[whatwg] Audio canvas?

[Dr. Markus Walther]

Thanks for all the feedback sofar!

Dave Singer wrote:
> 
> As others have pointed out, I think you're asking for a new element, 
> where you can 'draw' audio as well as pre-load it, just like canvas 
> where you can load pictures and also draw them.  This is not the <audio> 
> element, any more than canvas is the <img> element.

Not sure I agree. Your line of reasoning in general leads to a 
proliferation of elements, whereas my proposal to extend <audio> makes 
that same element more powerful. I guess it's more a matter of 
aesthetics which approach is better.

> It's an interesting idea, but you'd have to answer 'what are your 
> drawing primitives', and so on.  More, when creating visual content, you 
> are drawing on spatial axes, whereas in audio you are creating or 
> modifying samples, which lie themselves on a temporal axis.

I agree and I think I pointed that out already in my initial posting.

> I'm guessing that something like MIDI would be drawing primitives, but 
> overall this idea would seem to need a lot of working out...

Again in that initial posting I was quite specific about an initial set 
of 'drawing' primitives - audio-manipulation primitives -, minimally

get/setSample(<samplePoint> t, <sampleValue> v, <channel> c).

For the sketched use case - in-browser audio editor -, functions on 
sample regions from {cut/add silence/amplify/fade} would be nice and 
were mentioned as an extended possibility, but that is optional.

I don't understand the reference to MIDI, because my use case has no 
connection to musical notes, it's about arbitrary audio data on which 
MIDI has nothing to say.

-- Markus