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Freeware alternative for SynthEdit?
Posted: Sun May 05, 2019 8:25 pm
by LinMusGuy
Does anybody know a simple freeware alternative for SynthEdit that can used on a Linux Mint computer?
I tried FAUST but that was no success. Much too complicated for me, and the plugins didn't work on LMMS.
Re: Freeware alternative for SynthEdit?
Posted: Mon May 06, 2019 4:41 am
by rghvdberg
That's something really lacking in FOSS
Re: Freeware alternative for SynthEdit?
Posted: Mon May 06, 2019 11:32 am
by LinMusGuy
Could one use this to make plugins?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_Data
Anyone experience with that program?
Re: Freeware alternative for SynthEdit?
Posted: Mon May 06, 2019 3:18 pm
by Linuxmusician01
Ha ha. That's a big coincidence! Spent the whole day yesterday to install and to try and use it on Linux and/or my Raspberry Pi.
Puredata (Pd) for Linux is a mess. There have been made some wonderful patches for it in the past by very talented people. However, at some point in time a fork of Pd was made: Pd-Extended. Most of the best patches are for this version. Development and support for it stopped in 2013 and it does not compile anymore on my Linux PC. There are some old packages for Pd-extended and my Linux Mint version is so old that the Ubuntu 14 package still works. And indeed, the
Minimoog clone works perfectly and sounds really, really great in Pd-extended (doesn't work properly in a current version of Pd)!
Now-a-days the official version of Pd (without all the extensions) is called Pd Vanilla. You can download and install the good old extensions via a menu, but that still doesn't get the old patches to work properly.
Then somebody made a fork of Pd-extended: Pd-L2Ork. That project's dead too and somebody else made a fork of Pd-L2Ork: Purrdata. Well, the good old Minimoog patch for Pd-extended doesn't work in Purrdata.
So if you're going to make a synth (i.e. a "patch") in Pd you'd better watch out in which Pd flavor and "extra's" you make your work: it's bound to not work anymore in the future. Backwards compatibility is awful.
Currently I'm exploring SunVox or the Pi.
P.S. Apparently the Windows ver. of Pd-extended still work in Windows. Unfortunately I couldn't get it to run in Wine. Pd is a big, big mess.
Re: Freeware alternative for SynthEdit?
Posted: Mon May 06, 2019 3:31 pm
by LinMusGuy
Thank you - that saves me a lot of trouble. I have spend several hours figuring out how to install it, without succeeding. I better not install it at all!
Re: Freeware alternative for SynthEdit?
Posted: Mon May 06, 2019 4:15 pm
by Linuxmusician01
LinMusGuy wrote:Thank you - that saves me a lot of trouble. I have spend several hours figuring out how to install it, without succeeding. I better not install it at all!
Eh,
That would have installed Pd Vanilla. The other flavors: long story.
Re: Freeware alternative for SynthEdit?
Posted: Mon May 06, 2019 5:32 pm
by sysrqer
Linuxmusician01 wrote:snip
Have you tried Purr Data? I think I prefer this over any others but you are right, it is a mess on linux. Reminds of how jack has turned out.
Re: Freeware alternative for SynthEdit?
Posted: Mon May 06, 2019 6:53 pm
by LinMusGuy
Linuxmusician01 wrote:LinMusGuy wrote:Thank you - that saves me a lot of trouble. I have spend several hours figuring out how to install it, without succeeding. I better not install it at all!
Eh,
That would have installed Pd Vanilla. The other flavors: long story.
Thanks, I have installed it now. It seems to be working.
I think I am gone play with it somewhat to see what it can do. At least I will learn about audio processing in this way.
Re: Freeware alternative for SynthEdit?
Posted: Mon May 06, 2019 8:52 pm
by AlbertoZ
sysrqer wrote:Linuxmusician01 wrote:snip
Have you tried Purr Data? I think I prefer this over any others but you are right, it is a mess on linux..
Why do you say that it is a mess? I installed purr-data (Pd-l2ork-2.9.0 20190416-rev.2b3f27c) and it is working quite fine and stable for me.
I really like it much more of the vanilla version, still linked to the old TCL-TK. while purr-data is build over node.js for the graphical part,
with better support of zooming, images etc. All my old patches (see my site in the signature) work out of the box in purr-data.
Concerning plugins... well not directly. There is a project called Camomile (by P. Guillot) which allows you to transform pd patches in VST plugins
but.. that's for the "braves".
Alberto
Re: Freeware alternative for SynthEdit?
Posted: Mon May 06, 2019 9:14 pm
by LinMusGuy
Re: Freeware alternative for SynthEdit?
Posted: Mon May 06, 2019 9:27 pm
by sysrqer
AlbertoZ wrote:sysrqer wrote:Linuxmusician01 wrote:snip
Have you tried Purr Data? I think I prefer this over any others but you are right, it is a mess on linux..
Why do you say that it is a mess?
Pure data on linux is a mess. The whole business with -extended and -vanilla is crazy, especially when there is also purr data adding to the mix and in some ways pushing development forward.
Re: Freeware alternative for SynthEdit?
Posted: Tue May 07, 2019 11:46 am
by Linuxmusician01
sysrqer wrote:AlbertoZ wrote:sysrqer wrote:
Have you tried Purr Data? I think I prefer this over any others but you are right, it is a mess on linux..
Why do you say that it is a mess?
Pure data on linux is a mess. The whole business with -extended and -vanilla is crazy, especially when there is also purr data adding to the mix and in some ways pushing development forward.
Agreed. @AlbertoZ: This means that you do not know if the patches that you made, that have cost you blood sweat and tears, will still work in a year or two time. At the time people loved Pd-exetended, just like you love Purrdata. Well, the patches that they made in Pd-extended do not work anymore. And Pd-extended cannot be installed anymore. Do you want to go that way w/ Purrdata? If you want to learn something about visual (object oriented?) programming then that's okay. But if you, like me, want to enjoy the fruits of your work then PureData and its flavors are a no go unfortunately.
This is absolutely not a personal attack on you. I reaspect you very much. I just want to warn you and other people before they spend too much time on Pd. Peace and have lots of fun and success w/ Pd. I really mean that.
Re: Freeware alternative for SynthEdit?
Posted: Tue May 07, 2019 11:46 am
by Linuxmusician01
That's PureData for an iPhone.
Re: Freeware alternative for SynthEdit?
Posted: Tue May 07, 2019 12:06 pm
by tavasti
Thanks for clearing out stuff about pd. I have sometimes considered if I should take a look into it. Maybe there is better ways to use my time
Re: Freeware alternative for SynthEdit?
Posted: Tue May 07, 2019 12:28 pm
by raboof
Linuxmusician01 wrote:This means that you do not know if the patches that you made, that have cost you blood sweat and tears, will still work in a year or two time. At the time people loved Pd-extended, just like you love Purrdata. Well, the patches that they made in Pd-extended do not work anymore.
Did you create any serious patches in Pd-extended yourself? While I agree it is disappointing that patches created for pd-extended are now no longer usable, I wonder how hard it would be for a pd patch author to 'port' it to other variants. This of course doesn't help you as a 'user' much, but let's be careful about extending that claim to patch authors.
Linuxmusician01 wrote:But if you, like me, want to enjoy the fruits of your work then PureData and its flavors are a no go unfortunately.
This seems kind of dramatic to me: I bet patches for the 'basic' Pure Data from the 1990s can still be imported, today, in 2019, 23 years later, into Pd-Vanilla. That's not too bad as such 'dynamic' works go.