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=== Stephen Kowalewski's Wiki Page ===

=== About Me ===

I am a junior Computer Science major at SUNY Geneseo. I am particularly interested in sound synthesis using computers.


=== My projects ===

== Distributing sound synthesis across a cluster ==

The generation of computer-synthesized sounds is typically not distributed. Often, as is the case with low-quality general midi sounds like those that come preloaded in common media players (Quicktime, RealPlayer etc.), a distributed approach is neither needed nor appropriate. However, the generation of high quality sounds can be quite processor intensive so that at most only a few sounds can be generated in real time. My goal is to distribute the synthesis across a cluster of computers in order to create more complex sounds in real time than would otherwise be possible.

Originally, I began my project using Java to take advantage of useful networking and tone generation libraries, but when I was running the program, there was problems with timing. It seemed that the Java Virtual Machine was taking control away from the master node for whatever reason (probably garbage collection or attending to other threads, since there was another concurrent thread running for displaying information). I decided to start again using the C programming language with the PortAudio library, which provided a way to place data in the audio output buffer and a call-back function by which to do this, and OpenMPI to send data between computers.