buzz forums

I've always dreamed of making machines, but I've never gotten off the ground coding. The most complex thing I ever made was a program that found prime numbers. I'd love to learn though. I'd love to know more about how buzz machines work, and I'd feel way proud if I could drop a synth of my own making into the machines view B)

Any recommendations on how to get started?

Depends a bit on what you want to achieve... You need to know quite a bit of C/C++ to move around the plugin interfacing system.

After that there will be lots of math to deal with DSP. Do you have anything specific in mind?

But.. to get started -> download the Visual Studio 2015 community edition for a nice C++ environment

Then search the buzz wiki for some examples of working buzz machine code and try to read it/understand the lifecycle of a plugin

Then.. visit musicdsp.org or #buzz #musicdsp on IRC - the rabbit hole is quite deep.....

Thanks Zephod! I love your machines!

I guess my biggest goal would be to attempt to make synths using novel forms of tone generation. I'd love to learn DSP. I have math phases I go through maybe once a year. I just took the accuplacer, which is a college entrance exam in USA. I got a perfect score in algebra, which just means I'm solidly college level. I've never done calculus or trigonometry, but I'm very interested in trigonometry. I also am fascinated by linear algebra, probability, non-euclidean and higher dimensional geometries and combinatorics! I keep trying to learn programming, but sadly I never get far off the ground.

I'd also love to just have a better grasp of how computers generate audio, and a better understanding of sound itself.

onecircles wrote:I've always dreamed of making machines,

DON'T DO IT!!! IT WILL EAT YOUR LIFE!

hahaha!

Many machines on IXix. New machines.

ags wrote:Many machines on IXix. New machines.

Well, one new one coming soon. PatchBay 3 is almost ready.

Making machines isn't very difficult. The hard part is making machines that always work as intended and never crash.

this is tempting me to make a cymbal plugin that always crashes, like intended.

Zephod wrote:this is tempting me to make a cymbal plugin that always crashes, like intended.

You should give up your high-flying super-programmer day job and become a comedian.

Zephod wrote:this is tempting me to make a cymbal plugin that always crashes, like intended.

Zephod wrote:this is tempting me to make a cymbal plugin that always crashes, like intended.

onecircles wrote:I'd also love to just have a better grasp of how computers generate audio, and a better understanding of sound itself.

I'd suggest getting hold of the book Electronic Music & Sound Design ( http://www.amazon.co.uk/Electronic-Musi ... 8890548401 ), it mainly focusses on Max (which might be a good introduction rather going directly into C++, PureData is a good free alternative to Max) but goes right back to the very basics of sound design and effects which can apply to any environment

There is also an introductory DSP class on Coursera right now, if you're looking for a structured format to learn the basics. It uses Python, but the principles are the same no matter what language you're using.

I started by hacking away at the cheapo template but that's very old now and probably not as good a starting point as it was.

If you decide to dive in it might be easier to try making a managed (.NET) machine first. I haven't tried that yet but I suspect it might be a less hair-pulling experience, plus if you want any kind of fancy GUI you won't need to mess around communicating between two dlls.

Spent the last year building electronic assemblies for the US military as per ipc/j-std, quit that because I'm a peaceful person. Have an electronics lab in my home now. Back in school for electrical engineering. Intending to build audio equipment. have to learn C and python. Can C be used to write buzz machines, or is c++ necessary?

onecircles wrote:Can C be used to write buzz machines, or is c++ necessary?

Don't quote me but I think it has to be C++ compiler. In fact I seem to recall that it has to be Visual Studio or at least the compiler.

How much actual ++ is necessary I'm not sure. Machine building is pretty simple, not much need for arcane knowledge.