<Sound Dev> OpenJDK, Mac OS X and Java Sound

[Mandolane Team]

Dear all

As I'm sure you're all aware, Apple recently announced that it is "deprecating" its own version of Java for OS X.  This probably means that they will discontinue further development and no longer ship Java with the next version of the OS X (10.7 codenamed "Lion").

As you can imagine, this news has caused great consternation in Mac Java community and huge amount of discussion about what will replace it.  Obviously OpenJDK is a top contender for the role.  At this point, I admit that I don't know the status of OpenJDK for Macs but I believe that it does not have a Java Sound implementation.

The version of Java Sound produced by Apple was pretty pathetic and for a long time it lacked Midi I/O.  For these reasons, some years ago we set up a small company to develop an implementation of Java Sound MIDI for OS X, and also an improved and very low latency audio output Mixer for OS X.  These were reasonably successful and we had a steady number of sales, plus many customers who wrote to us to say how useful they'd found it.  For personal reasons, the company is now in the process of liquidation and it seems a shame to deprive the community of the code we developed if it can be of use.

If it would help, then we're prepared to donate all our source code on a free licence open source basis to the Mac port of the OpenJDK project.  For the record, we have a working implementation of MIDI I/O and a working audio output mixer.  We also have an experimental synthesizer.  We don't have an audio input mixer (because there wasn't any demand), we haven't implemented ports, and we haven't implemented our own sequencer.  All of our software interfaces to Mac's Core Audio system via JNI. 

Of course, the project may already have a working version of Java Sound for OS X, in which case we'll consign our stuff to the great software library in the sky!  

Best wishes

Mandolane