Adobe – Make some noise
I’ve been doing a lot of research on how Flash manages sound. Naturally with Mixwit, we’re going to want to have various tools to manipulate audio, including pitch control, tempo control, EQs, etc.
A few days ago I was researching a few audio visualizers and made several discoveries.
One biggie is a conflict bug in AS3’s SoundMixer.computeSpectrum(), a class that appears to be directly tied to the actual Flash Player plug-in rather than the current flash movie. The problem occurs if you’re trying to use computeSpectrum when you also have another Flash movie that requires sound, regardless if they’re on the same page. So if you have audio+spectrum in tab #1 of your browser, and a YouTube video in tab #2, computeSpectrum won’t work… and in some cases will crash Firefox. Woot.
On a high note, the coolest discovery path begins with popforge, an AS3 code-base containing several new audio classes. I haven’t delved too deep into this but expect to very soon. Popforge is a collaboration between two amazing Flash/audio developers: Andre Michelle and Joa Ebert, both developers for Hobnox. They’ve been a big buzz in the ear of Adobe, making demands for more control over audio in Flash. They’ve also set up the Adobe: Make Some Noise website to chronicle the changes they want in the upcoming releases. As a result, Adobe has already revealed details on how Flash 10 has already implemented a new dynamic sound generator. Extra cool.
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Agreed! I’m certainly looking forward to better audio capabilities in general within Flash. The FP10 demos are exciting. For computeSpectrum to work on specific instances of sound will be a much welcomed tweak, also some integration of the microphone object would be ideal, i.e. better capabilities for working with live sound data (as well as generating it from within Flash as you mentioned). I’ll be playing with popforge soon too, and I look forward to hearing how you get on
Popforge is definitely one of the exciting flash-audio packages around (if not “the”). Might there be any additional documentation for the project? I’ve checked out the “pitch shifter” class for example, and it only entices all the more! I’m sure I speak for many when I say that I look forward to any further discussion on the beloved topic.