Towards an open Web Audio plugin standard

Abstract

Web Audio is a recent W3C API that brings the world of computer music applications to the browser. Although developers have been actively using it since the first beta implementations in 2012, the number of web apps built using Web Audio API cannot yet compare to the number of commercial and open source audio software tools available on native platforms. Many of the sites using this new technology are of an experimental nature or are very limited in their scope. While JavaScript and Web standards are increasingly flexible and powerful, C and C++ are the languages most often used for real-time audio applications and domain specific languages such as FAUST facilitate rapid development with high performance. Our work aims to create a continuum between native and browser based audio app development and to appeal to programmers from both worlds. This paper presents our proposal including guidelines and proof of concept implementations for an open Web Audio plug-in standard - essentially the infrastructure to support high level audio plug-ins for the browser.