Audio Programming

       For this post I wanted to go ahead and build something more interesting. Something that will significantly alter the sound of the guitar. As of the last post, I have a functioning volume slider that I can use to change the volume of my audio input and play it back. Now I would like to try something similar to changing the volume, but something a little more complex. The perfect effect for this purpose is overdrive/distortion.            Distortion is an effect that guitar players frequently use to make their guitar sound more powerful. Most guitar amplifiers sold today come with some kind of overdrive channel that can be used separate from the clean input sound. In the realm of analog amplifiers this distortion is caused by, simply put, the signal being amplified beyond the tolerance of the equipment. Sound travels in waves, and amplifying it, or changing its amplitude, just causes the size of the peaks and the troughs of the...

  For the second blog post here I wanted to take things in a bit of a different direction. In the first post I introduced the Java Sound API and some basic information about digital audio. Since working on that first post I have done some more digging and decided that in order to accomplish my original goal most effectively, I will transition to using an audio programming and GUI framework called JUCE to build the software I set out to make. This will require a little resetting from the first post as it is C++ based but it will be well worth it in the end because I will be able to build a wider variety of sound audio manipulation tools this way. This is also a framework for GUI so I can easily build sliders, knobs, and other graphical components really easily so we can better visualize just what we are doing with the audio. If you are curious about the Java Sound API specifically and not just audio programming in general, there is great documentation here that will step through th...

     In this blog we will be exploring audio programming. The end goal is to be able to take input from an instrument through and audio interface and to manipulate it. Personally, I am running a guitar through a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 (third gen) audio interface. It has two inputs that can be used to either plug in an instrument through a quarter-inch jack or a microphone through an XLR cable. If you decide to follow along and attempt to recreate the things I am experimenting with here you will need to ensure you have your default audio device set to whatever audio interface you choose so that you can plug in an instrument or microphone. Otherwise you should be able to use the code I post and just use your built-in microphone to capture audio. This will allow you to play around and find your own way to apply this knowledge.      For the setup phase of this project I have referenced a video that explains how to set up a project with the Java Sound API that ...