I was able to get Genome compiled and running on the iPad which is a nice first step. It's still nowhere near usable, since nothing has been designed for the touchscreen (tiny buttons and lack of gestures everywhere). My main goal was to test out the performance of the iPad processor for studio level audio applications. Early results are merely 'ok'. I was able to get bout 12-16 notes of polyphony on a very basic synth, but adding a single reverb brought the processor to it's knees. Everything is still fairly unoptimized, but it's a little disappointing. There is still some room for optimisim though - in iOS 4.0 apple added the Accelerate framework which adds support for hardware optimized DSP and vector operations. This could give a boost overall to performance. Unfortunately iOS 4.0 is not due for the iPad until the fall, though I could start playing with it now, especially on the new iPhone when that arrives next week. One could also envision heavy use of track 'freezing' to save CPU on a platform like this.
Anyway, I don't think this affects my overall plan much. I still want Genome as a multiplatform app - the iPad is just another platform. Being able to develop on the iPad should help me optimize for low cpu environments and also tablets in general - of which there are many coming out over the next few years (some with better specs than the iPad).
I successfully got genome making sound and processing audio and events again. This change literally took weeks to accomplish and constituted a major rewrite of the core of Genome. Going into this project, I wanted to make it my best piece of coding ever and so I've gone back and re-written my code several times to ensure that I'm doing things the best possible way, and not being lazy about changing code I've already written. The changes should make processing modules much more memory efficient. Programming modules is simpler as some stuff is now automatically handled for you and there are less hacky bits. There is also greater flexibility with the types and number of inputs on modules. This was a tough change, but it should pay off in terms of easier coding and debugging going forward.
Now that that's done, I'm going to try to get this running on the iPad and see how performance is. It might be that the iPad is just not fast enough to handle a fully modular synthesis workstation, but we'll see. 
I was excited to see the Juce framework up and running on my iPad, so I turned my attention back to Genome for a bit. Unfortunately it's still in a broken state as I was in the middle of a major change last time I left it. Currently working on getting it to compile and hopefully run again. Genome on the iPad is an interesting proposition. The iPad is just about powerful enough for a more 'complete' studio experience (eg, synths, samplers and sequencing all under one app).
Juce is still not nearly as fast to render as libNUI unfortunately, which is a shame because there are a lot of nice aspects to the design of the framework itself. I wonder if anything can be changed about the rendering to make it work more efficiently on the Mac.
contact@bleepboxapp.com
www.bleepboxapp.com
White Noise Audio Software Releases iPhone App bleepBOX!, an Analogue Synthesizer / Drum Machine Combo that Fits in Your Pocket
KENNETT SQUARE, PA – August 17, 2009 – The beat box just got pocket sized. bleep!BOX, an analog syth/drum machine debuted in Apple’s iPhone App Store on Saturday, August 15, 2009. bleep!BOX allows users to arrange synthesizer melodies, program drum beats and edit dozens of parameters in real time. Unlike other music apps, bleep!BOX does not limit users with fixed sample sets or pre-made loops. It does not use any samples, only tweakable, analog-style sounds.
Developer Dave Wallin, owner of White Noise Audio Software created bleep!BOX after becoming frustrated with music apps available for the iPhone. “Only two types of music apps were available: simple music toys and music makers. The simple music toys become boring fast and had limited usefulness and the music makers didn’t offer enough options to make a song interesting. bleepBOX! strikes that balance between simplicity and creative potential.”
Similar to the controls on a vintage analog synthesizer, bleep!BOX gives users creative license over waveforms, filters, effects and modulation. It features 50+ parameters and can play up to 10 instruments simultaneously.
“There are a lot of musicians who don’t like using already-made loops,” said Wallin. With bleep!BOX you can program all of your own sounds and make the melodies you want instead of using canned loops or samples. Now users can produce real music on their iPhones.”
bleepBOX!, sold solely in Apple’s app store, costs $9.99 USD and requires iTunes. Click here for the iTunes store link for bleep!BOX.
White Noise Audio Software produces innovative computer based instrument plugins. Founded in 2003, the company is best known for 3 products: Additive, an additive synthesizer, Doppelmangler, a spectral resynthesizer and Zero Vector, a virtual analog synthesizer. bleep!BOX is the company’s first iPhone app. Dave Wallin is the founder and sole proprietor of White Noise Audio Software. www.whitenoiseaudio.com
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Now that bleep!BOX has been submitted to the app store, I've been relaxing a bit and thinking about my next project. Some of my old plugin users have asked when Doppelmangler or Zero Vector will see an update. Honestly, I haven't touched those plugins for years and some of the code is pretty bad or difficult to maintain (esp. in Doppelmangler's case). Those plugins were compiled for vst 2.3 and we're up to 64-bit and vst 3.0 at this point, so some updates are in order. With Doppelmangler, I've always wanted to do a full re-write since I've never been totally satisfied with the quality of the resynthesis and the amount of CPU it consumes. I've actually been brainstorming about how to revamp it for quite a while now.
Zero Vector also presents some challenges. I would love to port all my plugins to the Mac, now that I've gotten comfortable with XCode. However, Zero Vector contains massive amounts of SSE assembly code and I'm not sure how well that will port (maybe it will be fine.).
In general, I've developed my own audio framework for writing portable modules. This is used in Genome Studio and also in bleep!BOX. I'd like to port both those plugins into the new framework.
Finally, I do want to get back to working on Genome Studio. I've put way too much work into it to not finish it (plus I'm getting fairly close to being able to beta test it). Genome will need some more instruments built into it, and I always intended to include some variant of Zero Vector and Doppelmangler. So, maybe now is the time to update those plugins, rebuild them in my new audio framework so they are ready to include in Genome. At the same time I can produce up-to-date plugins for them.
Doppelmangler is the most interesting problem to solve, so I think I'm gonna tackle it first. ZV will be a more straightforward port (though not trivial..). The direction I want to take Doppelmangler is to focus on high quality sample manipulation rather than all the crazy spectral stuff. Warping and modulating sounds is still the focus too (just that DM2 won't use spectral resynthesis per se). It may be something that is more like specialized granular resynthesis synthesis (not wacky artsy fartsy granular . As always the motto is to be able get greater control over your samples and to use them in new and creative ways. More soon - need to do some experiments.
Oh, and I nearly forgot. I have a few updates planned for bleep!BOX. Those will happen first and they will mainly be centered around performance features, patch sharing, and synchronization (read: DSMI - wifi midi).
I posted some new sound samples over here. Further bleep!BOX updates will occur there from now on. Today I finished up a couple outstanding things and started implementing the new GUI. Hoping to finish most of the GUI stuff tomorrow. It's looking pretty sweet. 
Link
The above link describes a method for converting Java source code into Objective C using xmlVM. xmlVM sounds pretty interesting, though the site is down at the moment..
Here's a few screenshots of BleepBOX. These are essentially wireframes - I will be implementing the 'pretty' version of the GUI this weekend.
Here's a couple screenshots of two 'learing' apps I did. The first is an RSS reader, the second is the custom control I mentioned earlier.
