I’m looking into making some software that makes the keyboard function like a piano (e.g., the user presses the ‘W’ key and the speakers play a D note). I’ll probably be using OpenAL. I understand the basics of digital audio, but playing real-time audio in response to key presses poses some problems I’m having trouble solving.
Here is the problem: Let’s say I have 10 audio buffers, and each buffer holds one second of audio data. If I have to fill buffers before they are played through the speakers, then I would would be filling buffers one or two seconds before they are played. That means that whenever the user tries to play a note, there will be a one or two second delay between pressing the key and the note being played.
How do you get around this problem? Do you just make the buffers as small as possible, and fill them as late as possible? Is there some trick that I am missing?