It’s simply stunning some of the terrific instrument and effect plug-ins available that are now free and open source – yes, free as in freedom, not just freeware. I had commented in the past something along the lines of, “boy, wouldn’t it be great if this now meant, say, a Linux port?” and then went on the business of my daily life, which tends not to include re-compiling plug-ins. But now, the folks of JUCETICE have been busy doing just that, serving up delicious instrument and effect goodness, running native on Linux.

Translation: fire up that netbook and make some music.

Following up on our tutorial on Ardour and netbook-optimized music competition with Renoise and Indamixx, here’s what you need to get rolling.

With Linux growing in popularity on netbooks – and an option like the pre-configured Indamixx solution saving you the work of optimizing and configuring it – it’s suddenly no longer a stretch to imagine yourself a Linux music user. Of course, what you don’t want is to wind up without the arsenal of plug-ins to which we’ve all become accustomed. There are various ways of hosting Windows VSTs under Linux as though they were native plug-ins; check out dssi-vst (which also enables 32-bit VSTs from Windows under 64-bit Linux hosts), in conjunction with WINE. That should probably be the subject of a separate tutorial. (Ardour 3 also promises Windows VST support.)

But here, let’s have a look at native Linux plug-ins. JUCETICE has some beautiful creations of their own – an elegant, 32-voice polyphonic drum synthesizer and a TB-303 clone – plus some familiar favorites ported from Windows, like the ingenious DiscoDSP sampler created by the late, great Arguru.

Here, we’ll use the native Linux version of a commercial host, energyXT. energyXT is proprietary, but it costs just EUR59, has a free demo to check out before you purchase, and – if you do like it – is really different than any of its competitors.

Patrick Shirkey of 64studio, the music-centric Linux distro, walks us through the steps necessary to get the JUCETICE plug-ins going under energyXT on Linux – all native, no WINE or Windows anywhere.

I’ll be doing this myself on my Indamixx test unit, and will let you know how that goes.

Developer note: yes, you should definitely check out the JUCE framework, which makes developing cross-platform C++ easy, efficient, and modern, and is free for open-source projects.

Patrick explains:

1. Download the jucetice linuxvst plugin : http://www.anticore.org/jucetice/?page_id=7

2. Make a folder called “plugins” in the home directory

3. Save or move the plugins to that folder and extract the plugins.

4. Open energyXT and add the “plugins” folder to the “Plugins” folder list. Choose File > Setup:

Select the “Browser” tab and set it to the “Plugins” section.

Now select the “plugins” folder and add it to the list of known folders.

[Here’s what it looks like in the path structure.]

5. To add the plugin to a project double click on the “Plugins” section on the left panel of the main window to show all the plugins and right click on the plugin you want to use. Click “Add as Send” from the popup menu.

6. Finally, open the “Window” menu and choose the plugin from the list to display the user interface and adjust the settings.

Ed.: Definitely let us know if this is helpful to you; we’ll have some more comprehensive, big-picture tutorials on this stuff soon – but in the meantime, I’m definitely checking out these instruments!

Very often, computers and music gear greedily consume whole corners of the room. Here’s a tidy alternative, modest in space consumption as well as in cost.

So, what’s so wonderful about DIY creations by our friend Sasa Djuric (aka fibra)? It isn’t just that his stands are recycled from monitor stand parts. It’s not just because the free ReBirth for Windows and an Asus netbook make for a wonderfully affordable computer music station. It’s not even that his cases for the x0xb0x 303 clone and a MIDIbox project are beautifully executed, or that magnets on the stands more effectively support those gadgets and place them in an ergonomic position.

What’s wonderful to me is that these designs relate the scale of those music-making objects to human hands. You just want to put your fingers on these devices and make some music.

From the Flickr set, Sasa explains:

This universal stand was part of the monitor once. I attached a piece of thick still and and 2 neodymium magnets recycled from hard drive.

[on the now-free-as-in-beer software running on the Asus netbook] …yes, in the name of good old times. ReBirth was my very first step in music making. I couldn`t even imagine I`ll build myself clones of all those machines. :)

He tells CDM:

I used 2 stands that are leftovers from monitors that are installed into an info kiosk. One is bigger than other which is allows me to cascade few machines. This was a really quick project as I used what I had laying around. Thick piece of steel is wood joint. Magnets are from a hard drive; the
tin plates glued on the eee and other machines are cutout from CDROM drive case, rubber comes from a blood pressure meter…
pretty much everything is recycled. :)
Besides the x0xb0x and eee you recognized, you can also see a ClockBox – MIDI clock generator (midibox project).

