AudioWorkletProcessor
Baseline Widely available
This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since April 2021.
The AudioWorkletProcessor
interface of the Web Audio API represents an audio processing code behind a custom AudioWorkletNode
. It lives in the AudioWorkletGlobalScope
and runs on the Web Audio rendering thread. In turn, an AudioWorkletNode
based on it runs on the main thread.
Constructor
Note:
The AudioWorkletProcessor
and classes that derive from it cannot be instantiated directly from a user-supplied code. Instead, they are created only internally by the creation of an associated AudioWorkletNode
s. The constructor of the deriving class is getting called with an options object, so you can perform a custom initialization procedures — see constructor page for details.
AudioWorkletProcessor()
-
Creates a new instance of an
AudioWorkletProcessor
object.
Instance properties
port
Read only-
Returns a
MessagePort
used for bidirectional communication between the processor and theAudioWorkletNode
which it belongs to. The other end is available under theport
property of the node.
Instance methods
The AudioWorkletProcessor
interface does not define any methods of its own. However, you must provide a process()
method, which is called in order to process the audio stream.
Events
The AudioWorkletProcessor
interface doesn't respond to any events.
Usage notes
Deriving classes
To define custom audio processing code you have to derive a class from the AudioWorkletProcessor
interface. Although not defined on the interface, the deriving class must have the process
method. This method gets called for each block of 128 sample-frames and takes input and output arrays and calculated values of custom AudioParam
s (if they are defined) as parameters. You can use inputs and audio parameter values to fill the outputs array, which by default holds silence.
Optionally, if you want custom AudioParam
s on your node, you can supply a parameterDescriptors
property as a static getter on the processor. The array of AudioParamDescriptor
-based objects returned is used internally to create the AudioParam
s during the instantiation of the AudioWorkletNode
.
The resulting AudioParam
s reside in the parameters
property of the node and can be automated using standard methods such as linearRampToValueAtTime
. Their calculated values will be passed into the process()
method of the processor for you to shape the node output accordingly.
Processing audio
An example algorithm of creating a custom audio processing mechanism is:
-
Create a separate file;
-
In the file:
- Extend the
AudioWorkletProcessor
class (see "Deriving classes" section) and supply your ownprocess()
method in it; - Register the processor using
AudioWorkletGlobalScope.registerProcessor()
method;
- Extend the
-
Load the file using
addModule()
method on your audio context'saudioWorklet
property; -
Create an
AudioWorkletNode
based on the processor. The processor will be instantiated internally by theAudioWorkletNode
constructor. -
Connect the node to the other nodes.
Examples
In the example below we create a custom AudioWorkletNode
that outputs white noise.
First, we need to define a custom AudioWorkletProcessor
, which will output white noise, and register it. Note that this should be done in a separate file.
// white-noise-processor.js
class WhiteNoiseProcessor extends AudioWorkletProcessor {
process(inputs, outputs, parameters) {
const output = outputs[0];
output.forEach((channel) => {
for (let i = 0; i < channel.length; i++) {
channel[i] = Math.random() * 2 - 1;
}
});
return true;
}
}
registerProcessor("white-noise-processor", WhiteNoiseProcessor);
Next, in our main script file we'll load the processor, create an instance of AudioWorkletNode
, passing it the name of the processor, then connect the node to an audio graph.
const audioContext = new AudioContext();
await audioContext.audioWorklet.addModule("white-noise-processor.js");
const whiteNoiseNode = new AudioWorkletNode(
audioContext,
"white-noise-processor",
);
whiteNoiseNode.connect(audioContext.destination);
Specifications
Specification |
---|
Web Audio API # AudioWorkletProcessor |
Browser compatibility
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