Csound vs. Supercollider vs. ChucK

JJarvis · Post by **JJarvis** » Tue Jun 17, 2008 6:24 am

I'm interested in getting into one of these text based languages but I don't really know which one would be best for my needs. Chuck seems to be a newer language that is simple enough to get going in. Csound seems to be the most mature program of the three. While supercollider is only about a decade old. I'm just interested in any thoughts or insights from experienced programmers on these three music synthesis languages. I am willing to invest my time into learning a difficult language and I am not at all turned off by the more involved route. I already have about a years worth of experience patching in max/msp and pd. I'm just interested in the sound design potentials that all three of these languages might offer. Thoughts?

frahnque · Post by **frahnque** » Tue Jun 17, 2008 6:29 am

If you want something that closely resembles a programming language from today, go for ChucK. CSound has it's roots in Lisp (which in many ways has features programmers only dream of in todays languages) but it also has it's roots from when computers were extremely old and while it has matured ever since it hasn't evolved in it's ways of interfacing with humans ever since (barring the use of GUI's).
SuperCollider is like you say only a decade old, I haven't tried it much other than getting it to crash some 5 times on different computers.

Go for ChucK!

JJarvis · Post by **JJarvis** » Tue Jun 17, 2008 6:35 am

Cool chuck seems pretty fresh i like the shred management feature. Could be an excellent live performance tool. One more question, how is midi in all three programs? I actually had a hard time interfacing my midi controller and sending midi with chuck.

frahnque · Post by **frahnque** » Tue Jun 17, 2008 9:00 am

JJarvis wrote:Cool chuck seems pretty fresh i like the shred management feature. Could be an excellent live performance tool. One more question, how is midi in all three programs? I actually had a hard time interfacing my midi controller and sending midi with chuck.

I know that you can use Csound to send insane amounts of MIDI, but I haven't looked too much into how. There's got to be some way of doing it in ChucK, with SuperCollider I am lost.

mikemc · Post by **mikemc** » Tue Jun 17, 2008 6:03 pm

JJarvis wrote:Cool chuck seems pretty fresh i like the shred management feature. Could be an excellent live performance tool. One more question, how is midi in all three programs? I actually had a hard time interfacing my midi controller and sending midi with chuck.

I have been able to send midi from chuck without a problem. Now, the controller I had attached was a hid device (the shred I had written was converting HID->MIDI) but sending it was no problem.

Michael Hatsis · Post by **Michael Hatsis** » Wed Jun 18, 2008 1:28 am

Heres a pretty interesting ChucK video i came across...

http://technorati.com/videos/youtube.co ... rpk461T6l4

bigbadotis · Post by **bigbadotis** » Wed Jun 18, 2008 1:46 am

SuperCollider is great. Well thought out syntax; completely object oriented, more unit generators than you could ever hope to wrap your head around. In my experience it is way more stable (not to mention much more efficient) than ChucK.

I don't think MIDI could be any easier than it is in SuperCollider.

Tone Deft · Post by **Tone Deft** » Wed Jun 18, 2008 2:17 am

mike@TrackTeam Audio wrote:Heres a pretty interesting ChucK video i came across...

http://technorati.com/videos/youtube.co ... rpk461T6l4

this is a phenomenal demo.

Thanks!

leonard · Post by **leonard** » Wed Jun 18, 2008 2:22 am

depends what platform you're on.
if you're on intel os x, csound isn't so great imo, theres more available for windows/linux csound than there is for os x intel. although theres more/greater variety of opcodes for csound than there are supercollider, although theres some great ones from some great programmers out there (joshua parmenter, dan stowell are my favs). although i want to get more into csound i think the sound design possibilities are greater there than supercollider in it's present state. although if you know how algorithms for dsp work then you can of course program your own things. midi is straight forward in sc3, theres great documentation. documentation for csound is equally great, even better with the csound book and canonical manual. of you know oo programming sc3 will be easier to get your head around, the server/client interface got me a bit to get used to (esp. what processes are server based (audio generation) and which are client based (midi, control, etc). i cant comment on chuck as i tried it first when it came out (when it didn't have arrays...), and i didn't think it was mature enough then for me to devote my time to learning another language. of course now it seems very popular esp. mong people of this board, and i'm sure it has far more possibilities now, and i see it has quite a good gui niterface. sc3 is great for real time programming/control, not sure about csound yet.

noisetonepause · Post by **noisetonepause** » Wed Jun 18, 2008 11:36 am

frahnque wrote:CSound has it's roots in Lisp

No it doesn't. There are several Lisp-based synthesis languages but CSound isn't one of them.

Calling CSound "mature" is being very kind to it. Grumpy, old and annoying are much better words for it... I used it for a while about a decade ago, when it was the only synth I could afford. I really wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

frahnque · Post by **frahnque** » Wed Jun 18, 2008 1:19 pm

noisetonepause wrote:
frahnque wrote:CSound has it's roots in Lisp
No it doesn't. There are several Lisp-based synthesis languages but CSound isn't one of them.

Calling CSound "mature" is being very kind to it. Grumpy, old and annoying are much better words for it... I used it for a while about a decade ago, when it was the only synth I could afford. I really wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

Right you are! I blame too much espresso, my brain is wired wrong

apalomba · Post by **apalomba** » Wed Jun 18, 2008 7:13 pm

Actually Csound has come a long way in the past 10 years. There are
all sorts of new user interfaces now that make using it much easier.
In fact, someone even created a Max wrapper external for csound.
You can now use csound within Max! Having the user interface capabilities
of Max overlaid on top of csound's powerful synthesis engine is unbeatable.

Nod · Post by **Nod** » Wed Jun 18, 2008 7:24 pm

For those interested the latest Pure Dyne ISO has just been released:

https://devel.goto10.org/puredyne/

"pure:dyne is an operating system developed to provide media artists with a complete set of tools for realtime audio and video processing. pure:dyne is a live distribution, you don't need to install anything. Simply boot your computer using the live CD and you're ready to start using software such as Pure Data, Supercollider, Icecast, Csound, Fluxus, Processing, and much much more.

You can boot pure:dyne from usb stick, CD or DVD. All you have to do to get started is download pure:dyne, put it on your preferred medium and boot your computer. Without installing anything you'll have the full system at your disposal, including all the software that comes with it. pure:dyne is optimised for use in realtime audio and video processing. Both the system and the software are tuned especially for low latency and high responsiveness."

chapelier fou · Post by **chapelier fou** » Wed Jun 18, 2008 10:22 pm

I am just curious:
I use plogue bidule a lot , and I know max, pd and reaktor. What is your purpose to use one of these 3 software. Basically, what could be done with this?

apalomba · Post by **apalomba** » Wed Jun 18, 2008 10:39 pm

- max does video, 3d graphics, and signal processing. I use it because it
allows me to build what ever I want.

- pd is a more primitive version of Max, the only benefit it has is that it is free.
I don't use it because I own Max.

- reaktor is tailored for creating audio instruments. It comes with a library
of signal processing macros and an extensive user library that saves
you a lot of time.