Really beautiful work – economic use of materials, clever design, and it could let you put a drum machine in your kitchen so you can cook music and food for a brilliant evening.

More on the elements of this project:
The x0xb0x is a fully open-source 303 bassline clone
The clockbox is a project based on the Midibox platform (see site, blog)
The Liliputing blog has great netbook coverage
ReBirth lives on as freeware at the ReBirth Museum. This is Windows, but if you don’t want to swap Windows onto your netbook, you can run it in WINE on Linux. (have to try that myself!)
Flickr set

All photos by Sasa Djuric, used by permission.

The NAMM show brought a cluster of new soft synths from some beloved synth makers. The interfaces are noticeably conventional, but there are some tasty sonic features in store. Most of these are promised as “coming soon,” not available now, but here’s a quick look at what to expect.

By the way, if you’re one the people complaining that you’re sick of everyone talking about Ableton and want something else to be excited about, I have one word for you:

D.CAM.

Let me sum it up in one line first:

minimoog V 2.0: Rewired circuitry, automation recording vocal filtering, and weird 3D preset browsing mean if you like minimoog, you’ll like it more.

Brass 2.0: physically-modeled brass stuff you can play more easily with controllers, now with a sax model and fully spatialized and harmonized.

Trilian: Even more of the synth that gives you more bass than you need – and now your Intel Mac can run it in place of Trilogy, for free.

Largo: It’s a Waldorf synthesizer, but it’s software. You can’t afford a Blofeld, but you can afford this, and then use it in a coffee shop.

D.CAM: Synth wishes granted: thick parallel-waveform performance synth plus vintage-style string synth plus big, modern FM plus and environment to put them all together.

(added!) impOSCar 2: Features aren’t confirmed yet, but an early look at the OSCar emulation suggest a very big sequel indeed.

And you can add that to the coming Operator 2 and Collision in Ableton Live (either a la carte or the suite). In fairness, these are exactly the sort of synths that make people wonder why they should pay for Operator – but one look at the clean interface in Operator, and how much it can do in that compact interface, and I think it fits in just perfectly. Collision, meanwhile, gives us physically-modeled percussion, which I really want to see more of.

By the way, in comparison most of the hardware announcements (microKORG XL, new V-Synth OS) at this show were, to my mind, more incremental than the goodness that shows up in the software stuff. True, D.CAM is the one new entry here, but, well, technically it’s four entries on its own, and there’s quite a lot in the upgrades, some of which you get for free.

Certainly, what we have is a ton of sequels to some of the biggest soft synth hits (Arturia minimoog V, Trilogy, and impOSCar in particular).

Arturia minimoog V 2.0

It’s an odd version number – five two? Okay, that’s “two” as in the number, “V” as in virtual, not the Roman Numeral. But for fans of Arturia’s flagship Moog emulation synth, 2.0 brings some interesting new features. Sound MAP is an odd, graphical way of exploring presets, although it strikes me a bit like what would happen if you took a preset browser and dumped all the presets on the floor. (For me, this brings back flashbacks to Apple’s HotSauce, an experimental 3D interface for metadata on the Web. Thanks, Mattbot. Everyone else, don’t ask.)

All of this would be gimmicky and useless, except that you can use this strange, 3D interface to morph between preset ideas. If you could also use it to select interpolate between random parameters, I’d go nuts – I’ll leave that to someone else to implement.

The other features are more likely to please everyone:

• A vocal filter feature with an X/Y morphing interface with different formants (not new to synths, but certainly new to Minimoogs, real or emulated)
• Circuitry and modulation destination improvements
• Automation with real-time recording

Together, it looks like a worthy upgrade for fans, some of whom I know just live inside this synth.

Arturia minimoog V 2.0 [Product Page]

Elsewhere: The folks at Future Music were especially excited about the new features, particularly that browser and the way the Vocal Filter sounds. (I didn’t follow, though, was the uberfeature the Sound Map or the Vocal Filter? We really have seen these sorts of things before, which is not to take away from Arturia’s cool implementation here.)

And it’ll cost $299/EUR229 to upgrade from the current – wait? What’s that?

No, it’ll be completely free for existing users. Now there’s a reason for some customer loyalty.

