# alexbw/novocaine

Painless high-performance audio on iOS and Mac OS X

Repository: https://github.com/alexbw/novocaine
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/novocaine
Homepage: http://alexbw.github.com/novocaine/
Language: Objective-C
License: MIT
License Family: permissive
Last push: 2018-11-28T13:21:24+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 32/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 0, release rhythm 35, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 5266, "days_push": 2835, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: no_releases
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 2232, forks 270 (observed 2026-08-28T04:06:29.172490+00:00)

## What it is
Novocaine is an Objective-C/C++ library that wraps Apple's low-level Audio Units API to make high-performance real-time audio input and output on iOS and Mac OS X simple. It provides easy block-based callbacks for reading microphone audio and writing playback audio with minimal code.

## Use cases
- capture microphone audio in real time on iOS
- play back generated audio with low latency on Mac
- build an audio analyzer or oscilloscope app
- route audio input to output for pass-through monitoring
- avoid writing raw Core Audio Audio Unit code

## When to choose
- you need low-latency real-time audio on iOS or macOS without wrestling with Audio Units
- you want a simple block-based API for mic input and speaker output
- you're building audio analysis tools like RTAs or oscilloscopes in Objective-C

## When to avoid
- you need cross-platform audio beyond Apple platforms
- you're using Swift exclusively and don't want Objective-C++ interop
- you need actively maintained software - the last release was in 2018
- you need high-level features like codecs, file playback, or effects chains

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: maintenance
- function: audio-processing, sdk
- domain: mobile-development, developer-tools
- platform: cpp
- tags: core-audio, audio-units, objective-c, real-time-audio, microphone, playback, audio, ios, macos

## Member repositories
- alexbw/novocaine (main) score 32

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:06:29.172490+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T02:44:24.753396+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/alexbw/novocaine (fetched 2026-08-28T04:06:29.172490+00:00, sha 1e4301f0b814)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.