NuDSP
has released a pre-alpha version of
Mod271,
a modular synthesis
environment with an intuitive interface
09th
November 2007
Mod271 pronounced as
"Mode" (the 271 being a play on
Euler's constant)
is really a DSP playground with unified audio/MIDI
support and functionally is supposed to exist somewhere
in between
Reaktor,
reacTable and Reason
(although this isn't the case quite yet). I will refer
to Mod271 as M271 throughout the documentation.
This all started out as my own personal frustration with
clumsy knobs and sliders in current use by most audio
software. I wanted to have an intuitive interface with
variable resolution control built-in. The entire
interface is rendered in 3D, so you can zoom in and out
with the mouse wheel. Zooming in on a node will give
you more precise control over its position, zooming out
does the opposite.
Really I wanted an environment where there is no
different between MIDI or audio signals, so an audio
effect will work the same with a MIDI signal. Also I
wanted an integrated way to handle envelopes, something
that has a direct and visual connection with a node,
this ended up meaning the removal of the GUI all
together, there is only one interface for everything :)
PCs are fast enough now to make this happen.
I'd like M271 to end up as a total modular environment
where you can easily make performances just as easy as a
synthesizer or effect
The current release that you will find in the
downloads
section is very very pre-alpha so please be kind and
report any bugs in the appropriate section in the
forum, the
entire project has been written on my laptop and only
tested with several ASIO devices so there are going to
be some issues there. Most of the optimizations have
been at the structural level which is pretty optimal
currently but there are plenty of things that can take
advantage of some SIMD. The sound quality isn't really
optimized either, there isn't any over-sampling yet and
no anti-aliasing. This will all be taken care of in the
future along with the addition of alias free BLIT
oscillators.
I'm very interested in hearing all feedback on this
project, it's still in a rather amorphous state right
now so it would be nice to get as much feedback and
possible new feature requests before I set too much in
stone on the next round of refactoring.
Some cool features include:
- ASIO/MIDI support
- built with portability in mind, a mac/linux
version shouldn't be terribly difficult.
- everything is a full audio-rate
signal which means you can do DSP type stuff to say
a MIDI stream.
- there is a VSTi version in the
works but it is still pretty unusable in a general
case.
- every node can be automated with
unlimited control points and automation takes place
right in the 3D environment.
- nodes can influence any amount of
other nodes or switched into a singular state.
- all signals are drawn at audio
rate and with full hardware acceleration, although
this can be disabled.
- the entire environment is
rendered in 3D.
- radial and linear influence modes
are supported for every node.
- all envelopes and motion are
completely sample accurate, meaning you can make an
oscillator out of an envelope.
- over 25 node types, of course
this is going to grow.
- Python node type that will allow
easy extensions.
- and most importantly it's fun!
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