Silence is my project to develop a new software sound synthesis system and 
algorithmic composition system. It is an experimental toy at the moment, but 
it actually is beginning to work.

If it ever became complete (probably 1 to 3 man-years of work), it would be 
an alternative, roughly, to Csound or SuperCollider. It would work for both 
off-line rendering and in real time, it would have an API, you could write 
GUIs, etc., etc. I have no idea if I'll ever finish it, and don't much care, 
as I am more concerned to write music. But I can't let the ideas die, so you 
never know.

I've never put in that much time on it, because Csound is frankly vastly 
more powerful now, and might always be, and WORKS RIGHT NOW. But again, I 
can't let the ideas rest, and you never know.

The silencevst project on SourceForge has up to date code and a build system 
for Windows/MSys/MinGW with SCons that probably could be got to work on 
Linux without much trouble. There is also LaTeX documentation in source code 
form.

The critical differences for Silence:

-- All signal processing in double precision, any number of channels.

-- All control signals are a sort of 'double precision, extensible MIDI'.

-- Core DSP graph and unit generators are written in cross-platform C++ as 
Lua extensions. Core classes are slightly more complex than STK, much 
simpler than Csound, Pure Data, CLAM, or CSL.

-- The Silence DSP graph is a signal flow graph. SignalFlowNode classes have 
Inlet ports and Outlet ports that carry control signals or audio signals. 
Graphs are created by connecting, in code, outlets to inlets. Silence infers 
the graph from the connections and generates an ordered, non-redundant, 
linear tick list.

-- Unit generators will be based on STK, and maybe on Csound if I can figure 
out how to wrap Csound opcodes without dragging in all of Csound.

-- All STK instruments will be available in Silence (right now there are 
only a few).

-- All CsoundAC Node classes will become Silence ModelNodes (very easy to 
port).

-- There will be a complete linear algebra library, up to eigenvalue 
decompositions, ported from boost::numeric::ublas and TNT/JAMA.

-- Write instruments and pieces in Lua or in C++ - no need to create a 
parser, a new language, etc., Lua is already better than anything I or James 
McCartney could do.

-- No GUI opcodes, no network opcodes -- only sound and music in the core 
classes. Lua has plenty of GUI and network libraries.

-- The DSP graph should be easily parallelizable in part using Intel TBB.

-- Extensible by subclassing, either in Lua or in C++, base classes 
SignalFlowNode, UnitGenerator, Instrument, or ModelNode.

-- Very compact and self-contained -- will always consist entirely of 1 
shared library, 1 header file, and 1 document.

Indications from tests of the toy are that Silence should run 75% to 95% as 
fast as Csound, without parallel processing; once parallel processing is 
implemented, and on a multi-core machine, Silence should easily be the 
fastest software synthesizer available.


Regards,
Mike



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Worrall" 
To: "Developer discussions" 
Sent: Monday, October 29, 2007 9:13 PM
Subject: Re: [Cs-dev] Custom Csound/music development services available


Thanks Mike.. Oh, I didn't know there was an examples directory...
(is that documented?)

I'll have a look and see how it goes...

ciao4now,

David
PS What's the status of 'Silence' I found the csound page via Google
but I don't think it's linked.
On 30/10/2007, at 11:57 AM, Michael Gogins wrote:

