Well, the folks behind this page have ported a whole lot of the some very cool formerly Windows-only code over to Mac.¹ Some of it’s AU, most VST. All of it is freeware/donation-ware, so like Rainbows pay what it’s worth to you. (Don’t ask me, I haven’t even heard it yet.) But there are some nice tools/toys in there, including some Smartelectronix collective plugs, daHornet which I remember to be a pretty fun machine (note to self:…), and some BigTick stuff that is quite quality.

So perhaps not the Motherload, but at least a motherload. Probably stale news to those who will most benefit from such things, but I thought it was pretty cool.

^{1At least, I think that’s their/his/her role, the page is pretty lo-tech and scant on info. Which can be my favorite sorts of pages. Seriously. I sometimes love web pages that look like the were built in a text editor.}

I don’t know, did this one sort of fly under the radar? I haven’t seen a lot of mention of it.

A name familiar to the budget conscious sound processor over here on Windows, Voxengo have released their first cross-platform plug Overtone GEQ. Not only do you get the benefits of Voxengo mastermind Aleksey Vaneev’s deep, deep knowledge of DSP, you get it for free.

But make no mistake, this is no bog standard bit of EQ code. No, this thing is deep. I won’t try to sum up the what and how, but it does impart a whole lot of audio voodoo to your tracks. It has/needs a lot of power and is not a per-channel EQ per-se, but throw it on a bus and listen to the magic. No, really, it’s a great sounding EQ. It’s not really meant to be surgical though I’m sure if you take your time or know what you’re doing you can use it thusly.

The GUI is a vast improvement over their old Windows-only plugs. It’s really well thought-out and clean for something so potentially complicated, and the on-screen hints are integrated nicely. I do wonder if this means he’s going to start porting his Windows plugs over; I imagine it is a promo for something yet-to-come. I use quite a few of his current plugins and I have every confidence that they are every bit the equal of plugins that cost twice to coin.

Really I should have posted this earlier. It’s not like it’s new information. Nevertheless it surprised the hell out of me when it happened.

I’m a newcomer to the good ship energyXT, so I had no working or emotional attachment to the earlier versions. From what I understand it was the business for cool MIDI tricks and all kinds of weird modular routings. The kind of audio/MIDI Fu I’m only just beginning to tap into. The release of version 2, which included a Linux version, was not without controversy. Some features were dropped, more emphasis was placed on the sequencer, and Windows die-hards thought the Linux version was a waste of development time. Then the updates stopped for something like - gasp! - two or three months (normally they’re quite regular) and a lot of glaring bugs hampered the program. Suddenly: an update that includes an OSX version. Cue much grumbling and bitching about the still-unresolved bugs, missing features, yadda, yadda.

Personally, I’m impressed. I can completely understand why a coder would want to go back and build out his code to be more future proof, to be more portable. If that meant sacrificing some of your platform-specific code, so be it. I think it’s (as they say around these parts) wicked cool that were I suddenly to switch my OS I could still use a program with which I am familiar. An academic point to be sure. But if the program survives (who knows these days) and continues to become more stable and feature-rich there’s more potential for a good community of resources.

Yeah, there are still some head-scratchers and some weird glitches, but incrementally it is coming along nicely, and with just a minimal amount of creative thinking and a handful of well-chosen plugs, you can get it to do some amazing things.

Considering I’m a Windows user, and (primarily) a Sonar user, I find these days I’m more interested in software that is available to all platforms, or at least both Mac and Windows.

I’m not going bother with the whole reasoning behind my platform choice (yawn) other than to say at this point it is mostly inertia. Well that and a financial (hardware and software) consideration. While I have never used a Mac for audio “production”, I’ve logged many, many hours on Macs, mostly with my web work. And really there’s things I like and hate about either platform; six of one. And as the differences between the architecture become more negligible it seems ever more futile to compare them.

I respect developers that can support either OS. To me, it speaks to a certain purity of code. Of course, I know not much at all about software coding, and even less about DSP coding. But for some reason I trust a developer who is not dependent on one or the other platform to do their magic. Certainly, I enjoy the benefits of getting a lot of pretty fun software toys that a Mac user has to jump through some hoops to employ; but most of the time these days, Windows-only signals to me that what I’m getting probably isn’t that spectacular or offering me something that I don’t already have. Whereas, something that is coded for either OS pretty much signals that the developer(s) know their shit, and their DSP is independent of the OS libraries. (Does that make sense?)

So in this vein I’m going to be posting about a few new developments, and some old favorites, that further bridge the divide between one brand of geeks and another

Okay, I’ll indulge in a little NAMM-related chatter, albeit of a particularly geeky nature. I speak of Steinberg’s announcement of the VST3 spec for plugin developers. Hey, upgrade, you think. And just look at all those cool new features.

Well, read this thread. Seems a lot of developers are less than thrilled about having to completely redevelop their software for something that doesn’t bring them any real advantage. In fact, I think it’s safe to say, that Steinberg’s behavior towards independent developers over time has been shoddy if not outright hostile.

The question remains, will anyone outside of Steinberg sign up. Chris Randall thinks that Ableton is major factor in whether it gets accepted, and that makes sense to me, as they are the other cross-platform host with any significant user-base/market-share. If they do, it will be interesting to see who could withstand the storm. Though I do wonder if Ableton has any vested interest in switching over. And Cakewalk by Roland? Who knows now, ’cause let’s be honest, it would seem wither goes Roland so goes Cakewalk. But I can’t imagine their coders are thrilled about having to accommodate a completely different layer of abstraction between the host and the plugins.

