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Comment by indigochill | Hacker News Reader

On this topic, something I don't understand which is probably just a limit of my experience in the field is if one is sufficiently talented at digital synthesis, why not use CSound for everything? It supports virtually any synthesis technique and can run in real-time. It also gives designers the freedom to define their own parameters on their instruments. And it's open source. But it seems mostly relegated to art projects, which confuses me.

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Because Csound is mostly a trashcan of naive cookbook implementations of synthesis and processing algos collected by academic dilettantes who seem to have no clue about commercial production values or professional DSP coding.

Simple example - Chebyshev polynomials. How many Csound users even understand that these will alias if they cross Nyquist?

So Csound does a lot badly. It's not quite unusable in a commercial setting, but the sound quality is a long way behind even basic VSTs - which means the steep learning curve and 1960s-style programming system don't justify the benefits.

Supercollider has similar issues. The control language is more interesting, but the synthesis and processing code are similarly unrefined.

Well, for a lot of us the interface (and all the limitations or possibilites attached to it) --is-- what makes an instrument.

I mean, I can put stuff into WordPress with SQL directly, but it's much nicer to do it with an interface.

Similarly, I can program a snare sound using a noise generation, an envelope, and a filter, but it's sometimes nice to grap a box and it a button even if I'm constrained by whatever filter and parameters are already in the box... because the interface will dictate a lot of how I use the tool, and that is a feature not a bug :D

I think CSOund's popularity with art projects and the elctoacoustic scene in general comes down to interface. CSound is great if you're supplying/inventing the interface or program to create the sounds/music.

Compare a CSound IDE to something like the Ableton Operator interface or even PureData as someone else mentioned. Very different (and both great for different approaches and people!). A lot of folks want flexibility in the sound by exploring an interface/instrument without having to come up with that interface/instrument themselves.

Because typing and mouse-clicking are not everybody's favorite way of making music, if they can even make music that way, or if CSound is even appropriate for the kind of music they want to make.

Have you tried programming a DX7? It's difficult enough already with just 6 FM operators. Expand to "virtually any synthesis technique" and most musicians will decide they don't need that much flexibility.

But there are some exceptions, e.g. Autechre are well known for using the similarly flexible MaxMSP. As Sean Booth said in an interview with Resident Advisor[0] when asked about new equipment:

"I just use MaxMSP now, because in Max I can generally build the thing I need, and if I don't know how to do that it'll generally be worthwhile learning. Intellectual capital or whatever. So rather than spend me money on equipment, I spend me money—as time—in learning how to build stuff."

[0] https://www.residentadvisor.net/features/2756

> why not use CSound for everything?

Because there are a ton of alternatives to CSound.

I use Max/MSP. But you could also use PureData, SuperCollider, Chuck, JUCE, etc.

Why use something like CSound when you don't need it's complexity? Sure, it can theoretically do all the same stuff, but if you can buy a software package or hardware box that saves you a few hundred hours of doing stuff yourself, the vast majority of which is re-implementing what's readymade in other tools, it's typically an easy choice.

Thanks for mentioning CSound, hadn't heard of it before and it looks interesting. :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Csound

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