|User Guide | Transform Guide | OSW on the Web| Many real-time
computer-music systems employ two different notions of time:
“physical time” that is associated with hardware clocks and low-
level scheduling, and “virtual time” which can be scaled or
otherwise controlled by the user. OSW provides a unified user-
configurable view of physical and virtual time that encompasses
both system functions (such as scheduling and sample clocks) and
user control. All transforms that depend on time, such as the
Sinewave transform, a sample playback transform or a MIDI
sequencer are automatically synchronized to a single clock (by
default, the clock of an audio device being used). Users can
gain more explicit control over time by optionally connecting
such time-dependent components to time machines, special
transforms that map physical time from clocks to virtual time,
or scale virtual time output from other time machines. Time
machines include parameters for scaling virtual time or
resetting to a specified value (i.e., "go t