Login
Login

Comparison of audio synthesis environments

{{short description|None}}

{{multiple issues|

{{notability|date=January 2015}}

{{original research|date=January 2015}}

{{more citations needed|date=January 2015}}

}}

Software audio synthesis environments typically consist of an audio programming language (which may be graphical) and a user environment to design/run the language in. Although many of these environments are comparable in their abilities to produce high-quality audio, their differences and specialties are what draw users to a particular platform. This article compares noteworthy audio synthesis environments, and enumerates basic issues associated with their use.

Subjective comparisons

Audio synthesis environments comprise a wide and varying range of software and hardware configurations. Even different versions of the same environment can differ dramatically. Because of this broad variability, certain aspects of different systems cannot be directly compared. Moreover, some levels of comparison are either very difficult to objectively quantify, or depend purely on personal preference.

Some of the commonly considered subjective attributes for comparison include:

  • Usability (how difficult is it for beginners to generate some kind of meaningful output)
  • Learnability (how steep the learning curve is for new, average, and advancing users)
  • Sound "quality" (which environment produces the most subjectively appealing sound)
  • Creative flow (in what ways does the environment affect the creative process - e.g. guiding the user in certain directions)

These attributes can vary strongly depending on the tasks used for evaluation.

Some other common comparisons include:

  • Audio performance (issues such as throughput, latency, concurrency, etc.)
  • System performance (issues such as buggyness or stability)
  • Support and community (who uses the system and who provides help, advice, training and tutorials)
  • System capabilities (what is possible and what is not possible [regardless of effort] with the system)
  • Interoperability (how well does the system integrate with other systems from different vendors)

= Building blocks of sound and sound "quality" =

Audio software often has a slightly different "sound" when compared against others. This is because there are different ways to implement the basic building blocks (such as sinewaves, pink noise, or FFT) which result in slightly different aural characteristics. Although people can of course prefer one system's "sound" over another, perhaps the best output can be determined by using sophisticated audio analyzers in combination with the listener's ears. The idea of this would be to arrive at what most would agree is as "pure" a sound as possible.

= User interface =

The interface to an audio system often has a significant influence on the creative flow of the user, not because of what is possible (the stable/mature systems listed here are fully featured enough to be able to achieve an enormous range of sonic/compositional objectives), but because of what is made easy and what is made difficult. This is again very difficult to boil down to a brief comparative statement. One issue may be which interface metaphors are used (e.g. boxes-and-wires, documents, flow graphs, hardware mixing desks).

General

class="wikitable sortable" style="text-align: center"

! Name

! Creator

! Primary purpose(s)

! First release date

! Most recent update

! Most recent version

! Cost

! License

! Main user interface type

! Development status

Bidule

|Plogue

|Realtime synthesis, live coding, algorithmic composition, acoustic research, all-purpose programming language

|2002

|2017-06

|0.9757

|{{nonfree}}

|Proprietary

|Graphical

|Mature

ChucK

| Ge Wang and Perry Cook

| Realtime synthesis, live coding, pedagogy, acoustic research, algorithmic composition

| 2004

| 2023-12

| 1.5.2.1

| {{free}}

| GPL

| Document

| Immature

Csound

| Barry Vercoe

| Realtime performance, sound synthesis, algorithmic composition, acoustic research

| 1986

| 2022-10-22

| v6.18.0

| {{free}}

| LGPL

| Document, graphical

| Mature

Impromptu

| Andrew Sorensen

| Live coding, algorithmic composition, hardware control, realtime synthesis, 2d/3d graphics programming

| 2006

| 2010-10

| v2.5

| {{free}}

| Proprietary

| Document

| Stable

Keykit

| Tim Thompson

| MIDI synthesis and algorithmic composition

| 1995

| 2021-03-15

| v7.7e

| {{free}}

| GPL

| Graphical

| Mature

Kyma

| Carla Scaletti

| Realtime audio synthesis, hardware control, acoustic research, algorithmic composition, data sonification, live-performance multi-effects processing

