Who says every music production tool has to be either a traditional DAW or Ableton Live?

Not Renoise, for one. I’m running out of things to call it. Modernized tracker? Tracker on steroids? Music production tool from an alternate history in which conventional DAWs were ignored and everybody just kept on using trackers? How about this: a gem that a tiny development team somehow keeps making more awesome with regular updates with misleading names like “point 8.”

So, what does “2.8″ give you? A couple of OS compatibility fixes and one new delay effect? Wrong. New in this release is a massive set of improvements. 64-bit is in there, but in terms of day-to-day use, the workflow improvements may be what really matters. (Okay, I usually cringe when I see “workflow improvements” in a press release, and here I’ve gone and used the same phrase. Let’s just say it’s “more awesome to use.”)

The new Renoise Pattern Matrix aliasing means powerful arrangement and compositional tools.

Highlights, condensed:

• 64-bit for everybody (Mac and Windows in addition to existing Linux support), so you can access more than 4 GB RAM. A bridge plug-in lets you use 32-bit instruments and effects, and there’s 64-bit ReWire support.
• Pattern Matrix now lets you alias and clone pattern slots. It’s a powerful arrangement feature that’s a bit different than similar block arrangement or clip launching features in other tools (both because of Renoise’s approach to patterns and clips, and this ability to use those aliases to create structure). Expect some follow-up.
• Collapse tracks and groups (see image below), giving Renoise some of the screen economy that made trackers famous. Route those grouped tracks, and use pattern effects across grouped tracks (also something relatively technique).
• DSP multitap delay. (Yes, there’s that, but also…)
• DSP repeater (“stutter”) effect.
• DSP Exciter.
• New pattern effects: Tremolo, Auto Pan, Set Envelope Position. (That last one sounds like it could be pushed into some insane places.)
• Meta Mixer lets you combine modulation signals. (It’s really a meta device – imagine combining what Ableton does with Devices and Reason does with Combinator and CV devices.) Improvements to other modules, as well, both aesthetically and in parameters.
• Improved editing in Sample Editor, including destructively rendering slices to individual samples, and editing features typically associated with waveform editors rather than tools like this. My favorite: cross-fading loop creation, which previously required jumping out to another tool (Peak, SoundForge, etc.)
• More performance: Hyper-threading on new Intel chips.
• More spectral views and editing, more envelope editing views, Favorites for devices.

And there’s a lot more, as well.

http://www.renoise.com/new

You've got to love the ultra-compact track collapse feature - ideal for 11" MacBook Airs or Linux netbooks.

You also get features like this: “up to 34 DSP devices can be addressed via pattern commands 1xyy-Yxyy.” Power users know instantly what that means musically. The rest of you – well, don’t worry, other parts of Renoise will gradually level you up to that kind of ninja insanity. And Renoise is humanizing things, as well: “Logical mnemonics for pattern effects from A to Z instead of cryptic numbers.”

Will everyone drop everything and use Renoise? Odds are, no: this tool remains an acquired taste (though don’t dismiss until you’ve given its unique workflow a try). But, then, that’s part of the joy of this: it’s not an “industry standard.” It’s just an incredibly terrific music making tool that proves that not all music making tools need to look identical.

Now that I share the same home city as the developers, I think I owe you more information from the inside. Stay tuned.

Renoise 2.8 is a free update for current users, and an insanely-low 58 € new.

http://www.renoise.com/

If you’re a Mac user, we’ve got some cheap and free tools for you. And if you’re a Max patcher, you may be surprised with how they were built: they were all exported from Max 6.

This week, we welcome a guest writer developer Dan Nigrin. Amidst some new controversy about Apple and app distribution, here Dan looks at how Apple’s marketplace can indeed be useful to developers using Max 6, the popular graphical patching tool. (Incidentally, the libpd library could work for App Store apps, too, and for mobile on iOS and Android, along with various other tools, so developers now have lots of options for getting their ideas out there.) -PK

CDM has covered the Mac App Store and its impact (or not) on music software quite extensively in the past – see Apple’s App Store May Not Work for Audio Devs; Developers Respond, October 2010, and Six Reasons the Mac App Store Means Little for Music Creation – At Least For Now, January 2011.