> Ah, you've got me. I do not have a Mac or OS X and do not maintain
> csnd on
> this platform -- I do maintain it on Windows and help to maintain
> it on
> Linux.
>
> If you can load csnd, however, I would think that the examples in
> the Csound
> examples directory that use it, should work as is.
>
> Perhaps you could be more specific with what you are trying to do?
> Can you
> try it on Linux and get it work, then see if it works on OS X? I
> know that's
> not what you want to hear...
>
> Hope this helps a bit,
> Mike
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "David Worrall" 
> To: "Developer discussions" 
> Sent: Monday, October 29, 2007 8:43 PM
> Subject: Re: [Cs-dev] Custom Csound/music development services
> available
>
>
> Thanks for taking the time to reply, Michael.
>
> On 24/10/2007, at 10:33 PM, Michael Gogins wrote:
>
>> Building Csound from sources requires installing multiple
>> dependencies, and
>> thus requires developers with some modest experience.
>>
> I am aware, I'm doing it all the time.
>> Using Csound binaries as a library in Python, Java, Lisp, Lua, C,
>> and C++ is
>> cake. It is documented, and there are example projects that work
>> and cover
>> the basics. So I think that what you are asking for basically already
>> exists.
>>
> Cake, of course, if only one could find the appropriate boulangerie
> without wandering around the internet!
> I suspect that it's cake if you're familiar with the overall
> development but from the outside it's pretty opaque once you get past
> the binary install mode.
>
> I'm a reasonably experienced user of pre v5 csound but it has taken
> quite a while to understand what all the options/non-options are for
> any particular HW and OS combination.
>
> csounds is not alone in this, but there is often no reference to what
> the HW/OS restrictions are for any particular package/tool and one
> can waste days trying to figure out what the appropriate toolset for
> a particular job is.
>
> For example. I have spent days looking and I have not been able to
> find a single tutorial or example of the use of csnd.py for OSX
> 10.4.10 which works 'out of the box'.
>
> Apart from the csound API reference manual, which is not a tutorial,
> what I've found is
> - Victor's 06 paper "Introduction to using the Csound Host API".
> - Victor's 06 paper "Scripting Csound 5"
> - Øyvind's 'A Sound Server Approach to Programming in Csound''
>
> but none that works. Can point me to an "example project[s] that work
> [s] and cover the basics" using csnd on OSX?
>
> ....
>
> What do you think about the interprocess(or) parallelism direction?
>
> cheers,
>
> David
>
>> Regards,
>> Mike
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "David Worrall" 
>> To: "Developer discussions" 
>> Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2007 12:02 AM
>> Subject: Re: [Cs-dev] Custom Csound/music development services
>> available
>>
>>
>>> Further, I think it would be very worthwhile to pull things apart
>>> and
>>> put them back together again so that CS
>>> a) was more generally accessible as (a dynamic) librar[y, ies] on
>>> multiple platforms. From the sidelines, the process of working
>>> towards a build seems torturous. This would involve a a clearer
>>> rationalisation of (python etc) extension scripting to better enable
>>> the integration of their developments (eg ipython) to be more
>>> seamlessly included.
>>> b) More broadly, an inter-process/inter-processor communication
>>> framework which affords better parallel instantiation.
>>>
>>> In summary a revision which emphasises the integration of csound in
>>> broader computational frameworks.
>>>
>>> David.
>>>
>>> On 23/10/2007, at 8:04 AM, Oeyvind Brandtsegg wrote:
>>>
>>>> Good.
>>>> We should probably try to define a subject for the research,
>>>> something that implicitly needs csound to be developed to the next
>>>> level (parser, multiprocessor, things already thought of for
>>>> csound6,
>>>> and so on), and something that might make us interesting research
>>>> partners for institutions outside of the purely music technologic
>>>> areas (?)
>>>> ... or am I being too opportunistic here ?
>>>> Obviously, there's plenty of subjects that could be interesting
>>>> *for
>>>> us*, but maybe we could try to find ways to incorporate those
>>>> subjects
>>>> into something of wider interest.
>>>>
>>>> Oeyvind
>>>>
>>>> 2007/10/22, Victor Lazzarini :
>>>>> I think partners might be academic or commercial
>>>>> institutions. Perhaps when I come up in December
>>>>> we can have a quick chat about it.
>>>>>
>>>>> It'll take a bit of preparation, but might be
>>>>> worth it. So far we seem to have people in five
>>>>> countries interested (Ireland, UK, Norway, Germany
>>>>> and Italy). Three is the minimum, but more is
>>>>> probably better. Also if we could have partners
>>>>> in ascension countries (eg. Poland, Hungary), it
>>>>> would be good. I know someone in Poland I might
>>>>> be able to ask.
>>>>>
>>>>> Victor
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I've talked briefly to NTNU about this.
>>>>>> They have their own agenda/profile for applications,
>>>>>> but it seems they could also be interested.
>>>>>> Last time we talked it was shortly before a deadline, and
>>>>>> I figured we'd not reach that one anyway. So I forgot
>>>>>> about it until now. How should we proceed ? I know very
>>>>>> little about FP7 or EU funding applications. Should the
>>>>>> partners be academic institutions, or commercial, or
>>>>>> preferably some of each type ?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Oeyvind
