John Potter wrote:
Around a year ago I was looking into PD, MAX/MSP, Supercollider, CSound, DSP in general etc. after playing with modular synths and synths w/ large modulation matrixes for a couple years. Kind of dropped all that and picked the guitar back up for a while. Thinking about getting back in to it but primarily from the perspective of realtime audio effects – reverb, phasing, distortion, ring modulation, vocoding, gating, and 100 different things I’m sure you can think of (as opposed to creating a completely virtual instrument).
How does PD stack up against MSP in that regard? Is there something else I should be looking at? Another thought is picking up a Nord Micro Modular but that wouldnÂ’t necessarily preclude the PD/MSP route.
Thanks!
John
I think Pd shines for realtime work. I have used it in a few performances with live guitar / realtime processing. Take a look at the examples that come with Pd to see what it's capable of. Take a few of them apart and modify them to suit ideas you have. Then form a design for how you want to control the computer during your performance and start building.
I have a Micro Modular as well. A computer can't match it's virtually zero latency, but it is limited in the effects you can produce, and doesn't have the options for live sampling and delay that you can get with Pd. The Micro Modular limits you to more or less one general patch at a time, since it has a limited amount of CPU compared to a laptop with Pd. A computer based approach will allow you to overlay more sounds and generally have more flexibility. But certainly you could work both into a performance...
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