Virtual eurorack modular synthesizer vcv

#23

Pi is going to have trouble running anything in Java

#24

VCV is not written in java, its C++

#25

Sorry got my threads crossed there, thought it was in the patcher thread.

#26

(I know this is an older thread)

Been playing around with VCV for the last days. Its pretty damn nice, great quality and everything.

Yep, that is my experience too. My fan on my 2012 Macbook, is almost blowing full speed form the second I start adding modules to the rack and my computer get really hot.

And there is also pretty good guides on ho to build your own modules. Going to try in a few days, I think.

@SmashedTransistors Have you played with VCV rack?

#27

I used to use the good old KarmaFX Synth modular before switching to G2 and to the Axoloti

I did not tried a modular VSTi for quite a long time...

#28

Yeah tried Karma too, but only shortly. Was pretty cool :slight_smile: We used to have one of those German Creamware Pulsar cards, the modular DSP system. Was also pretty nice.

The VCV Rack is actually not a VSTI, it's a stand alone application, with some build in modules. Though I got it set up using IAC/Soundflower driver so I can trigger it with midinotes form Logic, without to much latency.

But, like Axoloti it's completely open source and I am finding lots of new stuff every day on Github.

#29

I fell into the VCV rack hole this autumn, and still in it (a bit too much) as a simple user. I really love it ! No optimizations for the moment ; CPU and GPU are always high. But you can add a load of modules and get amazing things happening.
I don't use it at all the same way as Axoloti, but I do use them together quite a bit.
Because of the real-time patching in VCV Rack, I seem to use it much more as a DAW, / composing mixing environment, than as an instrument. It's really managed to stop some of my GAS concerning a modular setup.
I do admit having wet dreams of a 'translator / compiler" from axoloti sub-patches to VCVRack modules, or some way of creating your own modules without any coding knowledge.
But for the moment I'm a very happy man, with so much amazing stuff at my finger tips, and still enough money to sip on wine in the evening :wine_glass:

#30

Yes, true. I heard an interview with Andrew Belt, the VCV Rack creator and he mentioned that they hadnt looked into optimization yet. So hopefully the side of it will become better in the near future :slight_smile:

If anyone wants to hear the interview and get a bit of background story of VCV Rack:

Someone tipped me, that I shoud try lowering the screen resolution of my Macbook. And this actually seems to do a difference, it take a little bit longer before the computer gets hot and fan goes crazy.

Yeah, I have promised my self never to buy any Eurorack all though I have been tempted many times. But VCV definately helps a bit on that side :slight_smile: Money saved :slight_smile:

I have installed developer version and have all ready made a few objects for its. Its a bit more complicated than Axo , but in general not too hard, once you got the development environment set up. Especially not when working with logic stuff like sequencers etc. But high quality osc's and stuff like that I am still learning about. That gets a bit complicated.

Yeah thats nice :slight_smile: Open source is really saving my creative life these days :slight_smile:

#31

Some random thoughts on VCV: I built it from source the other night on Linux and have been impressed so far. JACK support isn't compiled in by default but works great if you follow the instructions on the wiki. The plugin ecosystem is still in its earliest stages. There is this confusing sort of 'login' mechanism (both on the website and in the app) which seems to be laying the foundation for commercial plugin sales; you're not required to use any of it right now. In fact, if you build the bleeding edge sources in their default state, it is disabled.

I found that many of the available plugins are broken against the bleeding edge development version (annoyingly). Each plugin maintains its own version number which I think is supposed to track the overall release version number (Rack is currently at 0.5.1 and plugins seem to be at 0.5.x). The claim is made that all 0.x plugins are compatible which 0.x releases but it seems like backwards compatibility breaking changes are being made. Hopefully there will be a better strategy for dealing with plugin API level in the future.

The UI is the most impressive part of VCV to me. It is extremely responsive and smooth on my development machine, but might be too expensive for lower-end machines. It seems like considerable effort has gone into making the modules look pretty. I'm not totally sure how I feel about the "realistic" studio rack UI metaphor. There is nothing that feels like a real programming language here, no abstraction mechanism. You are purely using modules with their pre-fab UIs. It all looks super pretty though and feels very approachable, simple. Like you are just sitting down at a physical device that "just works", not having to deal with much software complexity. I think this last aspect is something we could improve on in Axoloti, making the experience for streamlined for new users, particularly less technically inclined ones. What's interesting about the UI implementation is that it is not using JUCE or QT or Java or any other very heavy UI library; it's using GLFW which is pretty close to raw OpenGL but helps out with normal UI stuff like input and events, etc. It's definitely inspiring me to think about directions for future Axoloti UIs. It might interesting to have a system that had the ability to work with both more abstract object representations (like Axoloti currently) and pre-fab skeuomorphic modules (like VCV) at the same time. I guess this is kind of like Reaktor maybe?

Unfortunately, the actual sound hasn't impressed me that much so far, but I haven't had a chance to go through all the modules.