All in One Guitar Studio in Web Audio

Author: Konstantine Kutalia
Keywords: electric guitar, web development, WebAssembly, Web Audio
Annotation:

Electric guitar is one of the most popular instrument. You have heard it on countless pop, jazz and rock records. Those iconic sounds are generated by electric devices known as amplifiers. Without them electric guitar can be hardly heard even in the room. First generations of guitar amplifiers used vacuum tubes to amplify signals. In 1970s when solid state technology became widespread transistor-based guitar amplifiers were popularized, yet many players would still prefer vacuum tube sounds as they sound warmer and fuller. At the end of 1990s digital simulations of both kinds of amplifiers appeared in a form of Line 6 POD guitar effects processor. It spawned a great interest due to its versatility, low cost, lack of need of maintenance and many factors but its sound quality was generally considered worse to analog counterparts. During 2000s many iterations of digital simulations appeared on various platforms. By the end of 2010s digital solution began to approach new levels thanks to products like Kemper Profiling Amp which could automatically generate new realistic amplifier simulations using user-supplied audio signals. It found home in the studios of top producers. Just few years ago first web browser-driven amplifier simulations appeared which used Web Audio API. They would try to make electric guitar playing through a computer a bit easier since native applications require setup and are platform-dependent. Since then not much has been done building upon this idea whereas Web Audio API has been improved. This paper aims to work on the aforementioned issue and offers a solution in a form of web-based native-like application. By itself it is a demonstration to use the latest achievements of web-technologies of both UI development and audio processing in an unified manner.

Lecture files:

ყველა ერთში გიტარის სტუდია Web Audio-ის გამოყენებით [ka]