Gamma

Generic Synthesis C++ Library

1. About

Gamma is a cross-platform, C++ library for doing generic synthesis and filtering of signals. It contains helpful mathematical functions, types, such as vectors and complex numbers, an assortment of sequence generators, and many other objects for signal processing tasks. It is oriented towards real-time sound and graphics synthesis, but is equally useful for non-real-time tasks.

2. Compilation Instructions

The source code can either be built into a library or directly compiled from source into an application. In the following, the base directory is where this README file is located.

2.1 Building a Library

Make (Linux, OS X)

In most cases, simply running

make

will build the library with automatically detected platform settings. See Makefile.config for other build options.

There are several other rules within Makefile. These are:

make            - builds static library
make install        - installs library into DESTDIR
make clean      - removes binaries from build folder
make examples/y/x.cpp   - builds and runs example source file y/x.cpp
make test       - performs unit tests

The rule that builds examples will automatically run the executable by default. To turn this off, pass AUTORUN=0 to make. The examples rule follows standard Unix conventions so that, for instance, all the examples can be built and run by typing the command

make examples/*/*.cpp

Binaries are located in the directory ./build/. On OSX, the Gamma library will be linked to the pre-compiled dependent libraries in external/lib_osx. On Linux, use apt-get to install the necessary dependent libraries (see 2.3 below).

Xcode (OS X)

1. Open project/xcode/gamma.xcodeproj
2. Build the target 'libgamma{.a, .dylib}'. The library will be in project build folder.

2.2 Compiling Direct From Source

Gamma can easily be compiled directly from source into an existing project.

Make sure to pass in the following flags to the compiler:

-D__STDC_CONSTANT_MACROS
-finline-functions (or -O3)
-fpeel-loops

2.3 Dependencies

Gamma depends on PortAudio v19 and libsndfile for performing audio and sound file i/o, respectively. They are required only if using certain Gamma classes.

PortAudio is required ONLY if you are using Gamma's AudioIO class (defined in Gamma/AudioIO.h). If you do not wish to use audio i/o, then pass the flag

NO_AUDIO_IO=1

into make or, if not using make, exclude src/AudioIO.cpp from your project.

libsndfile is required ONLY if you would like to use Gamma's SoundFile class (defined in Gamma/SoundFile.h). If you do not wish to use sound file i/o, then pass the flag

NO_SOUNDFILE=1

into make or, if not using make, exclude src/SoundFile.cpp from your project.