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NCSA NEWS |
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The Vanilla Sound Server
Bargar sees the Audio Development Group as having two immediate
goals. "We want to create sound controlled in real
time -- not pre-recorded or pre-produced -- while still
producing a high-fidelity sound
signal." He feels this is a critical milestone to
reach before sonification becomes meaningful to a lot
of people. The second goal is understanding the
importance of the sound coming from the machine
itself. "It's just as important as the real-time
element. The sound needs to come from the native
graphics platform, not a peripheral music box." To
accomplish both goals, NCSA's Audio Group created the
Vanilla Sound Server.
The Vanilla Sound Server (VSS), in development since
1993, is software designed to generate synchronized
sound in real time for interactive computing
environments, like VR. "The idea of calling it
vanilla is to get at the notion of being at a very
basic, general level of sound production," Bargar
clarifies. We understood from the start
that we were designing a system that had to be used
by non-experts in a wide variety of applications and
sciences." The key elements of VSS development were
sound production on a computer without a special sound
card, interactive in real time, and
synchronized to the computer graphics
display. The further step focused on a process Bargar
refers to as "sound authoring,"
allowing users to customize their sounds.
VSS, currently at version 3.0, has been designed to
be a tool scientists can rely on no matter what
computers they're using; it's an interface that can be
generalized for enhancing a computer application
with sound. Bargar recognizes that
its main operations have been designed for a UNIX
environment since the virtual reality user community
is primarily using Silicon Graphic's machines. But,
he notes, "ninety-five percent of VSS is platform
independent, and the Audio Group is in the process of
porting it to the Intel (PC) environment."
From the start, the Audio Development Group worked with the
assumption that sound design would always be
scaleable to the user's specific machine. Bargar says
VSS can already control commercial music
synthesizers, but he doesn't want to stop there. "Our
goal has been to create the core of VSS as a system
that can operate entirely within the computer itself
with no peripheral devices."
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