Pure Data as plugin

Think this is getting “serious” and growing…

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ooh, thats interesting… there have been a few pure data wrappers (including vst) in the past, but this one looks pretty advanced…

I see its supported by Deskew, so @david / gigperformer, thats cool too !

does anyone got some tech details?

I’m assuming its based off of libpd, so no PD install is required… all bundled in plugin?

I guess the focus of this, is to provide a VST patching environment for PD…
rather than to use PD as the DSP, and so develop your own plugins, with their own VST UI? which I think is what’s Camomile is more about?

I ask, as for Orac, I use the PD as a dsp platform, but I don’t use its UI at all, I use it in headless mode, since I then develop the UI per platform.
Orac works with libpd (I use this on Bela) , so Id assume it would work with this, but Id have to think about the UI side…

anyway, definitely a cool development…
I think PD is a great resource, thats often overlooked, as it doesn’t have the pretty UI of max (or debug tools etc)
I wonder if this might also ‘inspire’ Cycling 74 to something similar for Max.

seems, all the rage to embed virtual modulars into VST, given VCV etc :wink:

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Yeah, one of our users noticed that this was available and we’re pretty excited by the possibilities.

I doubt however that Cycling74 will do anything — remember they used to have Pluggo but they discontinued it when they got into bed with Ableton, who now owns them!

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Now there is RNBO for Max, that allows to create VSTs or code for other platforms. But it does not include the GUI. You just get the parameters, which is often sufficient for most use cases…

yeah, I created my own RNBO ‘template’ for the Percussa SSP… and its been pretty good.

I, personally, don’t have an issue with the lack of UI.
the idea is (for me at least) that the template creates a working starting point for a project.
you can then start editing that, and adding a more sophisticated UI.
if you do the development ‘right’, you can also later switch out the RNBO dsp for your own.
so its a pretty good, prototyping / evolving development model…

for sure… if the dream is that non-programmers are going to start shipping professional quality VSTs.
that’s indeed unlikely, but frankly, thats true even if it was creating a UI too.

so, I see it pretty much as two groups…
a) non-developers
doing their own thing, diy… quick n’ dirty…
b) developers
using as a prototyping/evolving dev platform.

and I think it fills both of these roles very well.

(I also like that its very easy to use RNBO for new platforms by creating your own ‘templates’)

of course, there are alternatives, e.g. you can do something very similar with PD/Heavy, or Faust.
but what stands out for me with RNBO is the Max development environment is very good for a quick workflow, its easy to test your RNBO patches quickly in max, and also debug them.
and thats simply not true of PD /Faust or alternatives.

so whilst RNBO is not ‘perfect’… I think it’s definitely a great tool to have in your toolbox.

albiet, I will say at the moment, its a bit too expensive unless you plan to seriously dive into it.

though, I suspect, in a year or two, I guess C74 will wrap this into a standard Max licence, at which point it’ll be much more ‘accessible’ to casual users.


edit:
just as a side note… since we are on this forum.
I will say, afaik, there is no explicit MPE support in RNBO…
no reason it can’t be done, as there are features in the api to handle custom voice allocation.

though, like many things in RNBO… you will also need support in the ‘target template’, which often is missing, so you need to customise template to your own requirements.

note: I’ve not added MPE/polyphony to my templates, as its not really a big requirement for a eurorack module… so above is based on what Ive seen in API etc, there may be other ‘practical’ concerns :wink:

Unfortunately, their licensing terms are totally unacceptable as far as I am concerned. Ignoring that they won’t even discuss how they might start charging royalties in the future their copyright requirement is absurd. They’re basically claiming authorship to anything you create using RNBO, which is totally absurd.

It would be like selling you a DAW and then insisting that the seller owns the copyright to a song you create with it.

this was discussed previously on the rnbo topic

the main issue is, not for current release of RNBO, but no solid statement on what a future license , may or may not look like.

so the issue isn’t really using RNBO 1.0… thats pretty clear.
but if you put alot of working into a ‘product’ , sure you can ship it now.
but you are likely to want to upgrade to 2.0 in the future … and that may not be possible if the licensing terms are incompatible with your needs. (*)

so a large project, esp. if its commercial, would be a risky undertaking…
and frankly, the risk/benefit ratio for most developers would not be worth it.
its also not that appealing to open source projects for similar (and other) reasons.

which goes back to my previous post… whats its useful for? (**)

as I said…
developers might use it for prototyping, or for small/non-commercial projects.
non-developers, really its, quick n’ dirty solution for one-off creative projects.

like or not, I think thats C74s market…
I think they see this as something for individuals to create ‘one-off’ custom projects, rather than as a ‘development platform’ - some will feel that vision is pretty ‘limited’ :man_shrugging:

personally, I feel RNBO will have limited appeal, until it gets rolled into the standard max license.

even then, Im not sure, it will ‘take off’ until Ableton Live has native RNBO support under ‘Max 4 Live’.
… I see that could change things, as I think M4L developers are a natural market for RNBO.
(though lack of live integration may be a big issue)

frankly, I think some social media , like CDM, got a bit carried away with RNBO… heralding it as the day ‘musicians could write VSTs’.
that was never the case, nor do I think it was C74s intention - C74s marketing was much more modest in its ambitions.

anyway… for now, just another tool for the toolbox… nothing revolutionary :wink:


(*) in fairness, this could happen with any 3rd party SDK… any developer could stop developing its current version , and release a new SDK which has a new license. JUCE did something similar to this.

(**) also Id point out, rnbo 1.0, has many quirks and limitations…
one of the most misunderstood parts of rnbo is, its actually 2 main parts

  • the code generator
  • the template

together they form the ‘functionality’
the issue is, there are many limitations in the current templates - and only developers will be able to realistically change these.
however, these templates are also limited by the code-generator, which we have no control over.

if you look at the C74 forum under RNBO, you can see this is not well understood by many, and even less understood are the implications/limitations.

also, honestly, my experience so far, is C74s support of RNBO has been pretty poor… I think they have underestimated the amount of ‘development support’ thats needed, and some glaring issues have not been addressed, nor many even commented on.