bytebeat

A bytebeat interpreter and SuperCollider plugin.

Building

Requires:

• CMake 3.7+
• SuperCollider Source
• Catch2 (on macOS, brew install catch2)

$ cmake -Bbuild -H. \
-DSC_PATH=/path/to/supercollider \
-DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/path/to/extensions \
-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RELEASE
$ cmake --build build/ --target test_bytebeat
$ ./build/test_bytebeat
$ cmake --build build/ --target install

/path/to/supercollider is the path to the root of your SuperCollider source installation.

/path/to/extensions is the path to your SuperCollider user extensions directory.

• On macOS, this is ~/Library/ApplicationSupport/SuperCollider/Extensions.

Expression Syntax

• One expression only
• Only one pre-defined variable: t
• Integers (+/-), strings
• Mathematic operators: ​(), +, -, *, /, %
• Bitwise operators: ​&, |, ^, <<, >>, ~
• Relational operators: <, >, <=, >=, ==, !=, !
• Array subscript operator: []
• Ternary if operator: ?:

SuperCollider Usage

Initially, the UGen will not produce any audio. A ByteBeatController instance should be used to wrap the synth containing the ByteBeat UGen. The eval instance method can then be used to send a bytebeat expression string to the UGen to be parsed and evaluated.

(
SynthDef.new(\bytebeat, {
var t = PulseCount.ar(Impulse.ar(8000));
Out.ar(0, ByteBeat.ar(t).dup)
}).add;
)
b = ByteBeatController(Synth.new(\bytebeat), 2);
b.eval("((t<<1)^((t<<1)+(t>>7)&t>>12))|t>>(4-(1^7&(t>>19)))|t>>7");

Command Line Usage

Requires:

• SoX (on macOS, brew install sox)

$ ./bytebeat "((t<<1)^((t<<1)+(t>>7)&t>>12))|t>>(4-(1^7&(t>>19)))|t>>7" | head -c 8000000 > crowd.raw
$ sox -r 8000 -c 1 -t u8 crowd.raw crowd.wav

Benchmarks

Host: 13-inch M1 MacBook Pro (2020)

...............................................................................
benchmark name samples iterations estimated
mean low mean high mean
std dev low std dev high std dev
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
parse crowd 100 7 1.8942 ms
2.82587 us 2.79468 us 2.97907 us
305.722 ns 7.57781 ns 729.356 ns
eval crowd 100 456 1.6872 ms
36.8993 ns 36.8727 ns 36.9713 ns
0.208576 ns 0.0980819 ns 0.445346 ns

Host: Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+

...............................................................................
benchmark name samples iterations estimated
mean low mean high mean
std dev low std dev high std dev
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
parse crowd 100 6 15.3318 ms
25.808 us 25.268 us 26.657 us
3.385 us 2.349 us 4.555 us
eval crowd 100 347 15.3027 ms
440 ns 432 ns 453 ns
49 ns 32 ns 68 ns