[Ardour-Dev] Potential GSoC projects

[Roman Sommer]

Hi there,

I wrote a similar mail to the LAD list a few days ago where I received the suggestion to write to you, the ardour project, directly (among others).
My name is Roman, I'm studying Computer Science and I'd like to participate in the GSoC this year.
Also I'd like to do this in a linux audio related project if possible, because I want to help improve the Linux Audio world!
That's why I'm asking you if you, if you plan to participate in the GSoC as an organisation this year and would be interested to think about and discuss project ideas together.

My background:
I'm a Master student in CS and my focus so far has been centered around operating systems (incl. kernel development), security,
concurrency and (hard) real-time.
At the University I also took a few signals, systems and DSP courses, so I know what an LTI system is, how digital filters work
and what a hilbert transform does.
To pay my rent and food I work part time as a repair technician fur electronic musical instruments and equipment and therefore
have a background in electronics as well.
I'm also a passionate hobby musician and live mixing technician.

I know how to write C code that doesn't blow up. I'm familiar enough with C++ to get around comfortably.
Recently I started writing an 8-bit microcontroller emulator as a University project in Rust and so far I really like the
language.
Python is also a very nice language in my opinion.
Audio related things I've written include python bindings for the jack dbus interface [0], a jack application managing tool to start/stop/mute applications via hardware buttons and used mididings to map MIDI CC to Sysex for my hardware synths [1].
I've also written a bit of FAUST code to create a number of effects I want to use.

A few ideas and fields I can imagine working on (non-exhaustive, no particular order):
  - Mididings backend for embedded devices
  - Polyrhythmic sequencing
  - Sysex integration in sequencers
  - Linux kernel work
  - Emulation of analog hardware (setBfree still needs a nice overdrive afaik ;) )
  - jack and/or pipewire

Something I'd really like to see someday is being able to sit down at (or stand up with) my Instrument and just jam and when I
played something I like, I can go back to, say, 28s ago and extract a few bars and build a song from there.

Also I'd really like to hear your ideas and suggestions! :)

I'm really looking forward to your responses and hopefully a great collaboration as a result!
Feel free to ask any questions, as will I! ;)

Cheers,

Roman / etXzat

[0] https://github.com/romsom/midiutil
[1] https://github.com/romsom/python-jackdbus