Native modular synth/environments on the market?

[irrelevance]

I've got back into the studio after a long summer of outdoor activities and have fallen back into scope modular in a big way. However I'm going to be away from the studio for quite some time in the near future and have no way of purchasing an xite right now so will be needing a native solution to whet my appetite. I was hoping that there would be an adequate solution but as scopers we are still very spoilt with the modules and functionality and I haven't even upgraded to mod 4!

So is there anything remotely similar to flexor/mod III on the native market?

So far I've looked into:

Synthmaker
Synthedit
Vaz
Reaktor
Kyma
Max/msp
tassman

I have to say I haven't got beyond reading specs and feature lists at this stage but some already seem that they will not give the same level of satisfaction. When the hell will flexor native arrive Red!?? This isn't ment to be a thread bashing all of the aforementioned, I just want to find a program that will run on my mac and offer a similar programming experience to that of modular and scope. At this stage I'm thinking Reaktor is the closest fit with the like of synthmaker and max being a lot lower level/ more complex in the nature of constructing audio devices.
As always any ideas greatly appreciated!

[dawman]

http://www.sonigen.com/index.html

Reaktor has years of users too...

[lunaorbit]

Very nice and very affordable modular

http://karmafx.net/

[petal]

Pure Data:

http://puredata.info/

Very similar to Max/MSP but Open Source and free.
Pure Data has a very active community who share their work including several libraries of high level modules.

[buzzr]

Unless you get a Nord G2 there is no comparison with anything on the market. Max/msp, Pd, Supercollider all take programers to make them make sound. Reaktor is ok, but the sound is less then stellar.

[irrelevance]

Thanks for the replies so far folks. I listed the karmafx as Kyma for some reason must of had something else in mind but I was not very impressed with the module list, seems a bit sparse. Maybe the documentation is not complete?
As tfor the G2 I have certainly not ruled this out as second hand prices seem reasonable I would like to compare to the xite-1D but I can't seem to find a retail price in any online store...even thomann doesn't seem to be listing anything from soniccore which I find strange.

RE: reaktor I guess running as vst might mean that sound generation algo might need to be a bit leaner but maybe running at 96k and in standalone might improve things?

Seems most software modulars on the market are pretty under-speced compared to mod III. If an xite 1 D is not too far off from a secondhand G2 I could just bite the bullet!

[garyb]

if you want your computer to ONLY run modular, someone could write a native modular synth that would truly compete with Scope modular and all it's possible modules.

[jksuperstar]

Thanks for the replies so far folks. I listed the karmafx as Kyma for some reason must of had something else in mind but I was not very impressed with the module list, seems a bit sparse. Maybe the documentation is not complete?
As tfor the G2 I have certainly not ruled this out as second hand prices seem reasonable I would like to compare to the xite-1D but I can't seem to find a retail price in any online store...even thomann doesn't seem to be listing anything from soniccore which I find strange.

RE: reaktor I guess running as vst might mean that sound generation algo might need to be a bit leaner but maybe running at 96k and in standalone might improve things?

Seems most software modulars on the market are pretty under-speced compared to mod III. If an xite 1 D is not too far off from a secondhand G2 I could just bite the bullet!

Try the G2 "Demo" version. It runs natively, but has a few limits to what modules can run (can't use 4 outputs, the reverb module, or the DX-like FM oscillator, for example). But it is certainly good for a whet appetite.) It also has only 1 slot (vs. 4 in hardware), so you can't run "performances", only patches.

Go to Clavia.se > downloads > ...G2 > mac/windows, click the download button, and then download the demo. It's free, needs no hardware, and you can get MANY .pch2 files from electro-music.com's forum.

[spacef]

I've been digging the Reaktor manuals lately, especially the new Core features, and it is both close to scope SDK and very powerful.... having made stuff in scope SDK for years, Reaktor was cake... haven't built anything yet though....

[dawman]

Th Ventilator Leslie Pedal is very good and was created in Reaktor is lame for realtime they ported it over to use a SHARC DSP to make sure no zippers were heard when moving the knobs.
But who moves knobs or plays their instrum etns live anymore....??

[spacef]

sure it is easy to do in scope, simply by adding an envelope follower between the prameter knob/fader and the pad module it is supposed to control (well, and a couple of other stuff to actually make it work smoothly like a mix module and a constant, for example).... but it is extremely dsp hungry to do that for many parameters and it wouldn't fit a scope pci card to do that on a few dozens of params. I guess it is doable in reaktor too (i don,'t have zipping when i automate stuff like Razor for example, that i use a lot these days, and which is a third party device built in reaktor, and with an added spectrogram display which i guess was done by NI, or not may be reaktor does that too).
From what i know from the other "sdk" apps i used (reaktor and synthmaker mainly), is that scope is still unbeaten for interconnecting signals that are not supposed to be compatible. that's the main reason why i keep coming back to it rather than using more powerful tools.

[irrelevance]

Always good to hear a dev's perspective Medhi thanks. Well I made the decision and went for Max for Live over and above all of the other choices Ticks the boxes for portability between PC and Mac OS, is instantly usable/playable/tweakable. Live is a environment that I'm familiar with already and Max for Live opens up this environment to something more akin to the scope paradigm imo. This will also give me a soft intro to the Max way of working plus allow me to continue to focus on improving my workflow with a program I'm already familiar with. Actually what swung my decision was the recent anouncement of max 6, as it seems that Cycling 74 have acknowledged where the competition (NI) has been beating them and have brought "Gen" to the table.

http://cycling74.com/products/gen/

Gen has to be bought seperately but can still be run in a compiled patch even if you don't own the license so at least I'll get to make a decision after trying out some patches.

