An SDOM Approach to Reactive Audio

The static DOM, or SDOM, approach to building web frameworks was first articulated by Phil Freeman as an alternative to the virtual DOM, or VDOM, approach used by frameworks like ReactJS and Vue. Since then, several projects, most notably SolidJS, have developed SDOM and related ideas into industry-grade web frameworks. This paper explores the applicability of the SDOM approach to Web Audio. It starts by defining the main concepts behind SDOM, including functional reactive programming (FRP) and the incremental lambda calculus. It then discusses some of the unique challenges in porting SDOM to Web Audio, including one-to-many relationships, feedback loops, referential transparency, and live-coding. After proposing solutions to these problems, it presents benchmarks of the SDOM-based approach compared to Tone.js, an imperative library for web audio.