But I think a new development may start to change things, at least a little bit. Cycling ‘74’s newly-released Max 6 now makes it possible for standalone apps created with it to be released on the Mac App Store. Previous versions of Max caused some standalone preference files to be written to a Preferences folder on the Mac; believe it or not, this violated an Apple Mac Store rule (an app can only write to very specific locations, not including the Preferences folder – go figure). To Cycling’s credit, they changed the preferences file location starting in Max 6, and so that obstacle has now been removed from getting Max apps in the Store.

I first asked the question about getting Max-built apps in the Mac App Store around the time Apple originally announced it in 2010 – see a thread in the Cycling ’74 forums. Soon after, Oli Larkin tested the waters, and he was the first to discover the above problem with the preference files. After Cycling addressed that, James Howard Young then tackled more minutia required to pass all the approval and validation steps Apple requires, and was the first to successfully get his app live on the store, followed soon after by Oli’s and then my two. We all shared our experience on the above thread, and with each other in private emails.

The apps have done quite well (Audio Plugin Player, below, made it up to #7 on Top Paid Apps in the Music category of the App Store within 48 hours of release), though we are all still experimenting with different price points, support models, etc. — usual App Store growing pains, I would imagine. Here are the apps currently available – note that there may be more, these are just the ones I know about:

Four Apps, Available Now

Defective Records Software (Dan Nigrin)
Audio Plugin Player
Get it on CDM Apps

A lightweight VST and AU instrument plugin host, that allows you to play these instruments using either your mouse, computer keyboard (including support for non-US keyboards), or MIDI device (both hardware and software MIDI devices supported). It has a simple, one-screen interface, without any of the complexity that a DAW takes for a newcomer to get up and running.

Defective Records Software (Dan Nigrin)
General MIDI Player
Get it on CDM Apps

An easy way to turn your Mac into an instrument, using its built-in General MIDI support. You can play these instruments using either your mouse, computer keyboard (including support for non-US keyboards), or MIDI device (both hardware and software MIDI devices supported). It has a simple, one-screen interface.

James Howard Young
TapNTempo
Get it on CDM Apps

A fully featured metronome that offers customizable sounds, real-time tempo tapping, and beat and division capabilities. TapNTempo’s easy-to-use interface includes the best of the traditional metronome, but feature bloating is avoided in favor of simplicity.

Oli Larkin
pMix
Get it on CDM Apps

pMix is a sound design, composition and performance tool that allows you to morph between VST plugin presets using an intuitive graphical interface. 

Presets are represented by coloured balls that are positioned on a 2D plane. The size of each ball and its proximity to the cursor affects the weight of the associated preset in the interpolation.

Morphing between presets often results in the discovery of interesting hybrid sounds. By constraining sound manipulations within a predesigned “interpolation space” complex transitions can be achieved that would otherwise be hard to manage.

pMix can load four VST2 audio plugins. It comes with a suite of specially designed plugins which cover a range of experimental DSP techniques (noise generators, FM synthesis, formant filtering, frequency shifting etc). These plugins can also be used in other VST host applications.

Conclusions, Looking Forward

I made a decision to “start simple” with my App Store apps, compared to for example my Klee or Cyclic. But as you can see, you’re not limited to just simple apps – Oli’s, for instance, is obviously quite complex. So I think that this is just the beginning of what I expect will be many Max apps on the App Store – it makes it possible for the many, many interesting projects developed in Max to reach a much bigger audience that possible before. Just taking a look at the Projects page on the Cycling web site gives a sample of what soon might find its way there.

Perhaps even more exciting is news from Damon Holzborn and Brad Garton of Columbia University, that they are working on a path from Max to iOS apps, and in a way that makes them totally compliant with the iTunes App Store. Really looking forward to this!