| 1986

| 2018-9-03

| v7.23

| {{nonfree}}

| Proprietary

| Graphical

| Mature

Max/MSP

| Miller Puckette

| Realtime audio + video synthesis, hardware control, GUI design

| 1980s (mid)

| 2024-01-17

| v8.6.0

| {{nonfree}}

| Proprietary

| Graphical

| Mature

Pure Data

| Miller Puckette

| Realtime synthesis, hardware control, acoustic research

| 1990s

| 2023-07-04

| v0.54

| {{free}}

| BSD-like

| Graphical

| Mature

Reaktor

| Native Instruments

| Realtime synthesis, hardware control, GUI design

| 1996

| 2023-04-19

| 6.5

| {{nonfree}}

| Proprietary

| Graphical

| Mature

SuperCollider

| James McCartney

| Realtime synthesis, live coding, algorithmic composition, acoustic research, all-purpose programming language

| 1996-03

| 2023-02-19

| v3.13.0

| {{free}}

| GPL

| Document

| Mature

Sporth

| Paul Batchelor

| Sound design, algorithmic composition, live coding, embedded systems

| 2015

| 2016-05

| -

| {{free}}

| MIT

| Document

| Immature

SynthEdit

|Jeff McClintock

|Realtime synthesis, live coding, effects coding, GUI design

|1999

|2021

|1.4

| {{nonfree}}

|Proprietary/BSD

|Graphical

|Mature

VCV Rack

|Andrew Belt

|Realtime audio synthesis

|2017-09

|2022-02-26

|2.1.0

| {{free}}

|GPL

|Graphical

|Immature

Programming language features

class="wikitable sortable" style="text-align: center"

! Name

! Textual/graphical

! Object-oriented

! Type system

Bidule

|Graphical

|No

|

ChucK

| Textual

| Yes

| Static

Csound

| Textual/Graphical (FLTK/Qt/HTML5)

| No

| In development

Impromptu

| Mostly textual

| -

| Dynamic & static

Kyma

| Mostly Graphical

| Yes

| Dynamic

Max/MSP

| Graphical

| No

|

Pure Data

| Graphical

| No

|

Reaktor

| Graphical

| No

|

SuperCollider

| Textual/Graphical (Cocoa/Swing/Qt)

| Yes

| Dynamic

SynthEdit

|Graphical

|Yes

|Static

MPEG-4/SA

| Textual

| No

| No

Data interface methods

Interfaces between the language environment and other software or hardware (not user interfaces).

class="wikitable" style="text-align: center"

! rowspan="2" | Name

! colspan="2" | Shell scripting

! colspan="2" | MIDI

! colspan="2" | OSC

! rowspan="2" | HID

! rowspan="2" | VST

! colspan="2" | Audio Units

! rowspan="2" | Other

In

! Out

! In

! Out

! In

! Out

! As host

! As unit

Bidule

|

|

| {{yes}}

| {{yes}}

| {{yes}}

| {{yes}}

| {{yes}}

| {{yes}}

| {{yes}}

| {{yes}}

|

ChucK

| {{yes}}

| {{yes}}

| {{yes}}

| {{yes}}

| {{yes}}

| {{yes}}

| {{yes}}

|

|

|

| Chunity allows to run ChucK in the Unity game engine

Csound

| {{yes}}

| {{yes}}

| {{yes}}

| {{yes}}

| {{yes}}

| {{yes}}

|

| {{no}}

|

|

| binding from Haskell (hCsound), C, C++, Java, JavaScript, Lisp, Lua, Python

Impromptu

|

|

| {{yes}}

| {{yes}}

| {{yes}}

| {{yes}}

|

|

| {{yes}}

| {{no}}

| Bidirectional Scheme to Objective-C bridge

Kyma

|

|

| {{yes}}

| {{yes}}

| {{yes}}

| {{yes}}

| {{yes}}

|

|

|

|

Max/MSP

|

|

| {{yes}}

| {{yes}}

| {{yes}}

| {{yes}}

| {{yes}}

| {{yes}}

| {{yes}}

|

|

Pure Data

| {{yes}}

| {{yes}}

| {{yes}}

| {{yes}}

| {{yes}}

| {{yes}}

| {{yes}}

| {{yes}}

| {{some}}

| {{some}}

|

  • bindings for GStreamer, Java, Lua, Python
  • the Camomile plug-in may host PD as plug-in within DAW
  • PD-extended presently has multiple options to host LADSPA plug-ins within PD environment
Reaktor

