats such as LPC, adsyn and pvoc are probably too esoteric for any of
the Big Companies to define formats for them, as such - so either the
Csound community invents new unambiguous formats, or it hitches a ride
on those initiatives that have been made.
There are two current ones - the SDIF big-endian (and 64-bit aligned)
format being developed at CNMAT and IRCAM (and a few other places) - it
is designed specifically for frame-based data such as pvoc, adsyn lpc,
and other things such as FOF; and the new Microsoft multi-channel
WAVE_EX formats, which provide for specialized and proprietary formats
without the need for registration with Microsoft. WAVE_EX is
specifically little-endian, of course.
Otherwise, the Csound community can define entirely custom formats for
things. All we need is an unambiguous binary format, with an adequate
header; this could even specify word-order if necessary.
Finally, the adsyn format would lend itself particularly well to an XML
version such as Michael Gogins suggested; a typical data file would not
be horribly long, and if partials were formatted in columns as
conventional breakpoint data, hand-editing and cut/paste would be
reasonable and useful things to be able to do. I would like to see
floats used for times, and for amplitudes either normalized to 1.0, or
to 0dB, therefore with the option for both linear and log
representations, distinguished in the header.
Richard Dobson
SteinersT1@aol.com wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I would like to know some fileformats for writing additional tools (like
> hYdra: http://members.aol.com/additiv) for pvoc and lpc files, any hints would
> help...
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> Malte Steiner
>
> - www.block4.com -
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