zvuk
Overview

What is zvuk?

An audio engine for the web. Tiny, ESM, type-safe. Built from a real shipping slot-game stack.

zvuk is a Web Audio API library that hands you the vocabulary you'd expect from Wwise, FMOD, or Unreal: an Engine you talk to, a Mixer made of named Buses, Sounds that spawn Voices, Snapshots that crossfade your whole mix, and Parameters that drive any value with smooth ramps.

Designed around the realities the Web Audio API doesn't smooth over: autoplay restrictions, iOS Safari's quirky AudioContext lifecycle, click-free parameter changes, polyphony at scale, and the discipline of disposing everything you constructed. The library makes those concerns explicit and named, so your application code can stay short.

Conventions

All time-valued options are in seconds, matching the Web Audio API (AudioContext.currentTime, every AudioParam schedule). That includes fades (voice.fade({ duration: 0.8 })), crossfades (engine.crossfade(a, b, { duration: 1.5 })), snapshot applies (snap.apply({ fade: 0.25 })), and every dynamics processor's attack/release. No millisecond fields, no per-API conversions to remember.

What's in v1.13.0

  • Runtime: lazy AudioContext, audio-clock scheduler, decode cache, codec ladder.
  • Mixer: Master with headroom + optional soft limiter, named Buses with click-free fades, FX chain inserts.
  • Sources: Sound + Voice with jitter, fades, pause / resume, live setPlaybackRate, abort signals, lifecycle promises; createSound for procedural buffers.
  • Sprites: one buffer, many named regions, one fetch — for cascades, UI variants, dialogue chunks.
  • Streams: loadStream for music tracks > 30s via HTMLAudioElement + MediaElementAudioSource.
  • Crossfade: engine.crossfade(from, to, { duration }) — equal-power music swap in one call.
  • Concurrency: per-bus voice limit with steal strategies (oldest / lowest-priority / quietest / none).
  • FX: Compressor, Reverb (synthetic IR or your own), Filter (six biquad types), Ducker (sidechain), pitch-preserving StretchProcessor (offline) plus a realtime AudioWorklet variant.
  • Spatializer: 2D StereoPanner + 3D HRTF PannerNode per voice, with voice.spatializer exposed for live setPan / setPosition.
  • Loudness: RMS-based normalization on load (loadSound({ normalize: true })) so sounds sit at uniform perceived loudness.
  • Parameters & Snapshots: named knobs with bindTo mapping; whole-mix capture and crossfade.
  • DX: BusNotFoundError("sxf"; did you mean "sfx") with Levenshtein suggestions; CLI (zvuk transcode + zvuk gen bank.json); auto-built TypeDoc reference, Pagefind search, OG cards, and an agent-readable llms.txt.

What's next

See the roadmap for sized, prioritised items, and the changelog for what's already landed. v1.0.0 is the first stable release; the next pass is community-driven — PRs welcome.

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