Using sound files in programs

[ThL]

Hi everyone,
As an old Amos Pro basic for Amiga programmer, I've decided to go back
to coding, after giving up, 12 years ago.
I don't know which of the following languages would suit best my project
: Visual Basic (6 or .net), Java or even php.
Here's what I have in mind : create a program that plays a short sound
sampls (2 seconds max.) and the asks the user to match it with 4
possible sound files (he'd have to click on 4 icons, linked to a
different sound sample).
It's in fact a sort of music test.
I'd like to know who could tell me which language would be best-suited
(and would be the easiest to use), knowing that I'm a very rusty
programmer (but a very strong-willed one too !). I'd also like to know
if there's any coding available which could import and manipulate sound
samples. I've even thought of plugins which would use external players
like winamp or windows media player.
Many thanks in advance for your kind and precious help or at least for
your comments.
Thierry

 

[Andrew Thompson]

On Feb 12, 2:08 am, ThL <t-l-a-r-i-v-i-e-r-e-sanslestir...@n-o-r-d-n-e-
t.ft> wrote:
....

Here's what I have in mind : create a program that plays a short sound
sampls (2 seconds max.) and the asks the user to match it with 4
possible sound files (he'd have to click on 4 icons, linked to a
different sound sample).

What flavor? WAV, MID, MOD, WMV, MP3,
AU, AIFF..?

This is an important question to resolve
early on.

If you control the format that the sound is
in, it becomes easier. Do you?

Core J2SE has inbuilt support for some
WAV, AU, AIFF and MID (MIDI - sequenced
music). For a limited range of other
formats, you might look to (the now
abandoned) JMF, or other Java based
API's.

..there's any coding available which could
import and manipulate sound samples.

Manipulate in the sense of play, and stop
at a certain time?

Sure. An applet can do it within a handful
of lines of code (most of which would be
the GUI and event handling for starting
and stopping the sound), an application
in just a few more.

More sophistcated control can be achieved
using the classes in the (core Java)
javax.sound packages.

Andrew T.

 

[David Segall]

I don't know which of the following languages would suit best my project
: Visual Basic (6

Not this one. Microsoft have declared it obsolete. They claim it still
works under Vista but it is likely you will have to change languages
for the next Microsoft OS.

or .net),

This is probably the easiest. You can download the free Express
Edition from here <http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/vb/> and
you will probably find the code to play your short sound in a
Microsoft tutorial. If not, Google will find some code for you to try.

Java

This is probably the language to go for if you never want to learn
another one. It is supported by all the heavies in the computer
industry and it includes the tools you need to play sound files.
Download the JDK 6 with NetBeans 5.5 from
<http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp> and search
<http://java.sun.com> for some code to show you how to play sound
files. It is more difficult than VB.Net only because there is a huge
choice of development tools in Java so the tutorials are more general
than the equivalent one in VB.

or even php.

Not this one. PHP is for web based applications and I would strongly
recommend that you start with a desktop application.

I've even thought of plugins which would use external players
like winamp or windows media player.

Unless you need many of the features of these players like play lists,
visualization and recognizing CDs you will find that using the built
in libraries for manipulating music files easier to use than
communicating with an external program.

 

[ThL]

Hi Andrew,

Andrew Thompson a écrit :

On Feb 12, 2:08 am, ThL <t-l-a-r-i-v-i-e-r-e-sanslestir...@n-o-r-d-n-e-
t.ft> wrote:
...

What flavor? WAV, MID, MOD, WMV, MP3,
AU, AIFF..?

Well, my contention is that wav files should be the easiest files to
deal with. Considering the length, 1 or 2 seconds would only "weigh" 100
KB or so. Opting for compressed files is not really worht the candle and
I'm afraid i'd have to deal with more complex structures (supposing I'd
have to edit them, which is not the case), and then there are copyright
issues to take into account.

This is an important question to resolve
early on.

