Technology and language for a stable Digital Audio Workstation development

Question

Hi,

I'm designing a cross platform (Windows/Linux/OS X) application, something like a digital audio workstation. I'd like to create a software where users have a fully featured sequencer (multiple tracks with automation) and where it is possible to create instruments using a visual language (as Pure Data/Max MSP).

Ehm... I know that I've already posted a question about a related issue... But in order to decide which technology I should use, I think I'd better to make more investigation.

I'm a quite experted user of audio trackers (Renoise, Protracker,...) and sequencers (FL Studio, Cubase 5), but I didn't ever try to develop even a basic audio tracker. I know just the basic theory of mixing sound and know how basically a DSP works.

My questions are:

• Where I can find a good tutorial/guide/book about this issue?
• Do you think using C# (with NAudio) could dramatically reduce performance? I know C++ would be the best choice, but I find C# so elegant and easy to build and port, while C++ is so powerful and fast, but there are too #define and bad things for my taste! ;-)

Thank you.

Answer 1

For cross platform development in C++ you might want to take a look at Qt. It is as (or more) elegant than C#/WinForms. I've been developing for Windows and Linux for the last three years with it and it's a pleasure to work with.

Look for the book C++ GUI Programming with Qt4. It's an excellent resource.

You should also look for Qt/Phonon backend and see how could it help you to reproduce media.

For C# I've had really bad experiences with WinForms - resizable layouts are a pain to work with and never seems to get really right. There's also Gtk# (from Mono) and WPF. If you want to do cross platform development I'd advise you to target the .NET subsets Mono support. But, otherwise, I'd just do with Qt.