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Web-REPL for my OSS sound engine

Web-REPL for my OSS sound engine

by octetta·May 10, 2026·5 points·2 comments
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AI Analysis

●●●BangerWizardryRabbit HoleCozy

Full C audio engine running in-browser via Emscripten with a custom ASCII notation language.

Strengths
  • •Compiles native C code and miniaudio to WebAssembly for zero-install browser audio synthesis.
  • •Custom ASCII notation system offers a unique, text-based approach to composing and sequencing.
  • •Serves as an accessible educational gateway to the underlying open source book project.
Weaknesses
  • •ASCII notation has a steep learning curve without extensive interactive tutorials or docs.
  • •UI feels utilitarian and sparse, potentially deterring non-technical musicians from trying it.
Target Audience

Audio programmers, musicians, and developers interested in low-level sound synthesis

Similar To

Sonic Pi · TidalCycles · SuperCollider

Post Description

I've been working on a C-based open source sound engine as part of a book project and wanted an approachable way for people to try it out without having to build anything.

Through the magic of emscripten (which I'm totally amazed by) and miniaudio (which has given me new life late in my development career), and a smidge of vibe-coded HTML/JS (web-dev is not my jam), this page will let you try out the tooling.

I gave a lightning talk on the ASCII notation at ElixirConf EU last month here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnJ0osgiqWM

There's a work-in-progress tutorial for the notation used in this tool at:

https://octetta.github.io/pulp/doc/learn.html

and a long-winded YT video of me showing a bit at:

https://youtu.be/_wNQ24EJKa0

I'll be showing this stuff off at the Audio Developer Conference in Tokyo June 2nd 2026.

https://adcjapan26.sched.com/event/2KCdr/beeps-and-ports-ann...

If you're there and you're an audio developer (I'm not), I'd sure like feedback and guidance.

Oh, one other thing, a side-project that I showed here last month (k-synth) IS embedded here but that documentation is yet to be written.

You can read about that project at:

https://github.com/octetta/k-synth

and there's also a web-UI for that tool to learn the weirdo-API-ish notation here

https://octetta.github.io/k-synth/

Have fun, be nice.

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