On Fri, 25 Apr 2008 09:52:43 -0400 Julian Peterson julianpeterson@mac.com wrote:
if you write a PD patch, you can give it to anyone with a reasonably
modern computer; they will be able to download PD on their machine/OS
and execute with full rights and privileges.
For the last 2 years I have very much kept democratisation of tools and universal access in the front of my mind.
The entry barrier to any career should always be hard work and learning and not access to an elite club of expensive tools. The computing/IT economy has blossomed because our generation had access to C compilers and cheap hardware as we grew up. I hope the next generation of sound designers will enjoy the same opportunity of commodity tools.
At one time I seriously considered using Max because of the readership potential and it was better known within sound design circles. Perhaps my efforts in this area are starting to pay off because I think that has changed. Several job specifications I've seen lately from games developers venturing into procedural audio have mentoned Pd, not Max.
Another thing I've tried to do with the book is keep all examples working within < 800MHz CPU requirements.
That said, beyond using Pd as the teaching vehicle I tried to keep an implementation agnostic approach, with the idea that if you understand the algorithm and model you can implement a sound object in Pd, Max, CPS or any in-house proprietry synthesis framework.
Being able to translate synthesis models between Csound, Pd, Max or whatever is a skill that comes with time. Automatic translation or import scripts are useful for sure, but I think we should recognise that they have now diverged into different things.
Since I still believe Pd is the superior design application (by miles) a far more useful automated path would be to spit out Faust symbolic DSP algebra from Pd patches so you could compile patches into externals, Max objects, VST plugins or stand-alone applications.
a.