First steps toward embedding real-time audio computing in Antescofo

Nicolás Schmidt, Arshia Cont, Jean-Louis Giavitto.
JI3 2016, number 6, pages 108-120.

Abstract

The problem of preservation through time of interactive music pieces has always been present in this field of contemporary music. Because of the size, versatility and computational power of the UDOO minicomputer, INRIA’s MUTANT team has decided to compile a version of the Antescofo software in order to conserve these musical pieces. However, because of the digital signal processing architecture of the software, a nonoptimal performance for the interpretation of real time pieces was observed. In this article, we present a new version of Antescofo that changes the signal processing paradigm from an architecture of a message passing system between Antescofo and external patches, to an architecture that integrates the Faust digital signal processing library. This research is based on the perform of profiling tests for both versions, with the aim of seeing if the new architecture is actually better in terms of performance for real time applications than the older version. The methodology used was to compare both versions performing the interactive music piece “Anthèmes 2” from Pierre Boulez and the comparison of the execution times of the digital signal processing process. The new architecture showed an improvement of 46%. The results exposed suggest that the technical resources of the UDOO platform are enough to run a version of Antescofo, allowing this way to preserve interactive musical pieces through time.

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