On 1/29/07, Ken Restivo <ken@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Mon, Jan 29, 2007 at 03:30:59PM -0500, Chuckk Hubbard wrote: > I think jackd and Rosegarden are strictly Linux. And Alsa Modular Synth, > fwiw. > My favorite audio apps are Csound and Pure Data, both amazing FOSS > audio apps, but not exactly mainstream or friendly. Extremely > powerful, though. > http://www.csounds.com > http://puredata.info > A lot of people rave about these. But what do they *do*? What do they sound like? It seems like they're audio programming languages. What things have people built/recorded with them? Is there a "Made with [Csound|PD|Max/MSP]" somewhere?
They are indeed audio programming languages. Lots of people use them to study Digital Signal Processing and digital filters. I used Pure Data to create a sequencer for alternate tuning systems that fit my needs, as none existed that did. I think Pure Data's strength is its data structures, which allow you to make a list of any number of qualities for lists of items; I used them for the notes in my system, and plan on using them for automations. People also use Pd to do video manipulations, which I don't know much about. Just from what I know, Csound does granular, FM, mixing, MIDI, all kinds of filtering (there are LOTS of kinds), AM, scanned synthesis, waveguide, wave terrain, formant synthesis, FFT, phase vocoding, convolution, morphing, sample playback, and dynamics processing. It does more that I don't understand too. One thing I love is that it can play any frequency whatsoever, not just the Big 12. This is all in addition to the usual math and "if" statement stuff of regular programming languages. There used to be a pretty extensive set of internet radio shows with all Csound stuff at csounds.com, but none of them seem to be there now. This guy has some good Pure Data stuff: http://obiwannabe.co.uk/html/music/music.html I think you have to use Pure Data to hear his compositions, though. I think Tobias Enhaus' Csound piece here is the best one: http://www.csounds.com/compositions/index.html I'm embarrassed that I can't produce more examples, but it is true that both Csound and Pd can sound like absolutely anything. The distinction is in how they're used more than what they do. -Chuckk
