[chuck-users] ChucK scripting language for Audio/MIDI testing

[mario buoninfante]

Hi,

Has anyone ever used ChucK for audio/MIDI testing?

I personally used it in more than a couple of occasions, and I found it 
really useful. Nowadays, also for audio and MIDI, Python is pretty much 
the standard language for testing. Actually it is quite powerful, 
especially considering the number of libraries available, but despite 
its versatility and easy of use, I found it a bit annoying for 
audio/MIDI testing. It seems to me that languages like ChucK and Pure 
Data are better candidates for this kind of job.

I've been using Pd for testing for almost 2 years now (from regression 
to semi-automated tests), and I'm really happy with it. No need to 
configure anything more than the essential, pretty stable and reliable, 
multi-platform, etc.

Then, recently I started doing the same with ChucK, that of course has 
some advantages being a "text-based" language rather than a graphical 
one. In the specific I've been using it to talk with a CLI via Serial 
(hardware testing). Perfect, stable, reliable, the possibility to easily 
manage events... in short, brilliant! I think it would be perfect for 
test automation as well!

The only missing thing is a full MIDI implementation (I know, I said 
that something like 5 billions times here on the mailing list, and I'm 
sorry I'm being "a bit" boring). But, SysEx messages are crucial 
nowadays. A lot of gears use it for basically everything from data 
transmission (patches, bootloader/firmware updates, etc.) to parameters 
control (from DX7 till the most recent Korg Volca series), plus internal 
functionalities. I think this is the real bottleneck at the moment, and 
I hope one day it will get "fixed".

Anyway, I'm saying this for 2 reasons.

First, I'd like to get some feedback from you guys and see if anyone 
else has been doing similar things.

Second, I think start using ChucK for audio/MIDI testing could be really 
good for ChucK itself and its community. I don't know, maybe that's just 
me thinking about stupid things, but I suppose if people (and when I say 
people I also mean companies) start using ChucK for work reason, the 
amount of support increases as well. There will be more users for sure, 
that means more beta testing, and probably more support in developing it 
as well.


cheers,

Mario




-- 
Electronic Musician, Creative Coder, QA Engineer
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