|

|

| {{yes}}

| {{yes}}

| {{yes}}

| {{yes}}

|

| {{yes}}

| {{no}}

| {{yes}}

|

SuperCollider

| {{yes}}

| {{yes}}

| {{yes}}

| {{yes}}

| {{yes}}

| {{yes}}

| {{yes}}

|

| {{no}}

| {{yes}}

| LADSPA Host, scsynth can be controlled by OSC messages (Haskell, Scala, Python, Ruby, Scheme etc.)

SynthEdit

|

|

| {{yes}}

| {{yes}}

| {{no}}

| {{no}}

|

| {{yes}}

| {{no}}

| {{yes}}

|

[https://vcvrack.com/ VCV Rack]

|

| {{yes}}

| {{yes}}

| {{yes}}

| {{yes}}

|

| {{yes}}

|

|

|

Technical

class="wikitable sortable" style="text-align: center"

! Name

! Operating system(s)

! Source code language(s)

! Programming (plug-in) API language(s)

! Other technical features

Bidule

|macOS, Windows

|C++

|C++

|ASIO/ CoreAudio (Mac)/ ReWire support. Possible to write custom modules via API if NDA accepted.

ChucK

| macOS, Linux, Windows

| C++

| C++

| Unified timing mechanism (no separation between audio-rate and control-rate), command-line access

Csound

| macOS, Linux, Windows

| C, C++

| C; also C++, Java, Lisp, Lua, Python, Tcl

| IDE (QuteCsound), multitrack interface (blue); several analysis/resynthesis facilities; can compute double-precision audio; Python and LuaJIT algorithmic composition library; multi-threaded processing

Impromptu

| macOS

| Lisp, Objective-C, Scheme

| C, C++, Objective-C, Scheme

| Native access to most macOS APIs including Core Image, Quartz, QuickTime and OpenGL. Impromptu also includes its own statically typed (inferencing) systems language for heavy numeric processing - OpenGL, RT AudioDSP etc.

Kyma

| macOS, Windows

| Smalltalk, C, Objective-C

|Smalltalk

|The Kyma hardware processes user algorithms at sample-rate, as opposed to a vector of samples{{Cite web|url=http://www.symbolicsound.com/cgi-bin/bin/view/Products/ChoosingTheRightConfigurationForYourApplication|title=Symbolic Sound Kyma: Products ChoosingTheRightConfigurationForYourApplication|website=www.symbolicsound.com|language=en|access-date=2018-10-13}} Kyma has a Frequency resolution of .0026 Hz, and large multi-dimensional arrays can be transferred through spectral algorithms at the speed of a single Frame.

Max/MSP

| macOS, Windows

| C, Objective-C

| C, Java, JavaScript, also Python and Ruby via externals

|

Pure Data

| macOS, Linux, Windows, iPod, Android

| C, Tcl (for GUI)

| C, C++, FAUST, Haskell, Java, Lua, Python, Q, Ruby, Scheme, others

|

Reaktor

| macOS, Windows

|

|

|

SuperCollider

| macOS, Linux, Windows, FreeBSD

| C, C++, Objective-C

| C++

| Client-server architecture; client and server can be used independently, command-line access

Sporth

| Linux, macOS

| C

| C, Scheme

| Many frontends built using the API exist, including Chuck, PD, and LADSPA

SynthEdit

| Windows, macOS

| C++

| C++

|

[https://vcvrack.com/ VCV Rack]

|macOS, Linux, Windows

|C++

|C++

|

See also

References

{{Reflist}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Audio synthesis environment comparison}}

Category:Audio programming languages

Category:Electronic music software

Category:Multimedia software comparisons

Category:Software synthesizers