I’ll take it from observation and the knowledge of people who, you know, actually code (when they’re able to dumb it down enough for me grasp) that this is potentially a huge pain in the ass to everyone but Steinberg and, more or less, their users. And that can’t be a good thing. Especially for us who are more interested in the fringe of software. From my POV it does seem Stein-aha is preparing to lock up the standard in their favor. But, really, I don’t know shit. However, how many more VST2.4 Steinberg commercial plugins do you think we’ll see?

Honestly, I wasn’t even aware of the VST3 spec until it was announced, other than some vague rumblings around the interwebs. (Are we saying that seriously or ironically these days? It’s hard to tell.) And I’m huge geeky trainspotter. But I’ve long since advocated the advantage of getting DSP & instrument plugins out from under the shadow of one company, no matter how you find their business practices. An open standard that had *wide host support* could mean better code and less time spend downloading updates and figuring out why X combination of host/plug cause things to crash. A fresh API written to be as agnostic as necessary would give developers a realistic target to hit.

But *wide host support* is no small hurdle. I suppose Randall’s vow to dance naked on the ‘Tube is his way of saying “never.” The optimist in me likes to see shit like this happen. The realist knows that everyone wants to be the one to establish the standard, to be “right” - to hold the keys that everyone else has to “borrow.” The populist in me wants to see an sandbox where everyone gets to play and we reap the rewards. Again, the realist knows everyone wants to be, well, king of the sandbox.

It seems to me that for the idea to get any traction, someone/group need to get pretty motivated and act pretty selflessly. And, quite possibly, need a charismatic leader. In theory, couldn’t someone or a small group of coders whip together a really rough API that roughly conforms to VST2.4 and release it under an appropriate license? Then everyone else can have at it? Get one or two adventurous hosts (eXT, whatever that new tracker that was just upgraded for multiple platforms) to include the API. Can an AU/VST wrapper be released as open source? Because that might be pretty necessary for the short term: a good AU and VST2.4 wrapper that would be open to developers to use directly. So, on top of that, developers need to be sold on that API which means a good SDK sooner rather than later - and an SDK that can easily port over to existing standards, right?

Anyway, blah, blah. Point being, yeah, that’s a hell of a lot of ifs, ands, and buts. The realist in me says, it’s a cool idea but it’s never going to happen. The populist still likes to dream.

Could VST3 be the final straw in a long line of relative indignities inflicted upon developers over the years? If the reaction and apparent outcome of that thread are an indication, then quite possibly. But a lot of stars have to line up or someone is going to come up with a really fresh idea.

The web-master over at Roland US has seemingly slipped up and posted a headline on their main page that declares, “2008/1/17 - Roland has reached an agreement to buy a major share of Cakewalk.” The actual link is dead, so all we have now is baseless speculation. But where would the internet be without baseless speculation?

If were to go by this one headline, Roland has not outright bought Cakewalk, nor are they the “majority shareholder” - and Cakewalk has been partnering with Roland for a few years now, so it’s not entirely out of left field. But it does suggest that there could be big changes afoot for the Cakewalk product line.

There’s a lot to suggest that it has more to do with this - a pretty cagey move on Roland’s behalf in making a play for the big corporate dollars if it does what it promises - than with any major shift in the Cakewalk development.

Honestly, I was half-expecting Microsoft to buy out Cakewalk. You know, to have their very own Emagic to play with. That it turns out the big money is coming from a company that, you know, is actually in the music gear market, that isn’t Gibson or Digidesign, may not be a Bad Thing.

But, really, even if this turns out to be a Major Paradigm Shift of the level Apple/Logic, Mackie/Tracktion, Stein/Yamaha, I’m not really sweating bullets. I’m pretty happy with the current state of Sonar, the current state of my music rig, and the after tiding up a few loose ends (Kontakt 3, BFD 2) I’m getting out of the major software upgrade market. And the next time I go to do a major system upgrade, I suspect the whole playing field will be a different and my method of working will be as well.

I just want to see one last upgrade of Project5 to sweep up the bugs there; the cynic in me does suspect we may be seeing the demise of that product. Which is sad, because I haven’t found anything that lives up to the brilliance of the Project5 Groove Matrix.

Edit: It should also be noted that the New Product Cakewalk had scheduled for unveiling at NAMM 2008 has been put on hold? Hmmm…

Edit II: Here’s the reassuring official letter from Greg Hendershot and a press-release on Harmony-Centeral.

Damn, and the baseless speculation is so much more fun.

While I spin my wheels in other areas, here are few new sites that will help distract you at work, while dreaming of noddling in your home studio with an unlimited budget.

Muff Wiggler’s Blog

Intellegent Machinery

Innovative Synths

In the meantime, I’m going to be easing myself back into this.

Surprising absolutely no one, but pleasing nonetheless, Cakewalk have polished their shoes for NAMM and released a new patch for Sonar. A great set of fixes and some nice additions to the step-sequencer.

What’s especially interesting is you may probably will be able to use one of these.

You know, provided Euphonix write some solid Windows drivers and keep up with production. But it does seem poised to make Mackie Control users feel very inadequate.

Digital Lofi commenter Logickal has released a new album, Twelve Offerings, which is available direct or through various digital music retailers. Moreover, he is donating all the proceeds to the U.S. Campaign for Burma.

I won’t redundantly try to do justice to the amazing music he produces by describing it; he’s a pretty eloquent dude himself who has been making electronic music since most of us were still trying to figure out how to find a decent drummer. Nor will I attempt to plead the case of his cause; if you are even remotely aware of the world’s social health you know it is righteous. So, let’s all earn all kinds of brownie points and support a few good causes.

I’ve vowed my next payday to buy the CD. I would hope that others might be able to do the same.