Composers Desktop Project Forum

I've been working on a sound algorithms library and a frontend for that library for about a year now. Here is the first beta version! It shouldn't be too hard to get it working on Mac or Linux at some point, but for now, I just have a Windows binary prepared.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1V3v2p8w_WIv3USm5U74x4zRoMgqSuNsD/view

Here are some gifs:

https://clyp.it/dl3yrr3w

A month or two ago I was discussing with another CDP user the discontent we felt with the difficulty of building additional software on top of the CDP. The codebase is, frankly, a nightmare. It isn't extensible or maintainable, or even comprehensible. I figured I should try to fix that, so I'm working on an audio processing library that aims to maintain the spirit of the CDP, but with a modern codebase and in library form. I'm not aiming for a one-to-one recreation, but I am aiming to recreate a large majority of the existing functionality in a form that is greatly simplified by having an entire programming language (c++) to work with. The naming convention will be different but I'm planning to create a mapping between cdp names and my own so long time CDP users know where everything is.

Here's a link to the repo (name suggestions are welcome): https://github.com/loganmcbroom/XCDP

I haven't used cmake before so the build might be rough at the moment, but I'd like the library to be cross-platform and it seemed like the de-facto option for that. It's also a work in progress, but it works, and passing lambda functions into blur_blur instead of time-value files warms my heart. If you've wanted to mess around with the nuts and bolts of the CDP but were scared off by if(sloom) and dz->bigBufbuf[buf], I hope you'll check it out and write some processes of your own. If you want help building or anything really, I'm always around the discord: https://discord.gg/QmQuJKB

I played a quick set for a Toyota themed party recently and put this track together for that

https://loganmcbroom.bandcamp.com/track/toyota-abstract

Finished up an album I've been working on for a while last week and several of the tracks use a good bit of CDP content.

https://loganmcbroom.bandcamp.com/album/precision-vibration

Specifically the tracks "Precision, Vibration" and "Emulation".

It seems like there are a good deal of people here willing to put a good deal of effort into software derived from the CDP. Maybe we could get some kind of community project going? What kinds of tools would be good to have? What things seem to be missing?

I think some in depth tools for generating all the various text files needed to automate parameters would be a good thing to have. It's one aspect of soundloom that seems the most dated to me.

Is there some way to force volume to a specific level regardless of it being at that level already? Sometimes I'll come back after ten minutes of processing with "ERROR: File is already at the specified level." from Modify Loudness in mode 4. Maybe there is a process I'm missing for this, or just some trick to get around it?

Does the cdp contain some kind of automated dynamics processing? It seems like a fundamental utility so I am a little surprised to not see it anywhere.

Through many processes I am getting this error:
"[CDP] ERROR: INVALID DATA
ERROR: Cannot open output ___ file".

Does anyone know what that is about? I found workarounds for some of these but there are some important processes that seemingly can't be run because of this (repitch getpitch being one).

Edit: Whatever causes this was fixed in 7.1
Edit2: Might as well follow up with an entirely new error. psow ptobrk tells me how to use it no matter what is typed after ptobrk on the command line and I've tried a lot of things from perfectly reasonable to very silly.

Trying to run anything in reverb.exe gives "The procedural entry point __gxx_personality_v0 could not be located in the dynamic link library libstdc++-6.dll.". Anyone know what's up with that?

I'm creating lua mappings for every process and in doing so I am occasionally seeing inconsistencies in processes and the documentation found here http://www.ensemble-software.co.uk/CDPDocs/html/ccdpndex.htm. I'll record anything I notice that seems noteworthy here for others to reference or correct.

Documentation errors:

    Housekeep Gate
    This process has 5 modes, the documentation doesn't list this as a modal process.

    Sndinfo Diff
    This is listed twice in the documentation.

    PSOW grab
    Density and spectrans are flipped by order.

    Distort Pulsed
    Missing the env parameter.

    Shifter
    Both modes missing the dur parameter.

Process errors:

    Gate Gate 2
    When cutting out enough sound this process is causing extreme pitch changes over time.

    Modify Shudder
    There is some kind of file name handling error in here that is cutting out a bunch of the output file name.
    Also, "outfilename â€" note that a '0' will replace the last character of your given outfile name"
    This isn't an error but it is ridiculous.

    Synth Spectra
    When running this, both the files mentioned are created... but the file with 1 appended is immediately deleted? It's
    always something. The doc is missing some parameter, range starting at 16k.

    Iterline
    I always receive out of memory errors.

    Madrid
    I get "[CDP] ERROR: INVALID DATA
    ERROR: Cannot open output file C:\Users\Logan\Desktop\Altar\Altar1470210899998\0_altar" for all inputs I've tried.
    It always strips the extension.
    This is probably fixed but I can't find it again.
   
    ptobrk
    No matter what I enter after ptobrk it always does nothing more than tell me how to use ptobrk.

Gripes:
    Housekeep Copy 2
    Would be nice to be able to specify the path this outputs to.

    Processes outputting multiple files have vastly different output naming schemes.

Here is some software I made for working with the cdp. Before it will run you'll need to set your _cdpprogs dirctory and working directory ( absolute file paths ) in Settings.lua. Drag audio in and drag clips around to reorder. Hit the pi button to send the files in the order they're listed to the lua script. Use cdp() to do stuff. '$' will generate a file name for output. Everything returned will be listed on the right. You can drag files back over to the left to process them anew.

I still have a few features to add but it's usable as is. Here's the source and if you're windows bound here's an archive with everything it needs to run. Includes some of my favorite recordings.
https://github.com/loganmcbroom/Altar
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxzJlrC6KHmxZnRwMEk2U19GLTA/view?usp=sharing

Hope you enjoy, feel free to shoot me feature ideas.

Edit: Switched archive for updated version without dll dependencies. Should fix missing vcruntime dll errors. Added a lot of functions to the lua interface but I'm going to wait on writing them all down until the interface is done.

Edit: Added more to LTMP system, made a readme. Tried to make it much harder to crash. This is now valid code:
return distort_average( {5,10,15,20}, housekeep_chans( 2, unpack( f ) ) )
It will split the channels of all inputs, and cyclically apply 5,10,15,20 as the parameter to average.
You can also write
getmetatable('').__index = function( str, i ) return housekeep_chans( 1, i, str ) end
This allows f[1][2] to access the second channel of the first file.

I'm working on a sort of front-end and running the CDP executables as child processes, but I'd like to be getting those processes output streams and apparently that can only be done on Windows using pipes which I don't understand at all. Being able to call the functions directly would also allow some additional flexibility.

Does anyone have experience or advice on this sort of integration, or on using Windows pipes?

I think letting the community contribute to the CDP would do wonders for its growth. I sent an email requesting this but I am wondering if the main CDP email is active? It seems the devs don't have much of a presence online.

If such a thing was around what would you want to see added to the CDP? I would love to see libraries as is mentioned on the website's main page. I think there is also a lot of room for new processes.