The τ (tau) Project

The τ (tau) Project (or simply “τ”) is a set of libraries which deal with audio :

• A player for audio playback
• A recorder for recording audio
• An Audio Graph engine
• Several utilities to handle audio files

Supported targets

τ is a library package allowing you to play and record audio for

• iOS
• Android
• Web

Later, τ will support also :

• Linux
• Macos
• Windows

Overview

τ provides both a high level API and widgets for:

• play audio
• record audio

τ can be used to play a beep from an asset all the way up to implementing a complete media player.

The API is designed so you can use the supplied widgets or roll your own.

The τ package supports playback from:

• Assets
• Files
• URL
• Streams
• Remote URI

SDK requirements

• τ requires an iOS 10.0 SDK (or later)
• τ requires an Android 21 (or later)

Examples (Demo Apps)

τ comes with several Demo/Examples :

The examples App is a driver which can call all the various examples.

Features

The τ package includes the following features :

• Play and Record τ or music with various codecs. (See the supported codecs here)
• Play local or remote files specified by their URL.
• Play assets.
• Record to a live stream Stream
• Playback from a live Stream
• The App playback can be controlled from the device lock screen or from an Apple watch
• Play audio using the built in [SoundPlayerUI] Widget.
• Roll your own UI utilizing the τ api.
• Record audio using the builtin [SoundRecorderUI] Widget.
• Roll your own Recording UI utilizing the τ api.
• Support for releasing/resuming resources when the app pauses/resumes.
• Record to a Dart Stream
• Playback from a Dart Stream
• The App playback can be controlled from the device lock screen or from an Apple watch

Supported frameworks

τ is actually supported by the following frameworks:

• Flutter (Flutter Sound)

τ will eventually be supported in the future by other frameworks :

• React Native,
• Cordova,
• JS (React JS, Vue, Pure JS),
• …

Licenses

Flutter Sound 8.3 was published under the LGPL License. A Flutter Sound developer noticed recently that this license was incorrect : the LGPL license does not allow static links to the library. The library must be linked dynamically. The problem was that Flutter links-edit the plugins statically. This means that many Flutter Sound users who use our library in private/close sources App was in a copyright infringement.

To solve this issue, we forked Flutter Sound 8.3 to two different branches.

• Flutter Sound 8.4 is published under the permissive Mozilla Public License 2.0.
• The τ Sound Project 9.0 (this fork) is published under a pure GPL License.

τ Sound is copyrighted by Canardoux (2021).

• τ Sound is released under a license with a strong copyleft clause: the GPL-V3 license. This means that if you use total or part of τ Sound, your App must be published under the GPL License too.
• If you cannot (or don’t want to) publish your App under the GPL License, perhaps you can consider using the MPL Flutter Sound 8.4 branch.

We need help

τ is a fundamental building block needed by almost every mobile project.

We are looking to make τ the go to project for mobile Audio with support for various platforms and various OS.

τ is a large and complex project which requires to maintain multiple hardware platforms and test environments.

Thanks

Too many projects to manage. I am burning out slowly. If you could help me cheer up, buy me a cup of coffee will make my life really happy and get much energy out of it. As a side effect, we will know that the τ Project is important for you, that you appreciate our job and that you can show it with a little money.