Composers Desktop Project Forum

Thanks, lynx. I'll consider the various options, but will likely just have to suck it up and learn to manage with Sound Loom, or maybe one day do a Windows partition for CDP and SoundShaper.

In the meantime, this thread can serve as a "sticky" for others who may want to add their opinions regarding a SoundShaper port to the Mac, or to discuss other options for using it on the Mac.

Thanks, lynx, for your observations and suggestions. I'll look into what you mention regarding WINE, as I haven't tried that. I can test whether it would work with SoundShaper Lite. If it would do as well as a ported version for the Mac, then I'd be fine with that.

Robert Fraser and I corresponded on this subject a little over a decade ago, and I certainly understood the reasons for his reluctance to proceed with a Mac version. Now that so much time has passed, and that CDP has entered a new phase in its development, I thought it might be a worthwhile time to see whether anything had changed in the interim with respect to Mac development.

As you say, SoundShaper and Sound Loom are very different in their approaches, and the former is simply much more intuitive to me and to my way of working. if I were a professional composer or sound designer, then it might indeed be feasible to have a Windows box simply for CDP, but I am not. Everything else I want and need, with the exception of one fabulous granular processing program, is available for the Mac, so given that fact, and my amateur (but serious) interest, it makes the most sense to me to have everything on the Mac platform, if possible. I envy users such as yourself who are "ambidextrous". The deal-breaker for me is getting Sound Loom to work with the Texture suite, which I find beyond my capabilities without having to waste time with an absurd amount of de-bugging. On Sound Shaper, Texture almost always ran seamlessly for me.

Thank you, simonk.

I suspect you are right regarding the port, but I thought I would make the request anyway, and create this thread as a sort of sounding board for others to express their interest (or lack of it).

I had hoped to stay away from dual-boot rigmarole, but thanks for reminding me of the various options.

Other Mac users, how do you feel?

Thanks very much to use and umfufu. Your replies are very helpful, and I think I've finally got it sorted out. I hope this will remain a useful reference thread for future Mac users who encounter a similar problem.

Thanks very much for the suggestion. The edit seems to have "taken"; now, I'll see how that affects Sound Loom's ability to remember my directory. I still can't run commands from the Terminal, such as "paplay"or the other example given in the instructions. I get a "command not found" message. So, we shall see!

Actually, I am not doing anything right. I have Sound Loom installed, but it is not remembering anything I do when I open and close sessions. I followed the manual instructions to the letter, at least as best I understood them, but nothing appears in the Terminal.

Is this forum the proper place to sort this out, or should I contact someone privately? I am musician, not a programmer, and it is obvious that I am going to need a lot of hand-holding to get this working on my system.