FrameLib: Audio DSP using frames of arbitrary length and timing

Block-based processing of audio streams commonly employed in realtime audio environments such as Max, Pd and SuperCollider is ill-suited to digital signal processing which functions on discrete chunks, or frames, of audio. Such environments currently lack comprehensive support for complex multi-rate processing. Consequently, welldocumented frame-based processing techniques requiring sophisticated multi-rate processing DSP graphs are currently under-exploited in the creative coding community. FrameLib provides an extensible open-source library for realtime frame-based audio processing, and is currently available as a set of Max externals and a C++ codebase. It enables rapid prototyping and creation of DSP networks involving dynamically sized frames processed at arbitrary rates. Unlike prior solutions, FrameLib provides novel systems for scheduling and memory management, reducing complexity for the user. Details of these novel approaches are explored in detail, and an overview of FrameLib in its current state is given.