| This is exactly my experience with both sc and Csound. (And Max too, for different reasons.) Csound is based on a synthesis paradigm that dates back to the very first computer music experiments. It started life as a microcomputer implementation of Music 11, which was based on Music IV, which dates back to the 60s - and it hasn't moved on from there. Meanwhile sc is a masterpiece of software development - a smooth and clever integration of a custom DSL with distributed real-time synthesis. But musically it's damn near impossible to get it to sound as nice as a mediocre VST, never mind a good one, and the sequencing and event management are eccentric at best. Essentially these systems are all opinionated frameworks with a huge conceptual overhead. They're supposed to make music-from-DSP easier to learn, but students have to learn DSP and a completely new and unusual programming language at the same time. And that's too much to expect of most people, even for A-grade students with PhD potential. So they tend to be used for tinkering and for academic music projects. It's not quite true that no worthwhile music has ever been made with these systems, but it's not an exaggeration to say that very little has. And when you include the learning curve, the ratio of time spent to creative benefit is unimpressive. |
As a resident of both Davis and Berkeley, CA I've heard a lot of stiff academic music made in Max/MSP on UC campuses, though I'd say UC Davis' Bob Ostertag is the notable exception - really compelling stuff - but that's because he's using at as an expressive musical instrument.
But still, these environments hopefully provide a DSL/interace that abstracts away some of the complexity of bare-metal C or C++ code; and non-PhDs like Autechre, Squarepusher, Aphex Twin, BT, Leafcutter John and Christopher Willits have made great-sounding things with them. And these tools are often used by professional audio developers to quickly prototype DSP algorithms.