

Introducing the Web Audio Editor in Firefox Developer Tools - rnyman
https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/06/introducing-the-web-audio-editor-in-firefox-developer-tools/

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leviathant
A little over five years ago, when a whole lot of people were telling me that
Javascript could do anything that Flash could do, whenever I brought up
anything related to audio, I'd get silence. Writing something like
[http://www.audiotool.com/](http://www.audiotool.com/) to operate in the
browser was just not possible without Flash (or maybe Java)

The continued envelope-pushing going on at Mozilla with regards to audio in
the browser has been great to watch unfold. Part of what made the web browser
so interesting to me was that I could easily build things in it using a text
editor. I didn't need to buy a compiler or a textbook, because I could look at
an interesting website and peek under the hood. It's been a gateway into other
more complicated realms of software production for me, and it's exciting to
see audio signal processing tools coming into the fold as well.

~~~
aikah
> . Writing something like
> [http://www.audiotool.com/](http://www.audiotool.com/) to operate

Sorry but in terms of holding the tempo the browser is still not
accurate.Audio Synthesis is only one part of the problem.Flash is bloody
accurate in term of sequencing and playing sounds at the right time.The
browser is just not.that's why Flash sequencers are possible,but WebAPI ones
arent.

~~~
stuartmemo
I disagree. I made a drum machine that, while has a few bugs (the beat url),
tempo isn't one of them. Even when switching tabs.

[http://beatpetite.com](http://beatpetite.com)

As an aside, the drum sounds themselves are generate using the web audio api.

~~~
leviathant
I don't think I can edit my other comment, so here's a new reply: The tempo's
jittery for me, and the audio's dropping here and there, just with a single
row of 16th note hihats. It also totally destroys the back button, flooding
the browser history. I'm running Windows 8.1, Firefox 30, 16gb RAM,
i7-2600@3.4ghz (it's my HD video & multitrack audio editing machine)

I'm not even switching tabs.

Doesn't appear to even display in IE11, although to be fair, I just opened my
DR-110 up and, while it renders, and most of the buttons are functional, the
knobs are not, and no audio plays back.

Playback of beatpetite seems steadier in Chrome, but as I typed that, I got an
audio hiccup. The visuals are noticeably jerky. Again comparing to my DR-110,
it's pretty clear I'm using a different approach to the audio playback because
I'm getting seriously weird glitches on my playback. And the CSS buttons don't
quite line up on mine in Chrome the way it does in the other two browsers.

I wouldn't spend too much time chasing a solid tempo down. That's essentially
out of your control.

~~~
stuartmemo
This is great feedback, thank you!

Yeah, I think Firefox isn't quite up to the job yet. But I think Chrome's
performance is indicative that it is possible.

I'm using the technique described in this article, but with a web worker,
meaning that the clock doesn't stop when changing tabs.

[http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/audio/scheduling/](http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/audio/scheduling/)

~~~
leviathant
Awesome, thanks for sharing. This definitely looks like the way to go in the
future, and with any luck, the abilities of the various browsers will catch
up.

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agumonkey
Now waiting for the visual counterpart of this:
[http://imgur.com/T95SENl](http://imgur.com/T95SENl)

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anigbrowl
Finally - someone gets the UI for this right! This is the first thing that has
made me want to install fireFox since...well, since Chrome came out.

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jongold
Download link because I spent 10 minutes looking through the Mozilla site for
the right version: [http://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/channel/#aurora](http://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/channel/#aurora)

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bsgreenb
Question: how would this impact music piracy and the ability of every day
people to rip audio off the web?

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catshirt
holy crap this is awesome. Firefox is no longer using a proprietary audio API
right? assuming it's the standard Web Audio API i might have a reason to
reintroduce Firefox to my toolset now. :)

~~~
rockdoe
Web Audio has been supported as of Firefox 25 or something:
[http://caniuse.com/audio-api](http://caniuse.com/audio-api)

It never had a proprietary API, their proposal for WebAudio just lost out to
the Chrome proposal and the latter was standardized.

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yarrel
Does this support DRM on the audio files?

