Manipulating audio input(real-time) via line-in/mic

Well after two weeks of searching I have found many posts asking the same question, but getting no good answers. Either VB does not support this function or no one knows much about it. In either case, I'm going to try one more time before giving up.

I(like a multitude of others) am looking for information about manipulating the audio signal input in real-time from a guitar. Not just a simple spectrum analyzer, but altering the signal to produce such things as distortion/pitch/frequency/delay/chorus/volume. In essence, we are wanting to create a guitar amplifier you can play through your PC.

If it's not possible in VB I understand, but as I said, after searching high & low I have yet to see an answer either way. Perhaps this would make a good project for one of you VB audio guru's.

Thanks

So you want to get into the realms of DSP eh?! This is normally C++ territory, there are loads of classes out there already written in C, can't say the same for VB.

I can point you to some relevant sites...

Digital Signal Processing Guide

This is a very good 'handbook' & covers loads of different sections, add to your favourites!

Music-DSP Mail list

Some German Site With Loads of Links!

On the whole, I would say unless there are APIs written in C++, you won't be able to do this in VB.....simply because what you are trying to do is very low-level (manipulating I/O streams).....someone correct me if I'm wrong!

Even with todays fast computer speeds, using a multi-tasking O/S [e.g. Windows] is not really the right approach for doing this in real-time with any quality.

There are a number of good PCI based DSP cards on the market that will allow you to to this with excellent results.

Besides the fact that Windows is not a real-time OS (RTOS), I'm not sure VB is a good tool to use to write this kind of application. You might want to check out PureBasic, PowerBasic, or Liberty Basic which let you build very small and fast EXE's.

http://www.purebasic.com
http://www.powerbasic.com
http://www.libertybasic.com

Fred.

What about a DLL/OCX written in C that VB can use to converse with the low-level I/O? is there such a thing, or is this possible? I have Visual Studio, do these other 'basic' languages have an advantage over VC++?

Thanks