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 2007/10/22, Victor Lazzarini :
>>>>>>> Also this points to something I keep saying: we need to
>>>>>>> organise ourselves and look for research funding for
>>>>>>> Csound development. I think we have a case for a FP7
>>>>>>> bid, but we need to get several EU partners together for
>>>>>> it. >
>>>>>>> Victor
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> At 10:13 22/10/2007, you wrote:
>>>>>>>> Anthony,
>>>>>>>> Just my 2c of experience on this.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Yes, I think it will be useful for some to be able to
>>>>>>> hire programming help, >e.g. pay you to prioritize
>>>>>>> "their" task before something else that you >might find
>>>>>>> more interesting. I think that you might be able to find
>>>>>>> just as many customers outside of the specialist
>>>>>>> communities for music >technology (e.g. here). I do
>>>>>>> occationally write software for other >musicians or
>>>>>>> artists, and I do some csound/python for industry type
>>>>>>> clients. Obviously it is not the musicians and artists
>>>>>>> that gives the >best payment, but it's often the more
>>>>>>> interesting assignments. >I also think it is fair to
>>>>>>> release the results as OSS. >
>>>>>>>> Oeyvind
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> 2007/10/18, Anthony Kozar :
>>>>>>>>> Hello all Csounders,
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> This email is meant to be both an announcement and a
>>>>>>>>> request/survey for comments about the viability of
>>>>>>>> the new software development services that I
>>>>>>>>> am offering to the open-source computer music
>>>>>>>> community.  I would appreciate
>>>>>>>>> your feedback.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> I have noticed in the last few years that there are
>>>>>>>>> somewhat regular posts to the Csound lists where
>>>>>>>> users are looking for a programmer to perform some
>>>>>>>>> specific and usually brief task for them.  These
>>>>>>>>> requests range from asking for a working Csound
>>>>>>>>> instrument to a new Csound opcode to writing a small
>>>>>> utility program for some compositional or miscellaneous
>>>>>>>> computer music task.
>>>>>>>>> Sometimes these requests are answered by a volunteer
>>>>>>>>> and other times they are not.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> I would like to offer my Csound knowledge and my
>>>>>>>>> programming skills as a resource for hire to anyone
>>>>>>>>> who has a special Csound or computer-music- related
>>>>>> need along these lines.  I have worked as a volunteer
>>>>>>>>> developer for Csound and related software tools for
>>>>>>>>> over 4.5 years now and I intend to continue doing
>>>>>>>>> so.  But sometimes the immediate priorities of
>>>>>> volunteer developers do not meet the immediate needs of
>>>>>>>> open-source software users.  I
>>>>>>>>> would like to bridge this gap by allowing
>>>>>>>>> individuals to sponsor and direct my development
>>>>>> priorities on projects that I am already working on.  Or
>>>>>>>>> if you have a special private need for a
>>>>>>>> music-related software tool that needs
>>>>>>>>> updating or that does not yet exist, I am available
>>>>>>>>> to update or create it for you.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> It is my intention that all of the development work
>>>>>>>> that I would perform for
>>>>>>>>> hire in this way will be made available to the
>>>>>>>>> entire community under an appropriate open-source
>>>>>>>>> license.  So, my clients would in effect be
>>>>>> sponsoring the creation of new tools for themselves and
>>>>>>>> their peers. >
>>>>>>>>> In order to make this service accessible, I am
>>>>>>>> trying to keep the rates at a
>>>>>>>>> level that I hope will be extremely reasonable.  I
>>>>>>>>> anticipate the average task taking 2-5 days and I am
>>>>>>>> aiming to make a job of this size affordable. >
>>>>>>>>> More information including examples of the type of
>>>>>>>>> work that I am able to perform is available from
>>>>>>>> this section of my personal web site: >
>>>>>>>>> http://services.anthonykozar.net/
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Also, Sourceforge has recently opened a public beta
>>>>>>>>> of a new "marketplace" for buying and selling
>>>>>>>>> open-source software services.  So I may soon be
>>>>>>>> listing my services on Sourceforge too. >
>>>>>>>>> I gladly welcome all feedback about the viability
>>>>>>>>> and usefulness of these services, their pricing, and
>>>>>>>>> whether or not you would ever consider employing
>>>>>>>> this type of service. >
>>>>>>>>> Thank you!
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Anthony Kozar
>>>>>>>>> anthonykozar AT sbcglobal DOT net
>>>>>>>>> http://anthonykozar.net/
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>> ...
>>> _________________________________________________
>>> experimental polymedia: www.avatar.com.au
>>> Sonic Communications Research Group,
>>> University of Canberra: creative.canberra.edu.au/scrg/
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>
> _________________________________________________
> experimental polymedia: www.avatar.com.au
> Sonic Communications Research Group,
> University of Canberra: creative.canberra.edu.au/scrg/
>
>
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_________________________________________________
experimental polymedia: www.avatar.com.au
Sonic Communications Research Group,
University of Canberra: creative.canberra.edu.au/scrg/



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