VoidLinkAudio — Link Audio for Max, Pure Data, TouchDesigner, VCV Rack, openFrameworks, and any DAW (open-source, free)

[julienb]

Hi everyone,

With Live 12.4 dropping on Tuesday and bringing Link Audio with it, I wanted to share VoidLinkAudio — an open-source project I've been building over the past few weeks that brings Link Audio into the creative tools many of us use alongside Live.

Quick recap for those who missed it: Link Audio is the audio extension to Ableton Link. While Link has synced tempo and beat across hundreds of apps since 2016, Link Audio adds the ability to stream actual audio between peers on the local network, beat-synced and sample-accurate.



Live 12.4 supports it natively. VoidLinkAudio brings the same to:

• Max / MSP — void.linkaudio.send~ and void.linkaudio.receive~ externals
• Pure Data — first public Pd vanilla implementation, to my knowledge
• TouchDesigner — LinkAudioSend and LinkAudioReceive CHOPs
• VCV Rack 2 — Send and Receive modules
• openFrameworks — addon for creative coders
• VST3 / AU plugins for any DAW (Reaper, Bitwig, Logic, Cubase, FL Studio... and Live itself)

So you can have your Live session driving the music, your Max patch doing sound design on another laptop, a TouchDesigner instance reacting visually on a third, and a VCV Rack patch on a friend's machine — all in tempo, all sharing audio, no virtual cables, no specialty hardware.

A few use cases

• Multi-machine live performance (your Live laptop + a guest performer's laptop on Wi-Fi)
• Hybrid setup where you keep Live for sequencing/mixing but use Max or VCV for synthesis/processing on the same LAN
• Replace BlackHole / Loopback / VB-Cable for inter-app routing on a single computer
• Network jam sessions where each player runs their own DAW

Coverage by Peter Kirn (CDM)

Peter Kirn published an article on CDM today covering the project — he frames it well and explains how it fits with Live 12.4:

https://cdm.link/void-link-audio/

Links

• Demo video showing all hosts in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSlQB007w_o
• Source code (GPL-2.0): https://github.com/gluon/Void-LinkAudio
• Connectors bundle on Gumroad (pay-what-you-want, free OK): https://structurevoid.gumroad.com/l/voi ... connectors
• VST3 / AU plugins on Gumroad (also PWYW): https://structurevoid.gumroad.com/l/voidlinkaudio-vst
• Project page: https://structure-void.com/tools/void-a ... link-audio

All Mac binaries are signed with my Apple Developer ID and Apple-notarized. Cross-platform Mac (Universal) + Windows.

Looking forward to seeing what you build with it. Bug reports / questions / ideas — very welcome.

Cheers,
Julien Bayle
Ableton Certified Trainer
Structure Void · https://structure-void.com

[yur2die4]

I have a particular use case in mind. Some cheap usb c mics take up my iPhone port. I have AUM and pd apps but I’m a novice with pd. The port being used by the mic makes it so I have no physical audio out unless I add more stuff.

Would like to receive mic input into AUM or Note and then send that to a second iPhone or iPad with AUM / pd. Unless there is a smoother approach.

The pd app should handle these nicely? I’ve never really added something into the pd app