- How do they compare against each other?
I only know a bit csound and am an everyday sc user.
- I find csound oldschool syntax pretty boring but maybe that's just me.
- sc is a killer for realtime dsp.
- sc-list is *extremely* active and helpful.
...
- What sort of things can be achieved in these programs that can't be
achieved in Pd, if any?
polyphony in pd is a nightmare, you get it for free in sc:
// 128 sine waves with random freq mixed down to stereo: { Splay.ar(SinOsc.ar({ExpRand(100, 5e3)} ! 128)) }.play
Ah, csound works well in all plattforms, last time I checked (some years ago) SC only runs best in mac (mainly for graphic elements?), and I couldn't get it running in ubuntu.
this is not true anymore (since a couple of years :) you now have ubuntu packages, and a bunch of very talented linux developers (some of them might be very familiar to you BTW) right now, one could say that sc development version works actually better on linux =) (downside for sc is the lack of win devs)
also, you might have a look (and listen) there to have an idea about sc power (this is close to some recent threads on this list, about writing compositions with the less number of objects possible. here sc oneliners limited to 140 characters): http://supercollider.sourceforge.net/sc140/
(advertising-mode off) best is of course to try them all and see for yourself !
my 0.02£..
cheers, _y
-- yvan.volochine@gmail.com http://yvanvolochine.com