Comments on: Front Row for Music: plasq Rax 2, Mac Music Host, Takes You Onstage

By: Create Digital Music » plasq Rax 2 Reviewed in Macworld: Mac Tool for Onstage, Offstage Music Plug-ins and Visuals

Mon, 18 Sep 2006 02:46:16 +0000

[...] Previously: Front Row for Music: plasq Rax 2, Mac Music Host, Takes You Onstage [...]

By: Create Digital Music » Create Musical Visuals with Rax and Quartz Composer on Mac: Free Software Download

Fri, 16 Jun 2006 16:52:31 +0000

[...] That’s where plasq’s Rax 2.0 comes in. As we saw earlier this week, Rax lets you build set lists for performance, with different software instruments and effects loaded for each song. Here’s the cool bit: Rax also lets you load Quartz Composer visuals. Since you can load different visuals for each song, you can use Rax to easily switch between QC compositions. (In fact, if visuals are what you really care about, Rax could even be thought of as a MIDI and audio-savvy VJ hosting application.) [...]

By: Peter Kirn

Peter Kirn — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 13:02:30 +0000

Right, these do scene recall, but they don’t take quite the same approach to remote control for triggering those sets with full-screen visual feedback. It’s different. It’s rare that anything is *entirely* new, but this is a different take.

We do need to work up a master chart of our favorite hosts on all platforms, though. :)

By: Adrian Anders

Adrian Anders — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 04:55:31 +0000

Oh the link!

http://www.sonicbytes.com/phrazor/phrazor.htm

By: Adrian Anders

Adrian Anders — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 04:54:53 +0000

Oh, and I totally forgot about Phrazor, which is a little bit different than Rax or forte, but does similar things like instrument/effects racking, scene/snapshot recall, etc. In addition, it’s a sequencer in a style similar to FLStudio, and it can be hosted as a VST/VSTi plug in, making it extremely easy to take your live set into the studio!

It’s free during beta, and only 29 euros after that! (PC only). There’s no reason why PC users shouldn’t go out and grab it right now!

ATA

By: Adrian Anders

Adrian Anders — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 04:48:38 +0000

Wrong there Peter, there is one that does rack performance at least as well as Rax:

Brainspawn Forte
http://www.brainspawn.com/products/forte/

Doesn’t do visuals however, plus it is more expensive than Rax. That’s why I had to give it up to plasq, they did it cheaper than the PC rival which is a rarity for sure…

ATA

By: Peter Kirn

Peter Kirn — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 03:12:43 +0000

Unfortunately, while back in the day Emagic shipped some of Logic’s instruments as plug-ins, they are now bundled directly into the application. (I mean literally bundled — they’re part of the application package itself, encoded into the app.) They don’t function in any way as plug-ins. That’s not to say Apple couldn’t make them plug-ins again if they wanted, at least in theory . . . they just don’t want to. But there are still reasons you might want to use Rax with Logic, for non-Logic plug-ins, and for visuals.

There are plenty of Windows hosts for plug-ins, but none that deal with the performance scenario quite like Rax does, and none that make it these easy to add 3D visuals.

By: Mies van der Robot

Mies van der Robot — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 23:28:19 +0000

Hats off to Plasq for having the same performer-focused vision that made Ableton such a success. I’m really chuffed about this release. They’ve come a long way since the early beta days.

The only way I could be happier is if this thing could host Logic’s native plugs.

A boy can dream…

By: joe

joe — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 23:24:11 +0000

sounds nice… is there anything similar for windows?

By: Adrian Anders

Adrian Anders — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 19:42:48 +0000

Not bad, that’s a pretty good deal for $50. QC integration is a really nice touch. Damn, I gotta say this is going up there with MetaSynth as a Mac program I would like to get my paws on sometime. I gotta give credit where it’s due, bravo plasq, any chance of you coding something new for Windows?

ATA