First project will be to get some midi control surfaces in Live for some Scope synths. Nothing to complex I think (there's a good article in soundonsound) probably a small synth like the three-o-three which I still love. Would be great to have Scope preset handling, bank changes, device loading as well as fully labled CC lists handled in the Live environment. Would love to work on more integrated modular control that is currently achievable with things like Silent Way but again integrated into the Live environment.

[borg]

Would be great to have Scope preset handling, bank changes, device loading as well as fully labled CC lists handled in the Live environment.

Now this would be fantastic indeed. I have downloaded a M4L patch for a Waldorf Pulse. I sold it to a friend, but will give it a try in the future. It could be a good start to do the same for scope devices, preset handling would be super. If time permits...

[jksuperstar]

Always good to hear a dev's perspective Medhi thanks. Well I made the decision and went for Max for Live over and above all of the other choices Ticks the boxes for portability between PC and Mac OS, is instantly usable/playable/tweakable. Live is a environment that I'm familiar with already and Max for Live opens up this environment to something more akin to the scope paradigm imo. This will also give me a soft intro to the Max way of working plus allow me to continue to focus on improving my workflow with a program I'm already familiar with. Actually what swung my decision was the recent anouncement of max 6, as it seems that Cycling 74 have acknowledged where the competition (NI) has been beating them and have brought "Gen" to the table.

http://cycling74.com/products/gen/

Gen has to be bought seperately but can still be run in a compiled patch even if you don't own the license so at least I'll get to make a decision after trying out some patches.

First project will be to get some midi control surfaces in Live for some Scope synths. Nothing to complex I think (there's a good article in soundonsound) probably a small synth like the three-o-three which I still love. Would be great to have Scope preset handling, bank changes, device loading as well as fully labled CC lists handled in the Live environment. Would love to work on more integrated modular control that is currently achievable with things like Silent Way but again integrated into the Live environment.

THIS idea deserves not only a thread, but a complete database of m4l devices to handle scope. I am also doing precisely the same thing. However, I am also adding OSC to the mix. This future proofs things, and lets me use either TouchOSC or the new Lemur for control purposes directly to the m4l device.

This way, I can also use other max devices, such as the Device Randomizer, Preset Mapper, etc. I am beginning with the JX-8P editor as my base example. All can be found on maxforlive.com.

[irrelevance]

Haven't heard anything from S|C regarding OSC support for scope 5 but if it helps with your current projects it's all good. Not sure if I would implement it into my design at an early stage. I'm moving through the max tutorials so it may be a couple of weeks at least before I can start on anything of real use. If there is a need for these devices I'm sure a thread could be started in one of the other forums ->development or ->study. I expect the midi stuff to be fairly straight forward and the real or perhaps a little easier than the challenges faced with OS or scope environment operations/commands like storing presets and device opening as I have no idea at this stage how max would interface at that level.

[Tau]

Speaking of Max4Live, here's a couple of devices I made a while ago to use with Scope:

CC SENDER 8
CC SENDER 16

Both are quite simple and straightforward. You can assign a MIDI CC to a knob, and it'll send it down the channel when you move it. This way, Scope's MIDI parameters can be automated in Live.

Enjoy!

[irrelevance]

Speaking of Max4Live, here's a couple of devices I made a while ago to use with Scope:

CC SENDER 8
CC SENDER 16

Both are quite simple and straightforward. You can assign a MIDI CC to a knob, and it'll send it down the channel when you move it. This way, Scope's MIDI parameters can be automated in Live.

Enjoy!

Yes I think we have been spoiled by the efforts of all of the devs here including yourself when it comes to useful midi utilities such as these. However I've come to realise how working with raw midi protocol across applications is like working in the dark, all memory and guesswork. Having a dedicated max patch should allow for full patch information, parameter snapshot/feedback as well as control.
I'm making progress with my first max midi patch but have hit a hurdle and so need to have a quick run through the Max midi tutorials to get up to speed. I think learning with Max will probably help me better navigate and use the Scope SDK environment also.

[dawman]

Razor uses 0-1024 in it's MIDI resolution so Filter Sweeps can be done smoothly but Sync is another story, especially when a fader is used to control the pitch of the Sync'd Osc. Perhaps because it's an addidtive synth, not sure why.
It's about time that NI and other developers realized that some folks enjoy motion in their music and decided to make their products better.
I first noticed NI was attempting to get better sound when I heard FM7 and thought it was a waspy little toy, But FM8 sounded beefed up, even if it was simply adding hidden Sine waves for more strength.
But I still punish any VSTi synth at soundchecks. FOH engineers tell me that the ITB synths sound distant, so they ask the performer to take off the effects, and then say nevermind, please leave them on................
But this doesn;t mean great ITB recordings can't be made. That's where these synths show thier real strengths.
Lady GaGa is not a fav of mine by any stretch, though I'd love to see her in my Jacuzzi, but the bloke who calls himself Big Red can do some impressive mixes using Logic and ITB synths. I will hear his latest stuff at CES as it's rumored GaGa will be there again. I'd rather see Shakira shaking her tailfeather, but she is in hiding for some reason.

[hollo321]

ive tried just about all of them, the only thing i found to have clean "quality" sound was synthmaker and its very flexible btw, kinna like sdk. But still that or ne other soft synth ive ever tried doesnt comes close to scope modular esp w. flexor. in native i can hear it but cant feel it no tingling sensations down bellow.

[faxinadu]

something i wrote a while back:

http://www.postunder.net/files/minimag/ ... ulars.html