Composers Desktop Project Forum

Tricky, indeed!  I hadn't looked at Lua before, and from what I gather, luaposix (namely, setenv in the luaposive.stdlib module) would appear to be one way to avoid sending actual commands to the terminal.  But this still leaves out Windows . . .

I assume instructions for setting the environment variable are already included with the CDP tool.  Maybe the most "portable" way of dealing with the problem would be just to check that environment variable has been set with os.getenv("CDP_SOUND_EXT") and simply ask the user to set it before proceeding?

I appreciate your exacting reply.  It is very clear!  So while it is not possible to have the WORKSPACE files occupy a different folder than the location of the soundloom.exe executable, either workaround is definitely simple enough.  Thank you!

Thank you very much, Richard!

I recently acquired a fancy new desktop with a high-speed SSD "scratch" disk, and it'd be nice for files in Sound Loom's WORKSPACE to live on this drive instead of where the Sound Loom executable happens to be located (e.g., C:\Users\<username>\CDP7\_cdp\).

Is there a way to change SL's WORKSPACE directory?  (In Soundshaper, at least, this is easily accomplished by changing the "Temp" directory in the Environment settings.)

I've never used the CDP Renoise tool, but taking a shot in the dark, it sounds almost like you might be having issues running the spectral processes, which expect and produce .ana extension (Analysis) files rather than normal sound files.

Does the Renoise tool use PVOC to automatically convert your sound file (.wav or .aif) into an analysis (.ana) file?

I don't know how SC's sound algorithms compare to other programs.  (Maybe someone with firsthand knowledge of this can chime in?)  But a very large part of it, however, is the user.  Curtis Roads not only knows the nuts and bolts of DSP, but has cultivated a personal aesthetic in which to apply that knowledge.  In his hands, arguably any tool could be made to sound good.  In tinkering with different languages and systems over the years, however, I'm left with the impression that Csound and SC were (are?) easily top of their lot in quality and expressiveness.

As to whether CDP can rival SC in sounding "good", I feel strongly that the answer is Yes!  In transforming sounds, however, the nature of the input has a lot to do with what you get out--CDP won't magically sound great on its own.  Above all, it needs the user to apply it sensibly to the particular input sound, or at least recognize a sensible accident when it occurs!  ;-)  Even processes that, by design, "butcher" the input sound may be exactly what you need to achieve a desired effect.  CDP is as good as they come, imho.  For proof, listen to some of the transformations Trevor Wishart uses in his recent work.

A minor update to Sound Loom, 17.0.0C, was posted to Trevor's website for both PC and Mac.