Web Audio API: Advanced Sound for Games and Interactive Apps

by Boris Smus

Go beyond HTML5's Audio tag and boost the audio capabilities of your web application with the Web Audio API. Packed with lots of code examples, crisp descriptions, and useful illustrations, this concise guide shows you how to use this JavaScript API to make the sounds and music of your games and interactive applications come alive.

You need little or no digital audio expertise to get started. Author Boris Smus introduces you to digital audio concepts, then shows you how the Web Audio API solves specific application audio problems. You'll not only learn how to synthesize and process digital audio, you'll also explore audio analysis and visualization with this API. Learn Web Audio API, including audio graphs and the audio nodes Provide quick feedback to user actions by scheduling sounds with the API's precise timing model Control gain, volume, and loudness, and dive into clipping and crossfading Understand pitch and frequency: use tools to manipulate soundforms directly with JavaScript Generate synthetic sound effects and learn how to spatialize sound in 3D space Use Web Audio API with the Audio tag, getUserMedia, and the Page Visibility API

Genres: Technology, Music, Computers, Reference

76 pages, ebook

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[Anton Poderechin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nice and short intro into the topic. Now I know how to access raw microphone data from JS.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

This gives a good high level view of the Web Audio API. It's more of a list of functions available with some code to play with. The author does his best in describing audio and sound in general, but doesn't make it the focal point of the book. While I'm waiting for a more in-depth version of a Web Audio API book, perhaps with building blocks and best practices, this one will do for reference and for leap frogging off the exampls.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is fine, but too shallow.
It feels more like a quick-start guide then as a introductory book.
In addition, it covers a lot of sound synthesis / audio concepts compared to instruction of how to use the api.

Overall, if you are looking for a tutorial and prefer a hard copy over reading from the screen (like me) this book is fine. Otherwise, read some tutorials on the net and you will cover the whole topic much faster.

[Aelena · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book does a good job of introducing the web audio api and a very basic theory behind sound. Obviously that is a complex topic and not the main purpose of the book, but it has enough samples to get you started with this api and do some noise on your own. You might want to check out the Processing programming language too for music / noise generation from code if that's what you're after.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Could use more depth. Decent overview of the API, but the last couple of chapters say "outside the scope of this book" a little too often.

[Amet Alvirde · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excelente libro como base para desarrollar con esta API; claro, concreto y muy bien elaborado, además te contextualiza respecto al audio en sí. Un imperdible. :)

[Marshall Upshur · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good intro, wish it provided more examples, but the API is still evolving and that's what playing is for