Generating Sounds at Runtime with C++

Question

So I'm picking up C++ after a long hiatus and I had the idea to create a program which can generate music based upon strings of numbers at runtime (was inspired by the composition of Pi done by some people) with the eventual goal being some sort of procedural music generation software.

So far I have been able to make a really primitive version of this with the Beep() function and just feeding through the first so and so digits of Pi as a test. Works like a charm.

What I'm looking for now is how I could kick it up a notch and get some higher quality sound being made (because Beep() literally is the most primitive sound... ever) and I realized I have absolutely no idea how to do this. What I need is either a library or some sort of API that can:

1) Generate sound without pre-existing file. I want the result to be 100% generated by code and not rely on any samples, optimally.

2) If I could get something going that would be capable of playing multiple sounds at a time, like be able to play chords or a melody with a beat, that would be nice.

3) and If I could in any way control the wave it plays (kinda like chiptune mixers can) via equation or some other sort of data, that'd be super helpful.

I don't know if this is a weird request or I just researched it using the wrong terms, but I just wasn't able to find anything along these lines or at least nothing that was well documented at all. :/

If anyone can help, I'd really appreciate it.

EDIT: Also, apparently I'm just super not used to asking stuff on forums, my target platform is Windows (7, specifically, although I wouldn't think that matters).

Answer 1

I use portaudio (http://www.portaudio.com/). It will let you create PCM streams in a portable way. Then you just push the samples into the stream, and they will play.

@edit: using PortAudio is pretty easy. You initialize the library. I use floating point samples to make it super easy. I do it like this:

PaError err = Pa_Initialize();
if ( err != paNoError ) 
   return false;

mPaParams.device = Pa_GetDefaultOutputDevice();
if ( mPaParams.device == paNoDevice ) 
   return false;

mPaParams.channelCount = NUM_CHANNELS;
mPaParams.sampleFormat = paFloat32;
mPaParams.suggestedLatency = 
   Pa_GetDeviceInfo( mPaParams.device )->defaultLowOutputLatency;
mPaParams.hostApiSpecificStreamInfo = NULL;

Then later when you want to play sounds you create a stream, 2 channels for stereo, at 44khz, good for mp3 audio:

PaError err = Pa_OpenStream( &mPaStream,
                             NULL, // no input
                             &mPaParams,
                             44100, // params
                             NUM_FRAMES, // frames per buffer
                             0,
                             sndCallback,
                             this
                           );

Then you implement the callback to fill the PCM audio stream. The callback is a c function, but I just call through to my C++ class to handle the audio. I ripped this from my code, and it may not be 100% correct now as I removed a ton of stuff you won't care about. But its works kind of like this:

static int sndCallback( const void*                     inputBuffer, 
                        void*                           outputBuffer,
                        unsigned long                   framesPerBuffer,
                        const PaStreamCallbackTimeInfo* timeInfo,
                        PaStreamCallbackFlags           statusFlags,
                        void*                           userData )
{
  Snd* snd = (Snd*)userData;
  return snd->callback( (float*)outputBuffer, framesPerBuffer );
}

u32 Snd::callback( float* outbuf, u32 nFrames )
{
   mPlayMutex.lock(); // use mutexes because this is asyc code!

   // clear the output buffer
   memset( outbuf, 0, nFrames * NUM_CHANNELS * sizeof( float ));

   // mix all the sounds.
   if ( mChannels.size() ) 
   {   
      // I have multiple audio sources I'm mixing. That's what mChannels is.
      for ( s32 i = mChannels.size(); i > 0; i-- ) 
      {
         for ( u32 j = 0; j < frameCount * NUM_CHANNELS; j++ ) 
         {
             float f = outbuf[j] + getNextSample( i ) // <------------------- your code here!!!
             if ( f >  1.0 ) f = 1.0;     // clamp it so you don't get clipping.
             if ( f < -1.0 ) f = -1.0;
             outbuf[j] = f;
         }
      }
   }
   mPlayMutex.unlock_p();
   return 1; // when you are done playing audio return zero.
}

Answer 2

I answered a very similar question on this earlier this week: Note Synthesis, Harmonics (Violin, Piano, Guitar, Bass), Frequencies, MIDI . In your case if you don't want to rely on samples then the wavetable method is out. So your simplest option would be to dynamically vary the frequency and amplitude of sinusoids over time, which is easy but will sound pretty terrible (like a cheap Theremin). Your only real option would be a more sophisticated synthesis algorithm such as one of the Physical Modelling ones (eg Karplus-Strong). That would be an interesting project, but be warned that it does require something of a mathematical background.

You can indeed use something like Portaudio as Rafael has mentioned to physically get the sound out of the PC, in fact I think Portaudio is the best option for that. But generating the data so that it sounds musical is by far your biggest challenge.