How to access Audio data from JUCE Demo Audio Plugin Host? - c++

Question

I am working on a project which requires me to record audio data as .wav files(of 1 second each) from a MIDI Synth plugin loaded in the JUCE Demo Audio Plugin host. Basically, I need to create a dataset automatically (corresponding to different parameter configurations) from the MIDI Synth.
Will I have to send MIDI Note On/Off messages to generate audio data? Or is there a better way of getting audio data?
AudioBuffer<FloatType> getBusBuffer (AudioBuffer<FloatType>& processBlockBuffer) const
Is this the function which will solve my needs? If yes, how would I store the data? If not, could someone please guide me to the right function/solution.
Thank you.

Answer 1

I'm not exactly sure what you're asking, so I'm going to guess:
You need to programmatically trigger some MIDI notes in your synth, then write all the audio to a .wav file, right?
Assuming you already know JUCE, it would be fairly trivial to make an app that opens your plugin, sends MIDI, and records audio, but it's probably just easier to tweak the AudioPluginHost project.
Lets break it into a few simple steps (first open the AudioPluginHost project):
Programmatically send MIDI
Look at GraphEditorPanel.h, specifically the class GraphDocumentComponent. It has a private member variable: MidiKeyboardState keyState;. This collects incoming MIDI Messages and then inserts them into the incoming Audio & MIDI buffer that is sent to the plugin.
You can simply call keyState.noteOn (midiChannel, midiNoteNumber, velocity) and keyState.noteOff (midiChannel, midiNoteNumber, velocity) to trigger a note on.
Record Audio Output
This is a fairly straightforward thing to do in JUCE — you should start by looking at the JUCE Demos. The following example records output audio in the background, but there are plenty of other ways to do it:
class AudioRecorder : public AudioIODeviceCallback
{
public:
AudioRecorder (AudioThumbnail& thumbnailToUpdate)
: thumbnail (thumbnailToUpdate)
{
backgroundThread.startThread();
}
~AudioRecorder()
{
stop();
}
//==============================================================================
void startRecording (const File& file)
{
stop();
if (sampleRate > 0)
{
// Create an OutputStream to write to our destination file...
file.deleteFile();
ScopedPointer<FileOutputStream> fileStream (file.createOutputStream());
if (fileStream.get() != nullptr)
{
// Now create a WAV writer object that writes to our output stream...
WavAudioFormat wavFormat;
auto* writer = wavFormat.createWriterFor (fileStream.get(), sampleRate, 1, 16, {}, 0);
if (writer != nullptr)
{
fileStream.release(); // (passes responsibility for deleting the stream to the writer object that is now using it)
// Now we'll create one of these helper objects which will act as a FIFO buffer, and will
// write the data to disk on our background thread.
threadedWriter.reset (new AudioFormatWriter::ThreadedWriter (writer, backgroundThread, 32768));
// Reset our recording thumbnail
thumbnail.reset (writer->getNumChannels(), writer->getSampleRate());
nextSampleNum = 0;
// And now, swap over our active writer pointer so that the audio callback will start using it..
const ScopedLock sl (writerLock);
activeWriter = threadedWriter.get();
}
}
}
}
void stop()
{
// First, clear this pointer to stop the audio callback from using our writer object..
{
const ScopedLock sl (writerLock);
activeWriter = nullptr;
}
// Now we can delete the writer object. It's done in this order because the deletion could
// take a little time while remaining data gets flushed to disk, so it's best to avoid blocking
// the audio callback while this happens.
threadedWriter.reset();
}
bool isRecording() const
{
return activeWriter != nullptr;
}
//==============================================================================
void audioDeviceAboutToStart (AudioIODevice* device) override
{
sampleRate = device->getCurrentSampleRate();
}
void audioDeviceStopped() override
{
sampleRate = 0;
}
void audioDeviceIOCallback (const float** inputChannelData, int numInputChannels,
float** outputChannelData, int numOutputChannels,
int numSamples) override
{
const ScopedLock sl (writerLock);
if (activeWriter != nullptr && numInputChannels >= thumbnail.getNumChannels())
{
activeWriter->write (inputChannelData, numSamples);
// Create an AudioBuffer to wrap our incoming data, note that this does no allocations or copies, it simply references our input data
AudioBuffer<float> buffer (const_cast<float**> (inputChannelData), thumbnail.getNumChannels(), numSamples);
thumbnail.addBlock (nextSampleNum, buffer, 0, numSamples);
nextSampleNum += numSamples;
}
// We need to clear the output buffers, in case they're full of junk..
for (int i = 0; i < numOutputChannels; ++i)
if (outputChannelData[i] != nullptr)
FloatVectorOperations::clear (outputChannelData[i], numSamples);
}
private:
AudioThumbnail& thumbnail;
TimeSliceThread backgroundThread { "Audio Recorder Thread" }; // the thread that will write our audio data to disk
ScopedPointer<AudioFormatWriter::ThreadedWriter> threadedWriter; // the FIFO used to buffer the incoming data
double sampleRate = 0.0;
int64 nextSampleNum = 0;
CriticalSection writerLock;
AudioFormatWriter::ThreadedWriter* volatile activeWriter = nullptr;
};
Note that the actual audio callbacks that contain the audio data from your plugin are happening inside the AudioProcessorGraph inside FilterGraph. There is an audio callback happening many times a second where the raw audio data is passed in. It would probably be very messy to change that inside AudioPluginHost unless you know what you are doing — it would probably be simpler to use something like the above example or create your own app that has its own audio flow.
The function you asked about:
AudioBuffer<FloatType> getBusBuffer (AudioBuffer<FloatType>& processBlockBuffer) const
is irrelevant. Once you're already in the audio callback, this would give you the audio being sent to a bus of your plugin (aka if your synth had a side chain). What you want to do instead is take the audio coming out of the callback and pass it to an AudioFormatWriter, or preferably an AudioFormatWriter::ThreadedWriter so that the actual writing happens on a different thread.
If you're not at all familiar with C++ or JUCE, Max/MSP or Pure Data might be easier for you to quickly whip something up.