Arturia Brass 2.0

Arturia also refreshed their physically-modeled brass synth, which now has a saxophone model – the tenor Buffet-Crampon. (Nice choice! And I’m partial to tenors, as I grew up with my father playing tenor in his college pep band.)

Also new: harmonization features, spatialization, MIDI integration features (ideal for, say, the newly-shipping Akai EWI USB wind controller). There are also pre-composed riffs by genre, if you’re feeling lazy, though I heartily recommend doing things the hard way.

The minimoog is slick, but I actually think Brass may be a bigger upgrade – and while you’ll find other moog-y sounds, Brass is a really unique sound source. IRCAM, Paris’ legendary sound research center, is responsible for the sounds inside, meaning you can imagine slightly unshaven, French students in white lab coats every time you use it, which has to be worth something. (I actually wear a lab coat when I’m designing sounds, I know that.)

Brass 2.0

Elsewhere: Sonic State grabbed a video demo of Brass 2.

And it’s also free to upgrade.

Spectrasonics’ All-Bass Trilian

How is it that some readers are more excited about Trilian than any other soft synths when all it does is bass sounds?

Well, perhaps because this is successor to Spectrasonics’ Trilogy is the uber-bass plug-in. Upright ? Check. 5-string? Yep. Roland 303? Why not?

Now, normally instruments based on lots of sampling leave me pretty cold, but the STEAM engine – used in Spectrasonics’ Omnisphere – gives you synth-like controls. And I think Trilian’s narrower focus on just basses might earn it more attention than Omnisphere got. (The latter was hyped like crazy on announcement, only to be oddly forgotten, relatively speaking, by the time it came out – maybe because it’s so huge, none of us can fit it on our hard drives.)

And by the way, talk about earning good will: if you own Trilogy and have an Intel Mac, Spectrasonics will give you Trilian for free (shipping only, in place of the usual US$99 upgrade price). So, sure, Apple burned you by switching CPUs, and Spectrasonics could profit – but they’re not.

This means even as I chide Novation, Spectrasonics earns the “Good Sense Wins Over Accounting” award.

Other specs:

• Big, new library of acoustic, electric, and synth basses
• Arpeggiator
• All the original patches, refreshed
• Gobs of articulations in the design, for live performance or scoring
• Modulation with FM, timbre shifting, and some unique modulation deliciousness
• 64-bit support
• A name that subtly references the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Too many other things to list, so just check out:

Trilian Announcement

Spectrasonics does some really incredible stuff. It’s mind-boggling overkill in some ways (ridiculous sampling plus ridiculous synth design), but there’s nothing wrong with that – especially when it serves nothing but bass. And there’s just so much control in there, it really is a sound design dream, not just a big pack of sample files.

US$299, due in May.

Waldorf Largo

It’s a Waldorf synthesizer, but it’s software.

I don’t really have to say much else, but suffice to say, it runs on Windows, it runs on Mac (VST and AU), and it’s all that lovely Waldorf-ness in a virtual rack. The software interface gives me deja vu relative to a number of Logic synths, among others, but then I think there’s just one guy who designs all UIs for all software. (Okay, maybe there are … two guys.)

• Voice architecture from the Q / Blofeld
• Three oscillators, two with sub-oscillators, modeling analog waveforms plus PPG, Waldorf Wave
• Ring mod
• Multi-mode Waldorf filter (“Taste the difference” seems to be Waldorf’s message, if you believe them)
• Modulation matrix, fast, syncable LFOs
• One arpeggiator per layer
• Effects

If you’re in synth overload, I’d say move along, but I know there are some folks who have been coveting Waldorf in software, and now you’ve got it.

Largo [Product Page]

I just wish they hadn’t given it a name that makes it sound like a notation product, but I guess that’s forgiveable. Pricing? Availability? No word yet.

Fxpansion D.CAM Synth Squad

D.CAM is a bunch of modeled-analog goodness. Now, the FXpansion boys want you to believe this is all about emulating the goodness of analog, but to me the real story is that you get loads of digital synthesis power that bring together some of the best old stuff with the best new stuff. The products read a bit like a wish list for synths, and then the Fusor product lets you put them all together in semi-modular fashion.

The marketing is a little muddled, and seems to feature evil dystopian overlords with giant red eyes. But who cares? The synths look fantastic. I, for one, welcome our new dystopian overlords.

Strobe is a “super-oscillator” performance synth with parallel waveforms, sub-oscillators, a filter with drive, voice stack/detune – think thick.