So let's say "wav" or any other "easy" format.

If you control the format that the sound is
in, it becomes easier. Do you?
I suppose it does.
Core J2SE has inbuilt support for some
WAV, AU, AIFF and MID (MIDI - sequenced
music). For a limited range of other
formats, you might look to (the now
abandoned) JMF, or other Java based
API's.

As I need real sound samples, midi files are not my best option.

Manipulate in the sense of play, and stop
at a certain time?

Exactly. This does not sound hard for the experienced programmer, but
believe me, for an "old person" like me, I really need to regain
self-confidence.

Sure. An applet can do it within a handful
of lines of code (most of which would be
the GUI and event handling for starting
and stopping the sound), an application
in just a few more.

This is what I call "regain self-confidence" !

More sophistcated control can be achieved
using the classes in the (core Java)
javax.sound packages.

Andrew T.

Not so long ago I bought Barry Burd's "Java 2 for Dummies". I suppose
this is one of the guides to start with, right ?

One last question : as Java seems to be more popular among the
coders'community than Visual Basic, do you think I'm making the right
choice going for a more complex language such as Java ? After all,
Visual basic.net has very little to do with former versions of basic,
like the ones I used to know.


Thank you very much for your help, Andrew.
Thierry

 

[ThL]

Hi David,
David Segall a écrit :

Not this one. Microsoft have declared it obsolete. They claim it still
works under Vista but it is likely you will have to change languages
for the next Microsoft OS.

This is what I thought.

This is probably the easiest. You can download the free Express
Edition from here <http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/vb/> and
you will probably find the code to play your short sound in a
Microsoft tutorial. If not, Google will find some code for you to try.

How much "harder" is Java ?

This is probably the language to go for if you never want to learn
another one. It is supported by all the heavies in the computer
industry and it includes the tools you need to play sound files.
Download the JDK 6 with NetBeans 5.5 from
<http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp> and search
<http://java.sun.com> for some code to show you how to play sound
files. It is more difficult than VB.Net only because there is a huge
choice of development tools in Java so the tutorials are more general
than the equivalent one in VB.

What about the syntax ? Both are object-oriented, right ?

Not this one. PHP is for web based applications and I would strongly
recommend that you start with a desktop application. Right.

Unless you need many of the features of these players like play lists,
visualization and recognizing CDs you will find that using the built
in libraries for manipulating music files easier to use than
communicating with an external program.

I only need to play the file and stop it.

Thanks for your answer, David.

Thierry

 

[Lew]

How much "harder" is Java ?

No easy answer. Parts of Java are so much easier to learn than Basic or C/C++,
other parts are so much harder, the bulk is about the same.

"Real programmers can program in FORTRAN in any language." (source unknown)

If you understand software development and programming principles,
particularly object-oriented programming, particularly polymorphism, then you
will learn how to use Java very quickly. (One week is not uncommon.) Likewise,
you can spend the rest of your life learning it and never really master it.
(Eight years and counting, in my case, and that only since I started getting a
paycheck for it. More like eleven years if you count when I started learning
Java.)

It's more than knowing the language. The APIs are vital and monstrously
extensive, and that's just core Java without any additional acronyms (JEE,
JWS, JMS, JMX, ...) or third-party products.

I spend half my professional life learning what I'm doing. That was true for
C, C++ and FORTRAN as well, and remains true for SQL and other languages, as
well as everything else in this profession.

What about the syntax ? Both are object-oriented, right ?

The syntax between Java, C++ and C# is very similar, enough to really mess you
up as you switch between them, because "similar" also means "different".
Smalltalk and JORF [1] are also object-oriented but differ from the Algolish
world rather sharply. FoxPro is object-oriented, too. You cannot generalize
difficulty just from that attribute.

I am familiar with C++ and Java, less so with C#. I rate C++ as "more
difficult" than Java, and what I know of C# puts it on a par with Java. That's
just me, of course.

