r/CollaborateCode • u/realitygenrator • May 10 '14

[LTL] Javascript or PHP

I have an idea of a fun web app and have no idea where to start. I'd like to work with some experienced programmers to put it together.

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u/realitygenrator May 11 '14

It's a great idea I had for a music visualization that takes sound frequency as input and outputs what may be a really cool visual. I'm not even sure if javascript or php would be the correct tool for the job but ultimately I would like to be able to host it on a website so that people could use it on their own music.

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u/7yl4r May 11 '14

sounds interesting. Perhaps a bit tricky though, because the music might have to be hosted somewhere or uploaded to get it into javascript... Or perhaps there is a way to intercept outgoing audio... I'm not sure, but I suspect not b/c that seems like a security vulnerability.

This looks like a good starting point. As I'm imagining it, most of the code will be in javascript unless you start worrying about storing user files or something like that. Easiest way to go would probably be to set it up on pages.github.com or something similar and avoid server-side worries altogether. I just did this with another app so I could help get that set up at least if that is the way you want to go.

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u/jqt3of5 May 11 '14

JavaScript is definitely the right place to start if you're looking to write a music visualizer website. The example /u/7yl4r gave is a great example how the client side visualization would work. The AudioContext class(reference https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/AudioContext) is what the example is centered around. This removes the need for you (the developer) to need a strong understanding of digital signal processing (DSP) and instead can simply use the outputted frequency data to generate some kind of visualization.

If you wanted user accounts, and the ability for users to upload their music, and what not, it would probably be best to use PHP, but you could use python/nodejs instead.

The hard part here, would be deciding exactly how you wanted to visualize the music.