Amber is a vintage string synth, which takes classic divide-down string synths and adds new absurd modulation. Delicious!

Cypher has lots of knobs and lots of arrows! Okay, basically the idea here is audio-rate FM with lots of shaping and filtering and still more modulation. FM is back, for sure.

Fusor is an environment in which you can layer your D-CAM synths and modulate them. There’s an arpeggiator and step sequencer. This might seem like overkill given the number of environments out there that do this stuff, but in this case you get a consistent interface and semi-modular capabilities. It’s no Reaktor, but it’s a bit like what I’d imagine a set of one really brilliant person’s Reaktor ensembles might look like.

http://www.synthsquad.com/

Elsewhere: Gearwire has a nice write-up that sums this up with one line: “This trio combines the most sought after features in classic synthesizers with the synthesizers of tomorrow . . . today!”

In other news…

Zebra is now up to 2.3, which I believe is also NAMM news (or announced at the same time). “Point 3” in the crazy, synthtastic world of Urs Heckmann means things like a skinnable UI, sideband modules, MIDI program changes, Mac RTAS, a resizable editor, compressor modes, comb filter, and … okay, I can’t actually list it all. The sideband alone sounds fantastic. Whoever out there has time to program Zebra and reskin it, I salute you.

Other soft synth news I’ve missed? Let us know.

And what has you most psyched?

impOSCar 2

I missed this important preview, as it wasn’t really an official release at NAMM – the features shown aren’t even fully confirmed. But one of the best vintage emulations out there, impOSCar 2, is up for getting some improvements. Interestingly, some of the directions GForce’s Dave Spiers is taking (like more modulation routing, ring modulation, and more particular synth controls) parallels some of the other stuff we’re seeing added to modern soft synths. I do like the sound of chord mode, polyphonic aftertouch, and portamento spread – this could be a very playable synth.

My usual caveat on this sort of thing is, I tend to personally shy away from synths that focus primarily on emulation of a previous model, just because that sort of thing doesn’t hold as much appeal for me. But GForce – not unlike Way Out Ware’s emulations, also distributed by M-Audio – certainly manage to be the better in this category.

If you are interested in impOSCar 2, this is the one case in which the folks on the NAMM floor have the definite advantage. Check out SonicState’s video below, and further details from the gang at Computer Music (via MusicRadar):

Computer Music: GForce impOSCar 2! See it, hear it, pull funny faces!

SonicState with the instrument’s creator:

Thanks, michel / bliss! (I had wanted to cover this and … yep, forgot.)

We got a couple of good notes on how to source your own x0xb0x synth kit. In general, I wouldn’t recommend the x0xb0x as a first synth project, but that said, there are some good resources out there if you decide you want to give this synth a try. Likewise, the resources on Lady Ada’s site are worth a look even if you don’t intend to build a x0xb0x — there’s a treasure trove of parts info there that could be useful for other projects, too.

Video: “wyllytesla Live Acid – a 303, 909 and x0xb0x pounding out hard techno”

Julien Chevalley says he had some good luck building his own open-source, DIY x0xb0x, sans kit:

It was a relatively easy process. I was able to get all the “rare-parts” from one guy (Gaetano) who has done all the hard work of sourcing them and offers them on sale in the xoxbox build forum. Even better he is based in the same country as me (Australia), so 90 bucks and 1 day later I had all the “rare” parts. 2 Weeks later I had everything else.

It took me 3 days to assemble, taking my time. Everything worked OK, first time (Yes I was actually pleasantly surprised!).

The total cost for me was about $400 (AUD). The real killer here is postage from the US suppliers (digikey/mouser). I might have been able to source the parts locally but it would have been a long and complex process, so I was happy to spend a bit of extra cash for the convenience…

Here’s where you might want to look:

x0xb0x Build Manual Parts List (includes each individual part with photo, description, source, alternatives where appropriate, and availability information)
Bill of Materials Spreadsheet on the Wiki (with printable PDF, if you’re luck enough to have a brick and mortar electronics store!)
Modifications to make the 303 a “true” clone of the Roland

I still wonder if there are other ways to “modernize” the design for easier availability, though I suspect you’d still have the issues getting parts in some parts of the world. If you work on such a project, let us know.

