Posted by Stefano on Fri, 21 Apr 2023 07:34:37 GMT.
I am glad to announce we have just released version 0.4.0 of Brickworks, the music DSP toolkit that supplies you with the fundamental building blocks for creating and enhancing audio engines on any platform.
Posted by Stefano on Mon, 20 Mar 2023 16:39:36 GMT.
This post is just to inform you that we are coming to Anaheim, California next month to attend the 2023 NAMM Show on April 13th-15th.
It's going to be our first time there, so we decided not to have a stand but rather explore and enjoy. We are however eager to meet anybody who wants to get in touch and maybe want to conduct business with us. In case you do, please get in touch.
Posted by Stefano on Mon, 13 Feb 2023 17:05:21 GMT.
As promised, in this second episode we'll see how the potentiometer interaction metaphor influences music DSP and how we can leaverage our knowledge to improve user experience.
Posted by Stefano on Thu, 02 Feb 2023 17:45:20 GMT.
They infest synthesizers, effect units, amplifiers, studio gear, electric musical instruments, DAWs, and plugins. Potentiometers, whether knobs or sliders, real or virtual, are definitely the most common mean of interaction with music gear.
No doubt there's much more to them than just representing some value within a given range. Let's uncover a few secrets and see how they can inspire day-to-day DSP.
In this first episode (out of two, presumably) we'll touch on the relevant, and perhaps trivial, analog aspects. Getting them right is, however, essential to the more advanced DSP concepts to be discussed in part 2.
Posted by Stefano on Sun, 22 Jan 2023 21:37:34 GMT.
Sorry for not having updated you in a long time. We actually have quite many news but we've also been incredibly busy lately (and still are).
Let's get started right away!
Posted by Stefano on Tue, 20 Sep 2022 16:11:45 GMT.
This year's DAFx conference, in which we have presented two new scientific papers, is now just behind us and we're now announcing our participation to the upcoming CIM and ADC conferences.
So, what are we doing at conferences?
Posted by Stefano on Sat, 06 Aug 2022 11:03:41 GMT.
Ciaramella is not the first declarative dataflow language around. Remarkable members of this category of languages, at least to some degree, include FAUST, Lustre, Kronos, Reaktor Core, and Max's Gen.
Last time I discussed why we were unsatisfied with them and had to invent our own. Essentially, to me they don't really seem to be designed for actual development of music tech products (Lustre being innocent here, as it is openly not designed for that). Plus, I am somewhat irritated by their strong coupling between syntax and complier internals which cripples modularity (details in this paper, and I have to admit we might have mistreated Reaktor Core somewhat, but it's still practically unusable for other reasons IMO).
Another aspect in which these languages are lacking or needlessly complicated is branching/conditional execution (vulgarly, "if"s, "switch"es, etc.). There are valid technical and historical reasons for this, but I believe it's time to get past them. In this post I'll tell you what we're doing about it in Ciaramella.
Posted by Stefano on Fri, 15 Jul 2022 10:25:55 GMT.
After all it's however 2022 and musicians/producers want the affordability and ease of use of today's technology, understandably. Here's how we modeled the MOS 8580 SID chip and "ported" everything to the modern world.
Posted by Stefano on Tue, 12 Jul 2022 16:01:13 GMT.
This time I'll tell you about the hoops through which I've been going to run the program on real hardware.
Spoiler: it was an expensive nightmare leading to a huge final reward.
Posted by Stefano on Fri, 08 Jul 2022 15:45:08 GMT.
Getting the design to actually work was easier said than done, to put it mildly. This second part of the story is about the implementation details.
