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by augustuspolius 1332 days ago
This plugin could potentially be a big deal. PureData has been around for decades but fell behind Max and/or MaxMSP mostly (IMO) due to usability limitations. If more people will be able to incorporate PureData organically into their workflow, it could create a real alternative to Max4Live in DAWs other than Live.

I could fantasize even further. A PureData plug-in could kickstart a VCVRack type effort - an open source library of interconnected audio processing modules.
2 comments
PaulDavisThe1st 1332 days ago
VCV Rack is already open source. What would be the benefit of duplicating the 2000+ modules already present in Rack with PureData?
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augustuspolius 1332 days ago
The advantage of this PureData plugin and Max4Live over VCVRack is that you can edit the patch on the fly right in the DAW (in addition to the fact that visual programming is way more accessible than a compiled language).
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jsilence 1332 days ago
Just FYI: you can do that too with a VST fork of VCVRack called Cardinal: https://github.com/DISTRHO/Cardinal
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bambax 1331 days ago
Yes. There os also a commercial initiative by the author of VCV to have it as a VST im the DAW. The difference between the two are that Cardinal only accepts open source modules and is packaged with all of them, while the VCV official VST lets you download modules on the fly.
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NickC25 1331 days ago
+1 for the VCV VST.

The fact that it's paid might be a turn off for some, but I've found it to be really useful, and it works really well inside of Ableton. Can't speak for other DAWs but having been using it for the past 6 months or so, it's been fantastic.

Does anyone know of good resources for folks who want to develop their own modules for VCV rack?

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augustuspolius 1331 days ago
v2 doesn't have native Apple Silicon compatibility yet. Rumors are we will need to wait for the v3 release.

In terms of the dev resources:

1. Here is a basic official tutorial: https://vcvrack.com/manual/PluginDevelopmentTutorial

2. A pretty good video tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d670AFZKGnw

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augustuspolius 1331 days ago
This is cool, but I think we are talking about different things. From reading the description of this project it looks like you can't actually _edit_ the individual modules. They still require compilation since it's C++. You can change the patch by adding modules and tweaking them a-la hardware Eurorack.

M4L and PD allow you to open the patch ("patch" as in MaxMSP patch, not a Eurorack patch) and edit its source code. Which is a completely different level of sound manipulation and synthesis.

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PaulDavisThe1st 1331 days ago
It's all about the level you want to edit the patch at. With PD you are likely to generally work at a lower level than in Rack/Cardinal, but you're still patching together elements of varying complexity.

You can also run PD as a plugin inside Rack to get "the best of both worlds".

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timothyschoen 1332 days ago
You can get close to this VCVRack idea by combining automatonism with PlugData
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singingfish 1332 days ago
I had a look at automationism, but don't really like how it imposes the CV concept in an environment where it doesn't make much sense (to me) - but is still fun to fiddle with. I came across a toolkit[1] yesterday which is similar but doesn't impose analogue concepts on the workflow in the same manner. Also not as polished in the GUI sense either mind you, but the guy who wrote it makes really good occasional pd tutorials on youtube as well[2]

[1] https://github.com/algomusic/Live-Coding-Toolkit-for-Pure-Da... [2] https://www.youtube.com/user/QCGInteractiveMusic

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