We’re looking forward to this, too, so we’ve assembled a special section that shows apps built with Max available on the Mac App Store. We may soon follow this with other tools (Pd, Csound, etc.) if there’s demand. But here are those Max options:

Made with Max, Featured on CDM Apps

Can You Play in the Sandbox?

Ed.: One issue to watch as Apple’s brave, new App Store moves forward is sandboxing requirements. For these Max apps, it shouldn’t necessarily be a problem, but before it appears that we’re endorsing the App Store for all music apps, regardless of purpose, we’re not. A number of Apple developers have raised some concerns about sandboxing and how it’s implemented. They’re worth reading if you’re a developer – and may, in turn, inspire some tweaks from Apple in terms of how this is done. All via Daring Fireball:

Sandboxing and xScope 3.0 [furbo.org]
Fix The Sandbox [Red Sweater]
Sandboxing and Clipstart [Manton Reece]

Here are Dan’s own thoughts on the subject:

No, I’m not concerned about plugin hosting with respect to sandboxing; the sandboxing rules stipulate that you’re allowed to access files on the host system if the user specifies the file in which they are interested via a file dialog. So, in my Audio Plugin Player app, for example, that’s what I do – the user is prompted to pick the plugin they want to use via file dialog (or they can drag and drop it onto the app). That way, I am not breaking any sandbox rules.

Also, one can request additional “entitlements” for one’s application, which allow it to access locations that are not currently “approved” areas within the file system for the app to access. I’d be surprised if requesting an entitlement to access the Plug-Ins folder was not allowed… Ed. That would be, of course, relevant to Apple’s own Logic Pro as a host; despite predictions to the contrary, it appears third party developers should – theoretically – have access to the same entitlements as Apple’s own apps. And if that’s not enough, you can still distribute via other means, including in Mountain Lion, and in contrast to the App Store-only iOS model. -PK

It makes sense that the App Store, with its specific sales model and technical requirements, will suit some applications well and not others. Because you can choose to install apps from other sources, that leaves both users and developer free to choose based on their needs.

Electronic music making has had several major epochs. There was the rise of the hardware synth, first with modular patch cords and later streamlined into encapsulated controls, in the form of knobs and switches. There was the digital synth, in code and graphical patches. And there was the two-dimensional user interface.

We may be on the cusp of a new age: the three-dimensional paradigm for music making.

AudioGL, a spectacularly-ambitious project by Toronto-based engineer and musician Jonathan Heppner, is one step closer to reality. Three years in the making, the tool is already surprisingly mature. And a crowd-sourced funding campaign promises to bring beta releases as soon as this summer. In the demo video above, you can see an overview of some of its broad capabilities:

• Synthesis, via modular connections
• Sample loading
• The ability to zoom into more conventional 2D sequences, piano roll views, and envelopes/automation
• Grouping of related nodes
• Patch sharing
• Graphical feedback for envelopes and automation, tracked across z-axis wireframes, like circuitry

All of this is presented in a mind-boggling visual display, resembling nothing more than constellations of stars.

Is it just me, or does this make anyone else want to somehow combine modular synthesis with a space strategy sim like Galactic Civilizations? Then again, that might cause some sort of nerd singularity that would tear apart the fabric of the space-time continuum – or at least ensure we never have any normal human relationships again.

Anyway, the vitals:

• It runs on a lowly Lenovo tablet right now, with integrated graphics.
• The goal is to make it run on your PC by the end of the year. (Mac users hardly need a better reason to dual boot. Why are you booting into Windows? Because I run a single application that makes it the future.)
• MIDI and ReWire are onboard, with OSC and VST coming.
• With crowd funding, you’ll get a Win32/64 release planned by the end of the year, and betas by summer (Windows) or fall/winter (Mac).

I like this quote:

Some things which have influenced the design of AudioGL:
Catia – Dassault Systèmes
AutoCAD – Autodesk
Cubase – Steinberg
Nord Modular – Clavia
The Demoscene

Indeed. And with computer software now reaching a high degree of maturity, such mash-ups could open new worlds.