[1] an obscure, nearly private object-oriented language from the 80s, named
after a goat.
<http://www.pycs.net/lateral/weblog/2005/12/20.html>

- Lew

 

[Andrew Thompson]

On Feb 12, 5:25 am, ThL <t-l-a-r-i-v-i-e-r-e-sanslestir...@n-o-r-d-n-e-
t.ft> wrote:
....

Not so long ago I bought Barry Burd's "Java 2 for Dummies". I suppose
this is one of the guides to start with, right ?

I tend to avoid books. The Java Tutorial and
the JavaDocs (both available freely from Sun)
combined with a bit of searching for specific
topics, tends to do for my purposes.

OTOH
- I would avoid any book that ends with
'..for Dummies'
- Someone who's opinion I respect, loves books
and has reviewed many - you might find just the
right book at their review page..

One last question : as Java seems to be more popular among the
coders'community than Visual Basic, do you think I'm making the right
choice going for a more complex language such as Java ? After all,
Visual basic.net has very little to do with former versions of basic,
like the ones I used to know.

I am no 'language expert' and have no
experience with VB. It seems Lew went
covered the entire area better than I
ever could, in any case.

Having said that, I will add that I like
Java for the following basic reasons.

- Cross-platform, or 'X-plat' (VB/.NET is
supposed to be available on different
platforms, AFAIU, but it is nowhere near
as easy to produce an X-plat GUI).
- Good documentation from the manufacturer
(the JavaDocs and Java Tutorial alone make
for good docs., but there is also available:-
the language spec., the source..).
- Lots of free tools for development
(NetBeans, Eclipse, JBuilder community
edition..) and the SDK itself is also
free 'bar the bytes to download it'.
- Huge repository of pluggable API's.
- Huge repository of LGPL code.
- The Plug-In required to run a Java
based project is both supplied freely
by Sun (for Windows, at least) and
updated as a matter of priority,
should a security bug be discovered.
As a result, I can confidently recommend
it to my end users.
- Excellent usenet newsgroups devoted to
discussing Java and Java based development.

Anything I forgot? Probably a great deal..

Andrew T.

 

[David Segall]

How much "harder" is Java [than VB.Net]?
What about the syntax ? Both are object-oriented, right ?

If you were learning to _read_ the two languages you would find VB.Net
a little easier because you are used to the BASIC syntax but the
difference would not be significant. Both are object oriented and you
will have to learn to think in that idiom.

To my mind there are two big differences in writing the two languages.

1. Java is much older than VB.Net. There is a huge body of code in the
form of Java libraries. This has the advantage that somebody has
probably already written the code you need but makes it difficult to
find exactly which method you should use. The problem is compounded by
the necessity for backward compatibility which means there are often
several ways to achieve the same result and it can be difficult for a
beginner to determine the "current" way.

2. VB.Net has only one development environment. That means that all
the code you read and all the instructions you find on the Web will
work as expected. If they say choose the xyz menu, select abc and
paste this code it will work. Java has dozens of different development
environments so that most examples and tutorials are designed for none
of them.

The comparison often ends up with command line Java versus the VB.Net
IDE. On that basis it would take an hour to get "Hello World" to
appear in the middle of the window in VB and a week in Java.

In my first post I "instructed" you to download the NetBeans/Java SDK
bundle. Comparing that to VB.Net it might take two hours to get "Hello
World" to appear in the middle of the window but, unlike VB, when you
resize the window your text will stay in the middle!

NetBeans will also help with the library problem above. When you cut
and paste some code from the Web into your program NetBeans will
usually provide the code you need to include it.

-
So, to guess a quantative answer to your first question, I would go
for twice as hard if you use any of the IDEs I list at
<http://ide.profectus.com.au> and your application does not use one of
the thousands of methods that are available in Java but not in VB.Net.

