jun :: realeyes

I got a chance to play with Merapi for the first time yesterday.  The reason behind needing Merapi was a limitation in the Flash Player on getting sound information from the microphone.

Here’s a quick demonstration and code walkthrough.

Creating an analog audio controller with Merapi and AIR from Jun Heider on Vimeo.

Couple notes:

1. Although I could have used FFT, I based the frequency analyzer on this Java-based guitar tuner app I found online. It was a much simpler solution for my needs. Thanks John Montgomery!
2. The sound you hear in the demo is not my guitar.  It’s actually sounds being dynamically generated using the Flash Player 10 Sound API based on the frequency information sent from Java to AIR via Merapi.
3. This code is POC quality, basically a toy.  Things could have been optimized and there are a couple bugs to work out.  However, it’s pretty cool as is.

It’s pretty messy right now and lacking comments, etc. so I’m going to hold off on releasing it.  As soon as I do, which will probably be via merapi-examples, I’ll announce it.

In the meantime, here’s some useful links to help get you started:

• http://www.merapiproject.net/
• http://blog.everythingflex.com/2009/05/30/how-to-checkout-merapi-examples/ (Rich is da man!)
  
• http://www.developer.com/java/other/article.php/3457251 (If you want to learn about FFT)
• http://www.hulstkamp.com/2008/09/12/sound-in-flash-10-beta-generating-waveforms-timbre-and-pitch/175 (Info and the reference I used when playing with Flash Player 10 Sound API.)

Anyway, enjoy the screencast, and start playing with Merapi!  Make some noise!