This is a dev log for a sound-maker called soundbox because i want to make some sounds. It's essentially BeepBox but as a desktop application.

Screenshot to show that i am really making this:

The code is hosted here: https://github.com/pkhead/soundbox

Not much right now, but here is the list of planned features:

• Plugin support (VST, LADPSA, LV2, CLAP)
  
• FX mixer
  
• Sample instrument
  
• Audio clip channel
  
• Tuning configuration (import of .scl/.kbm files)
  

even though i specifically asked for it seeing microtuning in the planned features made my day and it will also make the next few of my days

EDIT: i was using electron at the time of posting

i got the audio add-on to compile on windows!!! not mac because i don't have one. guess i could try cross-compiling somehow.

eventually i'll make a pre-alpha release on the github which contains a binary for the application for windows. (linux users can just run from source i guess)

also, a screenshot:

i changed the horizontal order of the ui, because it makes more sense that information about the song and instrument would come first for a left-right reading order, rather than the currently selected pattern.

not sure how to fix the black empty space at the top of the pattern editor

perhaps using electron was a bad choice for this type of application. i don't want to deal with this Inter Process Communication stuff i just want my window to provide a GUI to modify data why does it make a separate process for each window!!!. i was initially thinking of using Qt but idk how the licensing works too confusing so i just chose something i already know and that's easy (electron). but maybe i'll look into it more

nevermind qt is too complicated im just going to use dear imgui

i think i will stick with dear imgui, so far this is much better than html/css for my purposes

of course i do have to rewrite everything in C++, as i did write JavaScript code to play audio and make the volume and panning sliders work, but that (hopefully) won't take too long.

pattern editor and windows support!



you can also rearrange each region to your liking

I feel like i should also post dev logs somewhere else because most people on Scratch wouldn't be interested in this. Except maybe some the beepbox users mayhaps.

Anyway i finally got around to implementing instrument configuration

the colors in the pattern editor have changed because i decided to use the ImGui style colors. in the future, i'd make a style which would make the highlight colors back to the way they used to be (i.e. red)

Also, the waveform synth is the equivalent to the chip wave instrument in beepbox. But instead of having a “unison” type, I've added two more oscillators. Unison in beepbox just duplicates the waveform but offsets its “Crs” (coarse tuning) and “Fne” (fine tuning) by various amounts.

i added wav export! and effects too (currently only gain effect and analyzer)
maybe currently using the word “effect” for it is disappointing, but i am obviously planning to add stuff like reverb, echo, phaser, e.t.c.

check this out: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/857996106/

Okay, thats really cool. Will you release it to the public?

Where are you going to post if not on Scratch?

SandStick wrote:

Okay, thats really cool. Will you release it to the public?
Where are you going to post if not on Scratch?

pkhead has the project up on github, but you have to build it yourself. instructions are pretty clear though

oh my god you really are actually doing it. i think i might actually like. have hope for humanity

by the way for tuning it's that type of thing that you actually have to think about like really early so you don't get 12-tone stuck so uh yeah
if you ever want to speed up the process of adding microtones the vst surge (which has like the best microtuning there can be in a vst) has a [purple chat app] server and they probably will be more than happy to help (and plus a few of my xen buddies like userminusone are there)

Deetwo_ wrote:

oh my god you really are actually doing it. i think i might actually like. have hope for humanity

by the way for tuning it's that type of thing that you actually have to think about like really early so you don't get 12-tone stuck so uh yeah
if you ever want to speed up the process of adding microtones the vst surge (which has like the best microtuning there can be in a vst) has a [purple chat app] server and they probably will be more than happy to help (and plus a few of my xen buddies like userminusone are there)

cool, i'll check that out later because at the time of writing this i'm trying to fix a sneaky memory bug. i think i'm still early enough into development that i can fairly easily incorporate tunings other than 12edo. i did make and use a method in the Song class which gets the frequency of a certain key. i just have to make it be able to return stuff not in 12edo. note events to synthesizers also send both a key and a frequency of a note. maybe i should make it send tuning data instead of the frequency so that the coarse slider would work properly…

are you going to be setting up github actions for the repository? i definitely wanna try this out but im having a lot of trouble building everything necessary

Is this like a beepbox mod? Looks cool and can't wait to see!

Crispydogs101 wrote:

Is this like a beepbox mod? Looks cool and can't wait to see!

no its beepbox if it is a desktop app

Deetwo_ wrote:

Crispydogs101 wrote:

Is this like a beepbox mod? Looks cool and can't wait to see!

no its beepbox if it is a desktop app

Oh my bad . Anyways once this comes out this can be like another fl studios for me.

Crispydogs101 wrote:

Deetwo_ wrote:

Crispydogs101 wrote:

Is this like a beepbox mod? Looks cool and can't wait to see!

no its beepbox if it is a desktop app

Oh my bad . Anyways once this comes out this can be like another fl studios for me.

Minus everything costing 80-120 dollars (in AUD).

8bitjake wrote:

are you going to be setting up github actions for the repository? i definitely wanna try this out but im having a lot of trouble building everything necessary

i don't know what a github action is. but i can look it up

i assume you are on windows? visual studio with c++ and cmake packages should set everything up for you, minus the glfw support. maybe i should try including glfw's source in the repo and write cmake commands to build it automatically.

EDIT: I added glfw's source to the repository, it should be easier to build it now.