Learn about the project, and contribute by the 23rd of March via the (excellent) IndieGogo:

http://audiogl.com

As expected, Apple moved its Logic Pro music production tool to the App Store. And the results are mostly what you’d expect. The biggest change is the price: Logic gets slashed to US$199.99, while MainStage gets a so-low-you-might-as-well-try-it $29.99 sticker price.

Wave editor Soundtrack Pro, removed from Final Cut Studio, is gone here, too. Lesser-known mastering tool WaveBurner gets the axe.

Logic Pro 9 is still Logic Pro 9. Today is a minor update that you can now download via the App Store if you choose. Logic Studio remains for sale through Apple in its boxed edition, but at two hundred bucks, the App Store version is the winner.

No Logic Pro X

If you were expecting Logic Pro X, my guess is, it’s just not done yet. I still expect the number ten to follow the number nine. (Amazing how that works.) I don’t expect Logic Pro X to produce the kind of disruption that Final Cut Pro X did, however. Logic already has a 64-bit infrastructure. Final Cut had an aging code base, deeply rooted in deprecated versions of QuickTime, that prompted Apple to do a ground-up rewrite. The initial results made people unusually unhappy, and perhaps justifiably so, but ground-up rewrites of software this complex tend to be ugly at first. There’s no reason to believe Logic will face a similar overhaul. Whatever Apple is doing, I’m in no rush; Logic is a deep program, and I’d rather wait for upgrades from everyone (note to all developers everywhere) than have serious production software rushed out before its time.

Logic Express is also, not surprisingly, eliminated. At $200, there just isn’t a spot for Express any more. And I’ve never been in love with these kind of product tiers; you’re constantly explaining to people whether they should get Express or Pro, as they desperately try to work out how “serious” they are in light of the products.

What is notable is MainStage: there are some welcome tweaks, and absurdly-cheap, standalone pricing that should get some attention.

Most importantly, $30 now gets you all of the instruments and effects from Logic in MainStage, including instruments like Sculpture.

MainStage

The real changes software-wise come in MainStage. For starters, if you don’t love Logic but want to try Apple’s live performance / instrument and effect rig, you can now do that. MainStage works standalone, and you even get all the Apple Loop sound content and sample-based instruments previously available in Logic Pro – Jam Packs and all, what once could have cost you hundreds of dollars is now thirty bucks. One thing I wondered about with the App Store was how Apple would handle distribution of all that content. They’ve thoughtfully allowed you to check off only the content you want to install, saving bandwidth and hard disk space if you don’t want everything.

All those instruments and effects: You also get, bundled into the package, an extensive collection of everything from guitar amps and stompboxes to the Ultrabeat drum machine to virtual instruments from analog to the unique physical-modeling Sculpture. Because MainStage supports ReWire, that means if you, say, love Ableton Live or Cubase more than Logic, but longed for some of those Apple instruments, you can now play with them in your DAW for thirty bucks without having to buy the whole Logic package. You’d just route audio straight into your DAW.

Check out the extensive list of instruments and effects on the MainStage product page. (They’re called “plug-ins,” but they can only be used in Logic and MainStage, not in other tools.)

For onstage or live studio use, MainStage also includes a looper, backing track player, and other useful tools.

MainStage 2.2 also delivers some new features for your $30. From the release notes, I spot a few highlights:

• Now takes “full advantage” of Macs with four or more processor cores
• New template picker, Assignments and Mappings view for streamlined screen and hardware control
• Bigger interface elements
• More MIDI control, SMF support for sending SysEx and other data when you make a patch change, block unwanted controller messages
• Support for: Akai MPK25, Akai MPK49, Alesis Q25, Korg nanoKey2, Korg nanoKontrol2, Korg nanoPad2, updated M-Audio Axiom and Oxygen models, Novation Nocturn 25

There are also some bug fixes and improved ReWire support.

