syncotron

The syncotron is a daemon that plays an audio stream to an audio device, like a soundcard, while listening on the network for commands.

Commands can be sent to the syncotron from anything that can talk its language, making the syncotron well suited to interactive sound environments. Since it uses select-based multiplexing, it can simultaneously accept commands from many sources.

examples
• a foot pad could trigger a PIC, which could send a signal to a parallel port, which could trigger a syncotron client to send a message to the syncotron over a UNIX-domain socket.
• a video camera could be connected to a computer running another syncotron client that could interpret the incoming digital images and send requests to the syncotron to play patterns based on what the client "sees".
• a DJ playing records has recorded samples and made wav files to go with the music. He controls the tempo of the audio stream of a running syncotron by using the syncodj syncotron client.

The syncotron is written in C, but it looks like a bunch of objects. I would use Objective-C, but the syncotron has a lot to do and I'dl like it to be as thin as possible.

The syncotron is pre-alpha. Its source is available via CVS.