Join Google's Chris Wilson as he asks, and answers, "Why do we need another audio API? We have <audio> already!" While the audio tag is excellent for playing an audio file and streaming, it's limited in the sense that it wraps everything up in one step: loading, decoding, and getting ready to play.
The Web Audio API, however, provides us with:
- precise timing of lots of overlapping sounds
- an audio pipeline/routing system for effects and filters
- hooks to analyze and visualize audio data on the fly
All the sudden a whole new world of audio possibilities opens up, like online digital synthesis and super precise audio triggering for games and other applications. Chock-full of demos, if you like the internet, music, and synthesizers, check out this great presentation.
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