 

[Chris Uppal]

As an old Amos Pro basic for Amiga programmer, I've decided to go back
to coding, after giving up, 12 years ago.
I don't know which of the following languages would suit best my project

I don't want to muddy the waters here, but I would recommend /against/ Java for
now.

Java is designed principally to be used in large scale programs, and very much
more about making difficult things possible, than making simple things easy.
In fact it /doesn't/ make simple things easy, and in particular, things that
you might hope would be trivial (like putting a picture in a window and playing
a sound) are not at all easy. You have to learn a lot of Java, and then on top
of that learn about the (complex) libraries for doing sound and graphics,
before you'll get any results.

All that's assuming that you are more interested in being able to produce
results than in learning some specific programming language.

Actually, graphics and sound /are/ pretty complex, so programmers' tools like
AMOS (which I also played with a bit, although I did most of my Amiga
programming in C) put a lot of effort into hiding that from you. You might
find it worthwhile looking for some more modern programming language/tool which
takes the same approach. There are quite a lot out there, often they are based
more-or-less on BASIC, so one of those might suit you. Unfortunately, I can't
remember any names. A bit of Googling turns up BlitzBasic and LibertyBasic
http://www.libertybasic.com/
http://www.blitzbasic.com/
but I can't comment on how suitable either would be. Perhaps your recent
question on comp.programmer will produce some more recommendations.

-- chris

 

[Oliver Wong]

I don't want to muddy the waters here, but I would recommend /against/
Java for
now.

Java is designed principally to be used in large scale programs, and very
much
more about making difficult things possible, than making simple things
easy.
In fact it /doesn't/ make simple things easy, and in particular, things
that
you might hope would be trivial (like putting a picture in a window and
playing
a sound) are not at all easy. You have to learn a lot of Java, and then
on top
of that learn about the (complex) libraries for doing sound and graphics,
before you'll get any results.

All that's assuming that you are more interested in being able to produce
results than in learning some specific programming language.

I have to agree with this. I think it'd be relatively straightfoward to
do what the OP intends in VB6, and probably equally so in VB.NET. I vaguely
recall doing something similar in VB6 and all I had to do to add
sound-playback-at-the-click-of-a-button was drag and drop an OCX control
onto the window frame, and select the appropriate WAV file via Window's file
browser.

With Java, you're looking at JMF which gets ugly, or javax.sound, both
of which force you to actually type in source code (as opposed to dragging
and dropping components around as you might be able to get away with in VB).

Microsoft is giving away IDEs for all their .NET languages for free.
They call them "express editions".
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/vb/

If you already know Basic, I'd recommend starting with VB.NET, and once
you get comfortable with that, consider moving to C# 2.0. And from there,
you can go to Java. I specify C# 2.0 because from what I understand, C# 3.0
is a very different programming language (a lot more focus on functional
programming, with closures and such), and so the transition from C# 3.0 to
Java might not be as smooth as from C# 2.0 to Java.

- Oliver

 

[Oliver Wong]

PHP is for web based applications and I would strongly
recommend that you start with a desktop application.

Technically, you can build desktop applications using PHP (via
http://gtk.php.net/ for example), but I agree that this is probably not a
good idea for a beginner.

- Oliver

 

[=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Arne_Vajh=F8j?=]

2. VB.Net has only one development environment.

Wring.

I use two: Visual Studio and SharpDevelop.

Other may exist.

Arne

 

[=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Arne_Vajh=F8j?=]

If you already know Basic, I'd recommend starting with VB.NET, and once
you get comfortable with that, consider moving to C# 2.0. And from there,
you can go to Java. I specify C# 2.0 because from what I understand, C# 3.0
is a very different programming language (a lot more focus on functional
programming, with closures and such), and so the transition from C# 3.0 to
Java might not be as smooth as from C# 2.0 to Java.

C# 3.0 is not GA yet.

