Composers Desktop Project Forum

When it works, the MIDI-Sequence facility in Soundshaper is a two-pass process: it uses the public-domain program mf2t (as updated by Richard Dobson) to create a text file version of the MIDI file and then attempts to convert that into a .seq file for use with the CDP sequencer (extend sequence 2).

There are some problems with the present version which will need detailed investigation. It appears to work OK with a single track. In tests I have got it to convert a 4-track MIDI file, but I have also had access violations which have required a re-boot. I've found no problems with the first-pass mf2t, which can convert either type 0 or type 1 MIDI files.

If the .seq file is created successfully, you have to look at its first-line header before using it. It might look something like this - 60 60 60 60  - which indirectly tells you that 4 input files are needed. The first will be that in the current Soundshaper cell, the others must be selected via the OPTIONAL INPUTS panel, which will pop up when you select Sequencer from the process menus. These can be the same or different sounds. So in the above example, you might click the current cell three times to select the same source for inputs 2-4. An odd quirk of Sequencer is that two inputs are the minimum, so if there is only one source, you must click the source cell once as a dummy 2nd input. (I've no idea why this is.)

In conclusion, I think MIDI-Sequence can be made to work in a limited way, but there are clearly problems with it at present. I'll look into these further, but don't expect a quick fix. If the problems persist, the facility wil be removed from Soundshaper and perhaps offered as an external program to be used "as-is".

I don't know if it's been tried with the latest version.

I'm afraid not at the moment. I don't have a Mac to develop it on. In principle, the plan would be to adapt the present code (Delphi) to run in the Free Pascal equivalent (Lazarus), then adapt that to run in Linux and OSX. In practice, there are bound to be Mac and Linux-specific things that will take a lot of sorting out. Secondly, is there much demand for it? I'm not keen to spend months of work to create something that might be used by a handful of people.

Soundshaper does not currently support the '.amb' suffix, but the substance of ambisonic provision is supported.
For example, apply ABFPAN to a sound (Menu: Edit/Mix | Spatial |  Multichannel | Ambisonic Pan; called AMBIPAN for short) - you don't even need to pan it: you can leave start position and end position as 0. You have created an ambisonic file. Save this as myamb.wav; reload it into another row - it loads OK and it's the same. You could apply FMDCODE to give it multi-channel speaker positions. So the missing provision is just recognition of the .amb suffix in the filename. 

Following some changes to the Csound provision (and other bugs), a revised version (5.04) is now available.
This includes access to the online CDP documentation from the program.   (R.F. 8/05/19)

The latest Soundshaper update (5.03) adds support for running Csound scripts, as well as users' own Batch scripts. The Csound scripts can either be for synthesis, writing to an output file, or for sound processing, with one or more input files. (Real-time output is not supported at present.)

The inputs and outputs are integrated within Soundshaper patches (process chains), i.e. a Csound process can precede or follow a CDP process, and the overall patch can be saved and recalled. Taken together, CDP and Csound cover a vast range of audio processes and a huge number of Csound examples are readily available, particularly for synthesis, which by comparison is a bit thin within CDP.

The update also includes Csound's implementation of Paulstretch (extreme time-stretching), hard-coded as a "normal" process with parameter control. I will be looking for other opcodes and scripts that would be worth integrating in this way and would welcome any suggestions and feedback.

Soundshaper has been run successfully on Mac via Parallels and similar products. Not having a Mac, I can't test this. Apart from hardware limitations, I'm in the middle of upgrading Soundshaper to v.5.0, which has to precede any possible port.