None of this is really earth-shaking in itself – though it’s nice to see those patch change additions for people with hardware rigs. But the big news here is that, with MainStage unbundled from Logic, it’s in a whole new product category. It could be a viable option for Mac owners wanting to control plug-ins and hardware from a streamlined setup, even if they’re not Logic fans. And that could open MainStage to new audiences using other DAWs. Years ago, I reviewed a similar app, Rax, now marketed by Audiofile Engineering. (At the time, it was developed by Plasq, now better known for Skitch, which they just sold successfully to Evernote.) I was disappointed that no one really picked up on the app.

The idea is great: make a simple, straightforward app that gets you actually playing instruments on your computer with minimum fuss. It still seems like a great idea, and perhaps now the time is right. Rax/MainStage shootout, anyone?

Bottom Line

Sometimes, it’s news that something isn’t news. For all the rumors that the App Store transition was going to be a big deal, I think for Logic users, it’s probably not. It could be a more convenient way to distribute Apple’s software. And it sure makes those days of giant Logic boxes and blue Emagic copy protection dongles seem distant, huh? But I don’t think the question is whether competitors will go to the App Store, specifically. I think the question will be more generally, when will we cease to see boxes of nothing but software in stores? It seems stores may continue to carry hardware bundles, but that software will get delivered, you know, on the Internet.

Native Instruments announced this week that they’re discontinuing the Kore product line, focusing those energies on the host-plus-sampling groovebox Maschine.

Kore was an approach to making instruments and processing more manageable and tactile, coupling a hardware interface and standard control mappings with a hosting tool. What first drew me to Kore, personally, was the idea of setting up that host not only as a way of managing presets and the like, but building performance rigs and making them tactile. (I used a number of Kore-based rigs in the production of my recent album.) CDM also, as disclosure and reference, collaborated with Native Instruments to document uses of Kore and the rest of their line on our Kore minisite.

The free Kore Player is immediately discontinued, a casualty of the decision, and you won’t be able to buy Kore. The good news for Kore users is, a set of updates accompany the announcement:

First, an update with the latest sound engines. Schedule: third quarter.

Next, 64-bit support for Mac and Windows. Schedule: fourth quarter.

That would make Kore continue to be useful. Here’s the bad news, however: “Future versions of the Komplete bundle and of individual NI instruments might no longer be fully compatible with Kore, and will not include special preset versions for its sound browser.”

Instead, Maschine, not Kore, will get a free update that incorporates new preset management and parameter mapping features – Maschine now does some of what Kore did. But Maschine doesn’t yet offer some of the other unique features of Kore in terms of its utility functions and modules, its slim, slick touch-based interactive controller, and its performance setup.

To me, it looks like a decision that makes sense – but one that will also be tough for users to swallow. The maintenance updates to Kore are offset by potential incompatibility with future Komplete releases. And while there’s a crossgrade, it’s not inexpensive, because Maschine, too, relies on hardware for control. Through the end of the year, Maschine is US$449 (EUR399). I’d like to see Native Instruments, which recently underwent corporate restructuring, focus more closely on their software range to avoid these kinds of discontinuations. Even when they’re the right choice, they can be tough for users. It’s a particular challenge for a developer like NI that has always released a range of products instead of one flagship. NI, for their part, also tells CDM it was a difficult decision to make.

What made Kore unique also made it hard to support from the beginning: its ambitious combinations of hosting and engine integration features made it development-heavy. So the genuinely good news here is that NI is more focused on one tool, and that’s Maschine – a product that has been both more popular and more (frankly) well-liked than Kore was.

And that makes me unambiguously enthusiastic about the choice. Some things simply have to come to an end. The really important thing here is that this redirects development resources into Maschine, and Maschine becomes NI’s flagship host instead of the two competing with one another.

CDM spoke to NI’s Constantin Köhncke about the decision for more detail.

CDM: What does it mean for Maschine that Maschine, and not Kore, is now Native Instruments’ focus? We’ll see greater hosting features, I see; is there anything you can comment on specifically?

NI: Yes, among other features, the hosting features of Maschine will be expanded. As you are aware, the free 1.6 update already brought the hosting of VST/AU plug-ins into Maschine and 1.7 will see more advanced browsing and parameter mapping for NI instruments and effects.

