CSound for Android | Hacker News Reader

CSound for Android

palmsounds.net

I'm not sure about the utility of CSound on Android (I'll have to try it out), but I'm happy it's there, all the same (I'm of the NetBSD "put it everywhere" school).

CSound is the portable C (programming language) progeny of what's called "Music-N"[0] synthesizers by Max Mathews[1] of Bell Labs c. 1957. I'd say it eschews a learning curve in favour of a learning wall, but that said, once you're in, it's fascinating. I've heard it described as an audio version of programming in assembly (I don't disagree with this), which might sound off-putting, but you can't help buy learn interesting things if you stick with it.

Trivia -- Max/MSP audio software is named after Music-N creator Max Mathews, and Miller S. Puckette, the author of Max/MSP[2] (and the logical free successor, Pure Data (Pd)[3].

Congratulations, CSound.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUSIC-N

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Mathews

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_%28software%29

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_Data

edit: formatting, links

Utility of CSound on Android? I think it just means that Android is mainstream enough for it to be of use to someone out there .. I mean, I know of a few students who still have CSound assignments these days, so I imagine that it will be quite useful. I wonder if Pd is already onboard?

Both tools are very welcome, imho, on Android .. which has a real lack of great-quality audio apps - unlike iOS. The fact that Androids' Audio latency is terribly sub-par won't make a difference to us Csound users though, and I think thats a key point: In spite of Androids dull audio performance, CSound can still be used to do amazing, advanced synthesis on the platform ..

> Utility of CSound on Android?

Yes. My CSound experience is vi, and csound in X Windows. There's a tremendous amount of editing (I don't do much MIDI with it), and batch-oriented work (which you touch on wrt Androids latency).

So, the compute-power of an android device would be enough to render a score, but when I think of producing original work, or even editing some pre-existing work on an Android device, I think "pain" and "frustration".

> I wonder if Pd is already onboard?

Apparently [0][1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_Data

[1] https://puredata.info/downloads/pddroidparty

OK. Downloaded, playing with it[0]... at first blush it looks like it presents the sort of interface one might have made themselves w/ the fltk toolkit. So I've got 5 buttons, a trackpad (nice!!) and 4 sliders.

It's fun, but different from MY typical work flow which is: edit a score, run, and tweak the text of the params, so I have a sense of control and understanding, versus "just knob twiddling"[1]. This Android port might be fun, though, for experimenting with parameters of instruments, or just recreational noise making.

[0] Use "Drone IV", by Michael Gogins from the Examples.

[1] I'm not knocking knob-twiddling, I'm just saying it's not _my_ style.

Fun, but even like "desktop" CSound, it seems pretty easy to introduce artifacts when using it in realtime (I think CSound's greatest strength is batch-processing whereby you set-up the environment, and then let the CPU churn on it and emit a .wav, like a compiler producing a binary). I don't know if this is strictly CSound or Android audio (as @fit2rule was worried about), or combination. It's unfortunate, because CSound is awesome; hopefully anybody who's introduced to CSound via this is patient and tolerant enough to stick with it.

Not perfect, but still a great achievement. Congratulations again.

Thanks for reporting in on your experience - if I had an Android device handy I'd check it out .. maybe later in the week. Got any samples of your session online by chance - it might help to introduce newcomers to this fantastic tool.

Two problems: ① Android 5 only, and ② for some reason it doesn't seem to be on F-Droid: https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=csound&fdpag...

To bad Google play doesn't offer older version downloads.

As an Android developer, I am very glad that Google Play does not offer that. I can see where you are coming from though.

Download links available from https://csound.github.io/download.html

apk: http://sourceforge.net/projects/csound/files/csound6/Csound6...

I would like an f-droid version as well.

The CSound API for Android has been around for a while now. A few years ago I built an app called EtherSurface (my first and only Android app): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.zebproj.et...

Unfortunately seems it is incompatible with all my Android devices. I was hoping to try it out!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com