CsoundXML: a meta-language in XML for sound synthesis

The software sound synthesis is closely related to the Music N programs started with Music I in 1957. Although Music N has many advantages such as unit generators and a flexible score language, it presents a few problems like limitations on instrument reuse, inflexibility of use of parameters, lack of a built-in graphical interface, and usually only one paradigm for scores. Some solutions concentrate in new from-scratch Music N implementations, while others focus in building user tools like pre-processors and graphical utilities. Nevertheless, new implementations in general focus in specific groups of problems leaving others unsolved. The user tools solve only one problem with no connection with others. In this paper we investigate the problem of creating a meta-language for sound synthesis. This constitutes an elegant solution for the above cited problems, without the need of a yet new acoustic compiler implementation, allowing a tight integration which is difficult to obtain with the present user tools.