AOPs - Audio OP Family

I think it would be really helpful if the audio-specific CHOPs left the CHOP family and were in their own family of a handful of operators that were all running on a separate thread, could be called AOPs for short. That way no amount of stalling in the main process would wonk your audio. Timeline data or similar could be used to co-ordinate transports of movie files with audio. Then maybe there is one OP in the CHOP family that can bring back data from the AOPs for further chop processing or usage and one OP in the AOP family that can bring in CHOP data for something.

+1

I’m guessing this might be a use for the process COMP once it’s finished?

Yeah, the Process COMP (possibly renamed to Engine COMP) will be able to be used for this. The issue with creating something like AOPs would be that it would very limiting. Who is to say what you do and don’t want tied to the audio. It could want DATs or triggers or even stuff from coming from the GPU to affect the audio.

Ya I could see Process COMP being used for this, but I’d almost like for both to exist, Process COMP for general process stuff and hacking together your own networks, but then a totally foolproof way to just play audio from files, movies, with audio input and output, and then the few audio processing ops that exist already. I’m sure it’s not that simple but I think it’s the better way forward.

I think it wouldn’t really be conducive to general users to tell them “hey if you want audio properly, you need to setup your own separate thread to run audio.” I think that continues to build on the idiosyncrasies that make TouchDesigner really hard to learn for new users. I mean I still see TONS of users who use multiple Window COMPs in a single project…so I don’t think we can realistically expect general users to do anything more than drop all the Audio CHOPs right into their network right next to everything else at this point.

I think re Malcolm’s point of unlimited flexibility - I agree but I think at some point some limitations and bias are a good thing. It’s not like there are that many audio ops in existence right now, and people can still hack together their own things with Process COMP, but that doesn’t take away from the benefit of a very limited set of totally reliable audio ops that work for all users and not just pros with idiosyncratic knowledge.

+1

plus one!

+1 - Tired of listening to music coming out of TouchDesigner pitch bent due to frame drops, without any indication of when it is and isn’t working properly.

Foolproof audio sounds amazing. Regarding flexibility, TD’s balance of versatility and prefabrication is a bug bear of mine. I’ve certainly reaped the benefits of how granularly configurable most things are, but prefab’d components are in massive demand and short supply, especially in short time-frames or for beginners. The audio thing sounds like it could be an option in the audio operators that is on by default and fringe cases could intervene with certain pars?

I think to your point, fringe cases would then build their own, probably more complex, setups using Process COMP or similar. But for just drop in Audio files, sound card inputs/outputs, and movie file audio playback it would be nice to have something more or less foolproof. I dont know what the logic should be for movie file audio playback if the movie drops frames, aka what should the AOP do to respond whether that means also drops frame or it essentially continues to run in real time?