On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 08:37:24PM -0400, Rich Caloggero wrote:
OOPS, found an old post that fixes the problem. sndbuf only outputs mono data, even though sndbuf.channels has value 2. Very strange, but the following does work.
Now if sndbuf could read .mp3 files, that would be cool! In the ugen reference it says that sndbuf can support multiple formats, but no mention of exactly what it supports. No info on the wiki either. Does anyone know where to find more documentation / info?
Because we (like other similar projects) use libsndfile. From that library's faq; "Q20 : Why doesn't libsndfile support MP3? Lots of other Open Source projects support it! MP3 is not supported for one very good reason; doing so requires the payment of licensing fees. As can be seen from mp3licensing.com the required royalty payments are not cheap. Yes, I know other libraries ignore the licensing requirements, but their legal status is extremely dubious. At any time, the body selling the licenses could go after the authors of those libraries. Some of those authors may be students and hence wouldn't be worth pursuing. However, libsndfile is released under the name of a company, Mega Nerd Pty Ltd; a company which has income from from libsamplerate licensing, libsndfile based consulting income and other unrelated consulting income. Adding MP3 support to libsndfile could place that income would be under legal threat. Fortunately, Ogg Vorbis exists as an alternative to MP3. Support for Ogg Vorbis was added to libsndfile (mostly due to the efforts of John ffitch of the Csound project) in version 1.0.18." I suggest OGG, I use that myself for compressing my CD's. It means that less portable players will play your music which is slightly annoying but I think it sounds better when comparing two equal sized files. It's also Free (as in freedom) which might make some feel a bit better (it does for me).... but yeah it is at times inconvenient. Hope that helps, Kas.