Given that Maschine is now a host to a lot of people, how would you even categorize the application — it seems broader than what was first released?

Maschine is referred to as an integrated groove production system that now combines a pattern-based sequencer, professional sampler, multi-effect unit and VST/AU plug-in host.

It seems like Kore has had a big impact on the other product lines, as
well. Care to comment in terms of what Kore has contributed to other software?

Most prominently, the category browsing and parameter mapping concepts from Kore were integrated in individual NI instruments.

To put it another way, what would you say NI has learned from Kore?

Kore has been a very complex and ambitious undertaking in terms of the architecture, the hardware integration, and the various usability and data management concepts, so learnings in all these regards were applied for current products like Maschine and Kontrol S4.

Game makers and (particularly Mac) utility developers have joined forces to do various bundles of their software. I have to say, I generally like the model – particularly the fantastic Humble Bundle of indie games. That collection not only encouraged people to try adventurous (often experimental) independent game titles, but gives some of the proceeds to relevant charities. Linux users have been buying up the bundles disproportionately, contrary to the idea that they won’t spend money on software, and some of the developers even set a goal to earn enough money to open source their tools. (The open source software had a tangible benefit for gamers, too: it improved compatibility and performance on Mac and Windows.)

If you’re an independent music developer wondering how to make it work with an increasingly-commoditized, crowded marketplace, it could be worth investigating.

The Indie Dev Collective is one such effort for music developers. The model is a bit different: you buy music titles a la carte, not in one giant bundle. That means you only get what you really need, though, and titles still get some steep discounts, some up to 50-65% more. They’ve found a really talented group of developers, as well: H.G.Fortune, whiteLABEL, UGO Audio, Xoxos, ManyTone Music, Nuclues SoundLab, and others are participating. There are synths, effects, and soundware all on offer (and even one host).

Some stand-outs for me: IMEA Sequencer, pictured at top, is a 64-bit-ready Windows sequencer designed for live performance, complete with useful modules and VST compatibility. It looks fantastic – and it’s about time people found some alternatives; I love Ableton Live, but it’s boring if it’s the only thing you ever see onstage.

In effects, I like Amboea, a powerful set of stereo delay lines with “algorithmic crossfading.” Yeah, you could more or less finish an entire track with this one if you wanted.

There are a number of deep synths and drum machines, the most interesting I think being the M-theory physical modeling – hybrid instrument, bundled here with arpeggiators and MIDI tools. There’s also a fascinating-looking strumming plug-in bundled with multi-band effects and filtering, Mildon’s Strummer 2 and M4GIQ. Both those instruments are found here:
MIDI Effects

Windows users will find many, many more options than Mac owners, though Mac fans will find some good plug-in choices and plenty of soundware. (And they might have some goodies to use on a dual-boot system.)

All the tools here:
http://www.indiedevcollective.net/index.php

Sale ends May 23, or 23 May if you live in civilization. So, what do you think? Finding any good deals here? Favorite tools? And how could this model work elsewhere?

Choosing a computer for production generally means choosing flexibility, the ability to more effortlessly combine lots of sound sources and techniques. So it makes sense that, given that Native Instruments’ Maschine promises to bring computer-style flexibility to hardware-style groove box and drum machine workflows, it should behave like computer software. And that has meant many Maschine enthusiasts have asked for plug-in hosting. It doesn’t make Maschine a generalized “DAW” production tool, but it could mean, for people who like the drum machine style of working, the ability to mix and match sound sources as you can in a DAW.

With a beta scheduled for 2011, and a final release early in the year, Maschine users should get that wish. Version 1.6, Native Instruments recently revealed on their forums, will add VST and Audio Unit plug-in hosting, both as effects and sources.

Thomas at NI wrote up the news last week (whilst I was still busy working on this redesign):

So, according to popular demand, the upcoming 1.6 version will allow you to use VST and AU plugins as sound sources and effects in your Maschine project. This includes both the whole NI range of instruments and effects as well as any third-party plugin.

