Composers Desktop Project Forum

Thanks, sleestack (great nym, by the way). I hadn't heard of the Renoise plug-in. Things are hectic here for me at the moment, but I'll try to look into it reasonably soon and will report back with any results.

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.

UPDATE:

I am having no luck at all using Wine. I can install the Windows CDP 7 and SoundShaper Lite using Winebottler as the front end. When I create a Wine app for SoundShaper Lite, however, it merely crashes each time I try to open it. On the other hand, when I try to run it directly, SoundShaper Lite opens, I can load a sound file, and then run a process. So far, so good, right?

But then I get the following SoundShaper error message:

"Possible Processing Error: Outfile 'Z\[name of folder]\~A_1.wav' not found. Search for this file yourself?"

I search, and the "possible error" becomes a certain one, as there is no file to be found, and obviously no file was created, even though SoundShaper Lite appeared to execute the simple process I ran.

Thoughts? Help? Advice?

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.

Thanks again, simonk. I mistyped. I meant that I want to avoid a dual OS installation, and not a dual boot (although I wouldn't care for that, either).

Here's hoping that some other Macintosh users (as well as the developer) will weigh in on the subject.

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?

I understand the difficulties involved, and I recognize the limited market, but please, Mr. Fraser, reconsider porting SoundShaper to the Macintosh platform.

With all due respect to Trevor Wishart, I dislike SoundLoom very much. My mind and his simply do not work the same way, whereas SoundShaper is so very much more intuitive for me. When I was using SoundShaper with my otherwise-despised Windows machine in the early 2000s, I could effortlessly create wonderful sounds, Now that I am committed to the Mac platform, however, I must struggle with SoundLoom if I want to use CDP, and, while it is better than nothing, it is not better by much, from my perspective. I just can't work easily with it, and am therefore deprived of CDP as a result (I do not write code or run command lines).

I cannot speak for other Macintosh users,, but I, for one, would be happy to pay double or even triple the price for a SoundShaper for Mac. Please (re-)consider it. Thank you.

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.

UPDATE: Thanks very much, usw. Sound Loom now remembers everything it should, and this issue appears to be resolved. Soon, I'll try the suggestion you made in the other thread.

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!

OK, taking a deep breath and trying to control temper!

After following the results to the letter in step 1 of the Macintosh manual installation instructions, "Adding the CDP Path", here is my unsuccessful result and the Terminal results that I get when I try testing it ("xxx" is the substitute for my name):

Last login: Sat Mar  1 15:59:38 on ttys000
-bash: PATH: command not found
user-1087qbr:~ xxx$ env
TERM_PROGRAM=Apple_Terminal
SHELL=/bin/bash
TERM=xterm-256color
TMPDIR=/var/folders/7n/gsw9624j2ws8_qxv21hxckbr0000gn/T/
Apple_PubSub_Socket_Render=/tmp/launch-oLjofG/Render
TERM_PROGRAM_VERSION=326
TERM_SESSION_ID=8429EAF1-3408-4D35-8F75-871BCC81CF1D
USER=xxx
SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/tmp/launch-asN8qD/Listeners
__CF_USER_TEXT_ENCODING=0x1F5:0:0
PATH=/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin
__CHECKFIX1436934=1
PWD=/Users/xxx
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
SHLVL=1
HOME=/Users/xxx
LOGNAME=xxx
VERSIONER_PYTHON_PREFER_32_BIT=yes
_=/usr/bin/env
user-1087qbr:~ xxx$ paplay
-bash: paplay: command not found
user-1087qbr:~ xxx$

As you can see, the test fails. Is this also related to why Sound Loom will not remember my directories, or anything else about my previous sessions?

Again, whatever help administrators or more experienced users/programmers can offer will be most appreciated. If I should contact someone privately for support, then let me know that, as well. Thank you.

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.

With all due respect, this part of the Macintosh instructions is not clear--at least, not to this non-programmer.

I created the requested text file and saved it to my home directory. I then launched the Terminal, entered the required command, and got the following message:

user-1087qbr:~ xxx$ sudo cp launchd.conf /etc
cp: launchd.conf: No such file or directory

I have no idea what I am doing wrong here. Please advise. Thank you.