*# Presenter:*
Hongchan Choi (hongchan@google.com)
Senior Software Engineer, Google Chrome
W3C Specification Co-Editor, Web Audio API

*# Topic:*
Better and Faster Audio I/O on Web

*# API Proposal/Explainer:*
https://github.com/WebAudio/web-audio-cg/blob/master/audio-device-client/explainer.md

*# Position Statement:*
Today, the web platform offers two different paths for audio: The
HTMLAudioElement, which is significantly abstracted from the actual
operation, and Web Audio API, a relatively high-level layer with a
modular/graph-based architecture. While these worked well for their
respective application domains, they also lacked features needed for game
audio engines and professional audio applications.

Audio Device Client addresses these problems by exposing low-level audio
functionality to developers: configurable interface to audio hardware
(callback buffer size, sample rate, I/O channels); a dedicated JS scope on
a higher-priority thread (if permitted); better integration with WASM; and
shared memory.

With this new low-level API, it will be possible to support more demanding
use cases like interactive 3D spatialization for VR/XR applications. This
also provides a path for audio developers to bring large-scale game audio
engines and professional audio applications to the web platform that were
previously very difficult to do.