Check the screenshot for an idea of how this will look like. Instrument plugins can be used in any sound channel, and effect plugins can be inserted on both the sound and group channels as well as on the master.

Obviously the addition of plugin hosting requires quite a bit of development and testing…

1.6 won’t just include plug-in hosting, but this could be a big breakthrough both for Maschine addicts and, on the other hand, people who were waiting on Maschine to add such a feature. Forum post:

Coming up: Free Maschine update with VST/AU plugin hosting [NI User Forum]

I think in a way it’s unfortunate that music tech news cycles are the way they are; usually there’s a lot of attention and focus and “exclusive” cover stories and special issues in newsstand glossies right when a tool is new. But it often takes months and years for the tool to mature, and for users to really sink into productive workflows – indeed, that’s the sign of a deep tool. So I’m happy to give Maschine more attention in 2011. If you’re a user, let us know how you’re using Maschine now, and if this change is relevant to you.

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!

Renoise has already earned a passionate following among lovers of trackers. The once-forgotten alternative to conventional sequencers, these music editors were beloved for their quick workflow and vertical, atomic approach to assembling beats and patterns. But Renoise is increasingly poised to appeal to other kinds of music makers, too, not just tracker purists.

2.1 you can sum up pretty easily: now you can integrate Renoise with other stuff easily. There’s ReWire support (appropriately enough for a tool beginning with “Re” in the title). And if you’re on Linux, you can pipe control and audio through the ultra-elegant, ultra-powerful JACK. (If you’re not on Linux, you may have just gotten a good reason to give it a try.)

http://www.renoise.com/

This is on top of a rapidly-growing set of features like multi-core balancing, automatic delay compensation, audio recording (cough, Reason), and MIDI inputs and outputs. In other words, this is a tracker you can use without giving up modern luxuries. Maybe it’s like the difference between having a tent in gorgeous mountainous wilderness, and having a mansion with a hot tub and a T1 Internet line.

ReWire is the headline, but some of the live performance tools may make an even bigger difference. Live control tools and live pattern sequencing could make Renoise a lot more useful in performance, even without just ReWiring into Live and recording clips. The pattern triggering looks especially nice, because it brings a feature Game Boy trackers have often used live. (Add JACK on Linux, and you could add your own custom instruments.)

And, oh yeah, the whole program runs on every OS, has an incredibly responsive and involved community that impacts the direction of the tool, and is distributed on a shareware model rather than with painful copy protection.

Full disclosure: I’m slightly biased by enjoying a couple of beers with Renoise’s Dac, and by the fact that I think this looks completely delicious.

Here’s the full changelog.

Full ReWire Slave & Master support (on Windows & OSX)

ReWire allows you to connect and synchronize multiple software applications, so that you can run them side by side while passing Audio/MIDI information between them.

For example, you could connect Renoise to Logic, program your drums in Renoise, while arranging the bulk of your song in Logic. Or you could connect both Reason and Ableton Live to Renoise, arrange your track in Renoise, control Reason’s built-in synthesizers, and play around with loops in Live. All it takes is some ReWire enabled software and you are good to go.

ReWire has two modes, both of which are fully supported by Renoise: *ReWire Master* (ReWire Mixer) and *ReWire Slave* (ReWire Synth)

Jack Transport Support (Linux only)

Similar to ReWire, Renoise now supports the Jack transport protocol. Jack transport allows Linux users to start, stop and reposition multiple audio programs, all connected/running through Jack. 

New Pattern Sequencer Features:

Decoupled Sequencer Playback Now Possible: This new feature allows the user to detach the current playback position from the edit position. This lets you edit a pattern while other patterns are playing.

Live Pattern Triggering:

Patterns can now be "scheduled" for playback via a new column in the Pattern Sequencer. Without stopping playback you can now trigger new sequences in the song "in real time". 

