Link tags: webaudio

6

sparkline

Audio Session API Explainer

Jen pointed me to this proposal, which should help smooth over some of the inconsistencies I documented in iOS when it comes to the Web Audio API.

I’ve preemptively add this bit of feature detection to The Session:

if ('audioSession' in navigator) { navigator.audioSession.type = "playback"; }

Enable/unmute WebAudio on iOS, even while mute switch is on

Remember when I wrote about Web Audio weirdness on iOS? Well, this is a nice little library that wraps up the same hacky solution that I ended up using.

It’s always gratifying when something you do—especially something that feels so hacky—turns out to be independently invented elsewhere.

JavaScript pedalboard

Effects pedals in the browser, using the Web Audio API. Very cool!

Be sure to read Trys’s write-up too.

Sparkline Sound-Off – Chris Burnell

Chris has made sonic sparklines on his site too, but they’re far more musical than mine. Here’s his explanation of how he did it.

JavaScript Systems Music

A massively in-depth study of boundary-breaking music, recreated through the web audio API.

  1. Steve Reich - It’s Gonna Rain (1965)
  2. Brian Eno - Ambient 1: Music for Airports, 2/1 (1978)
  3. Brian Eno - Discreet Music (1975)

You don’t have to be a musician or an expert in music theory to follow this guide. I’m neither of those things. I’m figuring things out as I go and it’s perfectly fine if you do too. I believe that this kind of stuff is well within reach for anyone who knows a bit of programming, and you can have a lot of fun with it even if you aren’t a musician.

One thing that definitely won’t hurt though is an interest in experimental music! This will get weird at times.

Form Validation with Web Audio | CSS-Tricks

An interesting idea from Ruth—using subtle sounds to augment inline form validation.

There aren’t any extremely established best practices for this stuff. The best we can do is make tasteful choices and do user research. Which is to say, the examples in this post are ideas, not gospel.