(.NET 3.0 uses C# 2.0 while C# 3.0 will come with .NET 3.5 according
to the MS numerologists)

When C# 3.0 is GA maybe Java 7 may be GA too and maybe with closures as
well.

Arne

 

[=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Arne_Vajh=F8j?=]

I have to agree with this. I think it'd be relatively straightfoward to
do what the OP intends in VB6, and probably equally so in VB.NET. I vaguely
recall doing something similar in VB6 and all I had to do to add
sound-playback-at-the-click-of-a-button was drag and drop an OCX control
onto the window frame, and select the appropriate WAV file via Window's file
browser.

The difference between VB.NET and Java in way to work is rather small.

VB.NET is not VB7 - it is C# with VB syntax.

For the specific purpose which may require tight integration
with OS specific components the MS route be quicker.

But in general I do buy the argument that Java is harder to
get started with than VB.NET.

Arne

 

[David Segall]

Wring.

I use two: Visual Studio and SharpDevelop.

Why/when do you use the latter?

 

[Tris Orendorff]

Not so long ago I bought Barry Burd's "Java 2 for Dummies". I suppose
this is one of the guides to start with, right ?

I recommend one of Terry Terd's "Java 2 for Retentives," Carrie
Curd's "Java 2 for Telepaths," or Bruce Eckel's "Thinking in
Java."

 

[Lew]

ThL burped up :

I recommend one of Terry Terd's "Java 2 for Retentives," Carrie
Curd's "Java 2 for Telepaths," or Bruce Eckel's "Thinking in
Java."

Just in case: the third book, unlike the first two, actually exists and its
earlier editions are available for free online. It is an excellent beginner's
book, and not bad for intermediate Java programmers, either. It won't cover
everything, but it lives up to its title - it really does help one "think in
Java".

"Java 2 for Telepaths" can only be read in your mind.

FWIW, Java 2 is obsolete. Java 4 is the current "grandparent" version, Java 5
is two-and-a-half years old, more or less, and Java 6 is the current version.

That said, most of what you learn for Java 2 is still valid for Java 6.

(However, Java 2 references will probably still talk about "Hashtable",
"Vector" and "Enumeration" where a modern reference would probably recommend
"Map", "List" and "Iterator", respectively, with first-try implementation
choices "HashMap" and "ArrayList" for the first two.)

- Lew

 

[Daniel Dyer]

FWIW, Java 2 is obsolete. Java 4 is the current "grandparent" version,
Java 5 is two-and-a-half years old, more or less, and Java 6 is the
current version.

There is no Java 4. The release prior to Java 5 was still officially Java
2 (version 1.4.2).

(However, Java 2 references will probably still talk about "Hashtable",
"Vector" and "Enumeration" where a modern reference would probably
recommend "Map", "List" and "Iterator", respectively, with first-try
implementation choices "HashMap" and "ArrayList" for the first two.)

Maybe, but all of those newer classes you mention were introduced in the
first Java 2 release (version 1.2), so a good Java 2 reference should have
switched to using those classes rather than the older ones.

Dan.

 

[Lew]

There is no Java 4. The release prior to Java 5 was still officially
Java 2 (version 1.4.2).

OK, good point. I was confused by the change in nomenclature. So Java 2 is not
obsolete, only aged and creaky. (Java 1.3 and earlier are obsolete.)

Maybe, but all of those newer classes you mention were introduced in the
first Java 2 release (version 1.2), so a good Java 2 reference should
have switched to using those classes rather than the older ones.

"Should have" doesn't mean "did". That is why I used the weasel-word
"probably". I still see tons of people learning "Hashtable" and the rest; they
can't have just come up with this on their own, nu?

As you say, a /good/ Java 2 reference /should/ teach the Collections
framework. Conversely, if it doesn't it's not as good.

- Lew

 

[=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Arne_Vajh=F8j?=]

Why/when do you use the latter?

It has some features VS does not have (at least not in
the free edition).

I like the way it works better.

Arne