The x0xb0x, the open-source Roland TB-303 clone by Limor “Lady Ada” Fried, has been officially discontinued edit: unofficially end-of-lifed? Made less than widely available? It’s actually unclear. That makes this already hard-to-find kit tougher still to get. Because it’s open-source hardware, you can source the components yourself and build it, but some of the parts are very hard to find — which may be why it was discontinued in the first place. has been difficult to get a hold of in full kit form.

Our friends over at the awesome trash_audio (music blog with home studio voyeurism added in) pick up the story:

x0xb0x: Kits Discontinued

So, what’s next? It seems to me that, should the open source hardware argument really hold for music gear, the x0xb0x needs some successors — the more, the merrier. First off, perhaps it’s time to re-conceive the x0xb0x in a version that uses more easily-sourced parts. (Call it the Socks Box, dropping the l33t spelling as a metaphor for more accessibility?) And I’m eager to see the Next Great Open Instrument. Nominees?

Update: Okay, as my corrections above concede, it seems that the x0xb0x is not fully discontinued, just hard to get and between production runs. (I thought about applying a question mark to the original story, and now regret not doing that.) But maybe it’s time to declare what’s been obvious to many for a long time: the backlog for the x0xb0x is so huge, and there are so few signs of any increase in production rate, that they’ve effectively become impossible to get.

And that raises another question to me: is it possible for open-source music hardware to reach bigger quantities? Could they keep their cool factor even if everyone had one? (The answer, I suspect, is a huge yes, because greater availability almost encourages users to make their gear their own. Witness the hugely-successful Arduino, arguably music hardware itself.)

If you do get one shipped to you, though, do let us know.

Official word from Lady Ada in comments:

peter, the x0xb0x is not discontinued. the waiting list is long enough that i suggest ’self sourcing’. i am still making kits but it is slow going.

It’s Flash 909, and Amiga Flash.

Code wizard Andre Michelle has already made a name hacking audio capabilities into Adobe Flash and ActionScript 3. We got to see his work in the form of real-time audio effects processing in the GarageBand-like online sample-and-compose interface for Splice:

Interview: How Splice.com Has Taken Music Real Audio Processing to the Web

Well, there’s more, well into the “Things Adobe Wouldn’t Normally Expect People to Do With Flash” category. There’s 8BitBoy (warning: link autoplays music), a Flash-based player for Amiga MOD tracker tunes. There’s a 909 emulation (cutely named FL-909). There’s open ActionScript 3 source called popforge [@ Google Code] with all the Flash-hacking tricks needed to do audio.

Now, the most tantalizing bit yet: Andre has a new music environment coming, and to tease its arrival, he’s put up a little application with Roland emulations and stompboxes — and it’s all part of the Rich Internet Application of the Future:

The Hobnox Audio Teaser is a new approach to give you a great opportunity to create music [compositions] online in your browser. The underlying audio engine is based on dynamic digital signal processing to provide very complex audio compositing in Flash. The graphical user interface is based on an unlimited sized desktop to layout your chosen devices as you wish to operate.

The first application design delivers you some Roland emulations and effect floorboards to play with. Since this is a Teaser, you don’t have the option to save your environment. However, already at this early state we provide you with some well-known software features as history, clipboard and auto-alignment of the devices.

“Hobnox” will be about more than some TB-303 toys; it promises to be an “online entertainment and rich media publishing platform.” I assume we’ll find out just what that means later. For now, there is a limited beta sign-up with the audio application; it wasn’t quite online when I looked for it, but hopefully it’ll show up soon:

Hobnox Audio Teaser – Come and register for private beta

Hobnox.com

It’s not all sunshine and happiness. These are hacks, not fully-supported features of Flash — and Adobe, like so many developers of supposedly “Rich Internet Applications,” often doesn’t have a clue about sound. Andre has run into problems with his hacks for that reason. Now, I know what you’re saying — why should Adobe, a hugely-successful business, care about your MOD player? And of course, they shouldn’t. But that’s not the point. The vision of Rich Internet Applications is software that is expressive across media, and that includes sonic capabilities. Maybe people don’t care about the ability to play old Amiga tracker tunes — well, unless Timbaland is looking for some new tracks. But they might care when speech and creative music applications and interactive sonic interfaces come into play. We’ll never know for certain if the RIA developers keep ignoring audio completely, because then we lack the platform for people to do interesting stuff.

In the meantime, though, it’s comforting to have guys like Andre hacking in brilliant ideas. I hope Adobe takes note.

Thanks to Chris O’Shea for this link. Be sure to check out his all-new Pixelsumo blog.