Hacker News Reader

Comment by daguava | Hacker News Reader

I'm going to ask the dumb question here - how is this at the top with zero discussion? If I need to get dunked for asking that's fine, but I don't understand, since HackerNews is suppose to be a place for high quality discussion on tech.

View on HN

It often takes a while for comments to start showing up. That can be a good sign, actually—interesting reactions often take a while, since processing information takes time. Quick reflexive responses are often a bit mechanical/predictable.

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.

VCV Rack is already open source. What would be the benefit of duplicating the 2000+ modules already present in Rack with PureData?

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).

Just FYI: you can do that too with a VST fork of VCVRack called Cardinal: https://github.com/DISTRHO/Cardinal

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.

+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?

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

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.

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".

You can get close to this VCVRack idea by combining automatonism with PlugData

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

This is cool if you are interested in digital synthesis. Pure data and max/ msp have a long and complicated history. Very nice to see that pure data is still keeping up vs the ableton live / max programs.

PD is pretty popular and also has the distinction of being first-of-its-kind in many respects, so a major UX overhaul would automatically attract approval. Also the front page on HN is a lot less 'competitive' on the weekends.

Good q! I’m an audio dev who thought the general community might appreciate the project. It’s a cool effort (my primary beef with pd was always the UI)

Hacker News has moderators who can place things at the top of the page regardless of votes. Personally I think they've been do a great job, but YMMV.

I just assumed astroturfing

Reply on news.ycombinator.com