New meta devices (Modulation / Automation Device fun)

• Hydra Device: Automate/change/broadcast multiple FX parameters with a single parameter. Think of this as a magic slider, which connects itself to up to 9 other parameters – allowing you to change multiple settings with just one slider or automation.
• Keytracking Device: Modulates parameters depending on an instruments key (note) value. Like what the "*Velocity Device" does with Velocities, the Keytracking device does with Keys/Notes.  
• MIDI Control Device: This device replaces the old "MIDI-CC Device", finally offering Pitchbend, Channel Pressure, Program Change & regular controller (CC) in a single device.

I hope to check this out in June when I can sit down and get back to production.

Now that Macs run Intel processors, what was once unimaginable is suddenly possible. There’s certainly no shortage of plug-ins available on Mac OS, but users may still have Windows plug-ins they miss. Released as beta today from SM Pro Audio, VFX is an app that lets you host your PC plug-ins on your Mac:

VFX Mac Beta

The requirements are modest — a lowly Mac mini should work just fine, and you don’t even need 10.5. But some of the specifics get a little weird. You have to run VFX as its own host. And you actually can’t use Mac plug-ins on the VFX, which means there’s not much advantage here versus just running on a cheap PC. (Especially given that you can build a pretty decent PC for under $300 these days.) And there are various stability and reliability issues introduced, as well.

We saw the V-Machine from the same creator — a small hardware box running plug-ins on Linux — at the end of last year. But in this case, it appears you can may be able to the software minus the hardware, which would make sense. (Otherwise, the hardware becomes a rather large dongle.)
V-Machine: Dedicated Hardware for VSTs, for US$599?

Basically, what VFX is is a nicely-packaged rendition of a Windows host running inside the open source, multi-platform WINE translation layer. WINE is actually a ground-up “translation” of Win32 — it’s not emulation or a virtual machine; it actually runs Windows apps as if they were native. (Thank Microsoft for keeping its APIs relatively open, even if the OS itself is closed as Mac OS is.) The discussion of whether or not this could work has come up before, as recently in a thread on KVR. VFX is proof that it can work, and I could imagine it’s even good news for some people. You can read the manual addendum at the link above and decide if it’s for you.

Here’s the irony: Mac users arguably don’t have it as good as even Linux users, let alone people just running Windows (and, one might add, on cheaper PCs).

On Linux, there’s the superb dssi-vst, which also uses WINE but allows you to run 32-bit Windows plug-ins inside the host of your choice. Add the fact that Linux can take advantage of extreme low-latency performance using a low-latency kernel, a handful of rock-solid open-source audio drivers, and sophisticated inter-application routing of MIDI, audio, and sync that isn’t even possible on the Mac, and you have a pretty potent combination. See also solutions like the Muse Receptor, whose users use it as a hardware solution to run primarily Windows-native plug-ins. (Major advantage of the Receptor: it eschews a GUI, which is the major source of compatibility and stability problems.)

dssi-vst isn’t perfect, either: sync doesn’t work (oops), for one. And in all of these solutions, you can run into issues with copy protection schemes. (If you want to use the plug-ins legally and they use software authorization, it’s usually not such a big deal — though you do have to burn through one authorization.)

Bad as this may sound, I have to admit, when I have run some of these solutions, I’ve been really impressed. Kore and Reaktor, for instance, both run beautifully inside Linux. If you didn’t see the standard title bar, you’d think you were on XP — except that, under the right setup, you can sometimes get better performance. Plus, if you’re running the host under WINE, the sync problem is erased.

Bottom line? Native always wins. But there are nonetheless interesting times ahead. I’d love to get more compatibility reports, which is more than I could take on alone. If you’re interested in contributing on Linux or Mac, I’d be glad to hear it. And if, on the other hand, you’re perfectly happy on Windows running natively, more power to you. (There’s certainly nothing wrong with the easiest solution to this problem.)

Disclaimer: I still need to try out VFX, and the compatibility picture in general is complex and technically involved – in other words, your mileage may vary. But then, part of why I write this site is to get corrected on stuff and learn, so please, those of you with some WINE experience, we’d love to hear from you!