What is the best API in any language for Audio and MIDI music application development?

Question

What is the best API to utilize in developing an application that handles both realtime MIDI and audio input and output? This would be for an application that is used in the process of making music as opposed to playing audio or MIDI files. I'm aware that this may be a subjective question, but if you know of an API that is dominantly used for these purposes, please share it.

I'm agnostic about which language the API is for, and I also don't care about portability. The real concern is for an API that is well documented, well designed (e.g. thought out and intuitive to developers using it), and actively maintained. OS portability would be nice, but it is second to having an API/Language that meets the previous requirements.

Please note that the emphasis is not on API's for sound synthesis or for composing music with code. It is intended for the handling of sound file and MIDI data in a real-time context.

Answer 1

It's probably a pretty roundabout way of doing it, but I'd be pretty excited to work with MIDI in HTML5. Writing a MIDI synth in JS would probably be rather trivial, thanks to the new audio APIs that are making their way onto the web. Since it's in a web browser, you can do some of the preliminary processing on the client and then do some of the hardcore processing on the server.

I should also mention that HTML is a great language to create a GUI for this sort of app, and the cross-platform benefits are inherent in the fact that it's made for the web.

Answer 2

You might want to look at some unconventional "languages" (well, dataflow programming environments) like:

• pd: http://puredata.info/
• MAX/MSP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_(software)
• Reaktor: http://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/producer/reaktor-5/

I've also done some mucking about with Java and MIDI and had a good time with that.