SoundShaper Port to Mac--I Am Begging!

[Bestia Centauri]

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.

[simonk]

Hi,
I believe a Mac port is unlikely at this time ( I may be wrong) but meanwhile you could run Soundshaper in a virtual machine via Bootcamp/Vmware/Paralles/Virtualbox

[Bestia Centauri]

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?

[simonk]

Just for your info:
Vmware,Parallels and Virtualbox don't need a reboot, they can run in a window or fullscreen.

[Bestia Centauri]

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.

[lynx]

Another option might be WINE, which basically functions as a Windows application interface for X11.  You'll need X11 installed (if Mac OS X doesn't already come with it by default, these days), but it should--in principle--let you run Soundshaper side-by-side with your normal Mac applications without "virtualization" or some dual-boot scheme.

However, this is still not precisely what you want.  I don't wish to speak for Robert Fraser, but as I understand the matter, the issue has been the uncertain standing of cross-platform support for the language that SS is written in.  I'm sure "porting" the program to another language would be no joke.

As an aside, I am not a Mac user (anymore), but your perspective on Sound Loom and Soundshaper is interesting to me.  I've also found both front-ends significantly different in their approach, although I've come to respect both for their respective strengths & weaknesses.  (And it was honestly difficult for me to fully commit to just one of these two applications until fairly recently.)  But if it is Soundshaper that enables you as a creator, is it just not feasible to keep a dedicated Windows machine around for CDP?

[Bestia Centauri]

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.

[Bestia Centauri]

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?

[lynx]

Thanks for the update!  Regrettably, without a Mac available to me, I can't even begin to try to help troubleshoot this.

It might be best if you polled Robert personally to enquire about this error message.  I understand that he's been investigating WINE, so he may have gleaned some insight into this problem.  And if not, he might be able to tell you what's likely (not) happening on the SS side to cause this error message.

[Bestia Centauri]

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.

[simonk]

To Add.

I have recently installed Soundshaper on an i7 Mac Mini OSX10.9.3 under Vmware Fusion running Windows7 64 Professional, works fine so far. I'll continue to test.

[sleestack]

hey, maybe try that renoise plug-in for CDP, and its real time. you might not get everything, but you might get a lot from it and more you didnt expect

[Bestia Centauri]

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.

[sleestack]

http://forum.renoise.com/index.php?/topic/41882-new-tool-30-cdp-lua-tool/

[Makrotulpa]

Heya,

Just thought i'd mention I got SoundShaper pro working well on VMWare Fusion with an Windows XP image.
Also works great under bootcamp.  Problem with Wine (and similar alternatives I think will be successfully installing CDP components.

The Renoise thing works great and hopefully the Reaper extension will open up access even more.