What is miniBAE?

The platform neutral Beatnik Audio Engine, mini edition (miniBAE) is an exceptionally mature, well rounded, and reliable computer music and sound system specially customized for small footprint and embedded applications.

Table of Contents (TOC)

• miniBAE
• Flexible
• Interactivity Oriented
• Great Sounding
• Powerful and Extensible
• Efficient
• Hardware Independent – Sound Card Agnostic
• Consistent Across Plattforms
• An Inexpensive Cross Platform Audio Solution
• Why do we care?
• What can it be used for
• What’s is cost?
• What happen to beatnik
• What’s with all this Javascript code
• What’s left to be done
• New BSD License
• Acknowledgment
• Software
• Business Development
• Sound Design, Music Design

miniBAE is...

Flexible

It can play several leading industry standard music and audio file formats from disk or from memory.

Interactivity oriented

You can pause and resume any media playback at will, change pitch while a sound is playing, etc. The feature-rich miniBAE API is full of opportunities for innovative integration of sound design into interactive virtual worlds, for example, miniBAE includes a MIDI synthesizer that your application, or user, can play in real-time.

Great Sounding

The audio engine DSP quality is very good, comparable to high-end PC wavetable sound cards even though the processing is entirely software-based, and audio quality is selectable all the way from 8-bit 8 kHz up to 16-bit 44.1 kHz.

Powerful and Extensible

The miniBAE music synthesizer is a high-quality wavetable instrument with LFOs, ADSRs, and filters. It can be delivered with a complete General MIDI patch bank, or for small footprints a ‘light’ General MIDI approximation can be used. Custom instrument banks can be built with the Beatnik Editor application.

Efficient

Despite miniBAE’s power, the per-voice processor load is impressively low.

Hardware Independent – Sound Card Agnostic

Some other sound systems require consumers to buy expensive (and quickly outdated) hardware sound cards – but miniBAE avoids nearly all sound card support issues because it’s 100% software. miniBAE requires no particular sound hardware in the host system, only an audio output.

Consistent Across Platforms

Because it’s a software-only solution, consistently great sounding music is much easier to achieve with miniBAE than with many other computer music systems.

An Inexpensive Cross-Platform Audio Solution

miniBAE provides the same music and sound capabilities on every supported platform, so porting music and sound content is a no-brainer, requiring literally no additional sound artist work – simply reuse the files. Abstracted high-performance audio mixing engine. Designed for very low latency. Very efficient.

Why do we care?

Interactive audio is the core need for quality video games and sonified UIX. Audio is one of the senses, and any platform without good support suffers.

What can it be used for?

Playing just about any kind of audio content. Either stored locally, via a network stream or stored in an application. From the application, there are all kinds of ways to hook into the media as it plays. User feedback for visually impaired. Sonified UIX. Instantly create musical instruments out of any device or screen.

What’s is cost?

Free. BSD license.

What happened to Beatnik?

Beatnik ended business December 2009. Decided to release the miniBAE source as a BSD license rather than let it disappear.

What’s with all this Javascript code?

miniBAE’s first incarnation was a plugin for web browsers than included almost a feature for feature Javascript API to match the native API’s. That code is also in the release for potential reuse in Browsers or Frameworks that support Javascript.

What’s left to be done?

If the Javascript code is to be used, it will have to be modernized, and a layer between Javascript and the Native code will have to be written. A Native Host will have to be written for each platform you want to support. The code release includes Mac OSX, Windows, iOS.

New BSD License

Copyright (c) 2009 Beatnik, Inc All rights reserved.  
  
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without  
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are  
met:  
  
Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice,  
this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.  
  
Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.  
  
Neither the name of the Beatnik, Inc nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.  
  
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS  
IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED  
TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A  
PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT  
HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL,  
SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED  
TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR  
PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF  
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING  
NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS  
SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.  

Acknowledgment:

Everyone on this list made a contribution in some important way. Its amazing to me that two scruffy guys working in our house created something that went around the world and in lots of peoples pockets.

Thank you all.

Steve Hales - [email protected]

Software

Steve Hales - Halestorm/Igor Labs/Beatnik/Danger
Jim Nitchals - Halestorm/Igor Labs/Beatnik
Chris Muir - Beatnik
Chris van Rensburg - Beatnik
Christopher Schardt - Beatnik
Mark Deggeller - Beatnik
Doug Scott - Beatnik/Danger
Andrew Ezekiel Rostaing - Beatnik
Chris Grigg - Beatnik
Sean Echevarria - Beatnik
Kara Kytle - Sun Microsystems - Javasoft
Chris Rogers - Beatnik
Jarrell Irvin - Danger
Ian MacDonald - Sapien Technologies

Business Development

Don Millers - Beatnik
Gavin Bourne - Beatnik
Thomas Dolby - Headspace/Beatnik
Mary Coller Albert - Headspace/Beatnik
John Eckstein - Beatnik
Dane Bigham - Presage Software
Steve Hales - Halestorm/Igor Labs/Beatnik/Danger
Jim Nitchals - Halestorm/Igor Labs/Beatnik
Brian Hales - Halestorm
Brett Durrett - Halestorm
Joe Britt - WebTV/Danger
Andy Rubin - WebTV/Danger
David Rivas - Sun Microsystems - Javasoft
Bruce Leak - Apple/General Magic/WebTV
Phil Goldman - Apple/WebTV
Kari Johnson - Beatnik
Matti Hamalainen - Nokia
Jukka Holm - Nokia
Jacek Horos - Nokia
Mickey Mantle - Brøderbund Software
Doug Carlston - Brøderbund Software
Will Wright - Maxis Software/EA
Ken Grant - Pixellite Software
Paul Lamoreux - Sapien Technologies
Ferdinand Rios - Sapien Technologies

Sound Design, Music Design

Thomas Dolby - Headspace/Beatnik
Brian Salter - Presage Software/Beatnik
Michael Pukish - Presage Software
Kim Cascone - Beatnik
Blake Leah - Beatnik
Chris van Rensburg - Beatnik
Steven Clark - Beatnik
Thomas Dimuzio - Beatnik
Tom Rettig - Brøderbund Software
Chris Perry - Halestorm
Sal Orlando - Beatnik
Peter Drescher - Halestorm