Michael Gogins wrote:

>I don't think there's a single best answer, 
>the but the ideas I keep coming
>back to are (a) an efficient, public-domain 
> version of the MPEG-4 Structured
>Audio Orchestra Language, which is an updated, 
>C syntax version of Csound's
>orc language, the advantages being the same as 
> for Csound, namely a world
>standard, an interpreted language, and a deep
> library of patches.

Just to clarify, all of the projects around SAOL
that I'm aware of (there's five or six now) are
public-domain.  There are no IP issues associated
with Structured Audio as there are with other MPEG
standards.  My implementation is public-domain;
I'd be happy to help others who want to work on making
it efficient.

The MPEG-4 standard is finished (as of Oct 1998), and
SAOL and the rest of Structured Audio is a key part.
Any full implementation of the MPEG-4 standard is 
required to include real-time synthesis using SAOL.

There's no requirement that SAOL be interpreted
as opposed to compiled.  My implementation happens
to be an interpreter, but as long as it makes the
right noises, you can do anything you want.  There's
compile-to-C, compile-to-DSP, and compile-to-Csound
projects all underway already.

For anyone who's interested, there's lots of technical
papers describing SAOL and the other MPEG-4 Structured
Audio tools at
   http://sound.media.mit.edu/~eds/papers.html.

There's a free implementation and a free copy of a 
draft of the standard at 
   http://sound.media.mit.edu/mpeg4.

This site also has mailing lists you can join that 
support the nascent SAOL community.

Best to all,

 -- Eric

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|  Eric Scheirer  |A-7b5 D7b9|G-7 C7|Cb   C-7b5 F7#9|Bb  |B-7 E7|
|eds@media.mit.edu|      < http://sound.media.mit.edu/~eds >
|  617 253 0112   |A A/G# F#-7 F#-/E|Eb-7b5 D7b5|Db|C7b5 B7b5|Bb|
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