
Howler.js - Lightweight Javascript library for Web Audio and HTML5 Audio - james33
http://goldfirestudios.com/blog/104/howler.js-Modern-Web-Audio-Javascript-Library
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robmcm
I'm still waiting for a JS library to call it's self heavyweight, or bloated
;)

Nice work though

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catshirt
<http://www.javelinjs.com/>

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javajosh
This is kind of an aside, but I have a question. Is the format of the W3C
specification an actual value-add to ideas like this? I mean, if I look at
<http://www.w3.org/TR/webaudio/> my eyes kind of glaze over, whereas if I read
something like <http://json.org/> (to pick something at random) it is far more
accessible. Heck, most of the RFCs I've read are more readable than the W3C
formatted specs (and are often written in a human, witty way).

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bgruber
what's the advantage of using the web audio api for this over html5 audio
elements? i don't think there's anything here that html5 audio elements can't
do...

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james33
For starters, Web Audio is much more performant than HTML5 audio.

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phoboslab
This seems to be true, but I never understood why. HTML5 Audio is the simpler
API; browsers vendors should be able to optimize it much more, yet, it still
performs as bad as it did 2 years ago[1].

Another interesting fact is that iOS supports WebAudio, but doesn't support
HTML5 Audio (for a meaningful definition of "support"). I just don't get it.

[1] <http://phoboslab.org/log/2011/03/the-state-of-html5-audio>

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azakai
Yup, that's totally correct and sadly not much has changed since that
blogpost. I still have several bugs filed on HTML5 Audio on chrome that have
received no attention, that cause problems in BananaBread,

<https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/demos/detail/bananabread>

I suppose their assumption is that everyone should use Web Audio and forget
about HTML5 Audio? It's sad though because Web Audio is total overkill for
many things.

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arcatek
I didn't have played with WebAudio yet, but I assume that the main problem of
HTML5 <audio/> is that the controls cannot be customized to fit the
stylesheet. Using WebAudio probably allows to use custom html structure.

So the main question is : when will we have a standard shadow dom styling ? :(

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kevingadd
You can do any customization with <audio/> that you can with Web Audio. The
element doesn't have to be in the DOM to play audio.

It's actually harder to provide custom UI for the Web Audio API since seeking
and general stream navigation are a _complete afterthought_ and their API
makes them a pain.

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xiaoma
Are there any decent free tools for doing batch conversions on mp3 or wav
files to the formats needed for HTML5 audio across browsers?

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slajax
Crashes Chrome 24.x OSX 10.8.2 - Awww Snap.

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james33
Hmm, I run Chrome 24 on a Mac and haven't seen any issues.

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nextparadigms
Has Firefox implemented Web Audio by now?

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james33
Unfortunately, no. However, it will have at least partial support in Firefox
20, so it is on its way.

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snoerd
Doesnt work on an iPad...

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sisk
Check your mute switch.

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craigbellot
Doesn't work on iphone5 either.

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james33
Check your mute switch. I have an iPhone 5 and all of the functions work.

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craigbellot
Thanks... That fixed it. However maybe you should detect if the mute switch is
on and display a message. I'm guessing a lot of others would not think of
that.

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jonknee
> Thanks... That fixed it. However maybe you should detect if the mute switch
> is on and display a message. I'm guessing a lot of others would not think of
> that.

Sure, except there is not an API call for that.

