Arch Linux

disturb

Member

Registered: 2009-12-18

Posts: 70

Looking for an api to provide timing support for a music app

Hey folks, new member says Hi !
I was wondering if this would fit better here or in the multimedia section, but here goes :

I've been thinking about some music sequencing ideas that I'd like to implement in ruby.
However, the language has poor runtime performance and won't cut it if it has to handle the timing-critical processing.

So I was wondering if I could possibly design it in a way that would rely on a lower level api to provide clock info.

I've read a bit about jack, and at first glance, it seems reasonable to think that I could develop my application model in ruby and have it register as a jack client (provided I manage to make a  proper bridge for it), to fire up events in a timely manner. Same with alsa, which seems to have a special timer api.

But I'm new to this (even linux itself), so it's a lot of info to get one's head around.
I'd love to hear from some people who've had experience developing with these sort of musical/osc/midi apis, and maybe could give some insights regarding whether this is doable, and maybe some pointers on what to investigate.

cheers !