[gst-devel] application idea: loop-based music production app

[Shane Handley]

Greetings list,

I have been trying to get up to speed with gstreamer in the hope of 
developing an application that I sorely need on linux. I am hoping that 
someone on the list can provide some feedback about how difficult this 
would be to implement using gstreamer/gtk.

I am an ameteur musician, and coming from Windows 8 months ago, I had to 
drop a nice application named "ACID". ACID was similar to Audacity 
[audacity.sourceforge.net] in that it allows recording of multiple 
tracks of audio, which it displays as a waveform, for editing/mixing 
tracks/adding effects.

The major difference between ACID and Audacity is that ACID is 
'loop-based'. That is to say, instead of playing a repeated piece of 
song for many repetitions, you play it once, and loop that sample, using 
the graphical wave  representation of the audio to ensure that the 
sample begins and ends at the end of the beat.

screenshots of ACID for the uninitiated:

http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/images/ss/md/AXPress_Full.jpg

Audacity is at heart, and audio editor, rather than a music production tool.

I think ACID is inferior, it could be lot better through simplification. 
I'd like to see this application implemented using gstreamer, and I'd 
like to work towards it if the list believes this is feasable.

I understand that recording/playback/merging tracks would be a 
no-brainer with gstreamer, from what I have learnt so far, it would 
offer a very clean backend to the audio tasks.

Does anyone think it would be a massive task to expand on these simple 
src->file, file>effect>output...etc, tasks to make a complete loop-based 
audio production tool that isn't overly complicated.

This is getting long. Thanks for reading, any feedback is appreciated.

Regards,

Shane Handley