Picking my next graphics engine (Java vs. C#)

Question

Requirements

I am developing a music game that requires access to the audio line-in and classes to help me analyze a MIDI file (playing the MIDI is NOT necessary for me). Secondly, I need a graphics engine that allows easy and quick development (within reason). The game's focus is not cutting edge graphics - think along the lines of Audiosurf.

Issue 1

Java provides easy to use and well documented Audio line-in input and MIDI file support built right into the API that I could not find with C#. I found some resources to read from the line-in and MIDI helper classes but don't have much documentation/support and seem to be workarounds to a lack of support by C#.

Issue 2

The second aspect of the game is of course the graphics engine. On the C# side, XNA seems to be the clear choice for my needs. On the Java side, I'm leaning towards JMonkeyEngine (or ogre4j as a second choice). JMonkeyEngine seems to be fine for my graphical uses but the documentation is scattered and sparse.

Deciding

Both issues are of equal importance. Also, I know the community here is prominently .NET programmers, so try to consider both languages if possible.

Answer 1

Use processing, http://www.processing.org/

It seems that you for now mostly want to test a see if your concept actually can be done/(is cool)

Processing is more or less made for this sort of things, audio and visual programmatic sketchpad. You can with very little code see if your ideas stands the way you want.

It's a subset of java so you could use java inside or outside depending on some factors.

Yes, you could use some .net, XNA/WPF or whatever but too me that seems premature.

Test you ideas first.

Answer 2

For the .NET and audio side of things, I have written some code to read and write MIDI files and included it as part of NAudio. Have a look at MIDI File Mapper for an example of how to make use of this. NAudio also includes the capability to capture microphone input.