Pure Data

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a community for users of Pure Data. Pd (aka Pure Data) is a real-time graphical programming environment for audio, video, and graphical processing. Pure Data is Free and Open Source Software created by Miller Puckette, original developer of MAX/MSP

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Can you only use PD without VSTs? (feddit.it)

submitted 1 year ago by pieceofcrazy@feddit.it to c/pure_data@waveform.social

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I'm really new to Pd and I wonder how much stuff is it capable of doing sound-wise without having to use other software

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[–] DigitalAudio@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Honestly, PD is pretty flexible in a lot of ways, but I think to take full advantage of it, the name is very telling: it’s all about the data.

You can of course make music, but in order to get musical, you will still need to understand a lot about how audio data works in computers. Once you do, it’s easy to start getting very creative. You can write full musical sequences, or make music that slowly develops over time with a good degree of randomness.

Or you can take a more VST approach and make cool effects and sounds for your vocals or your guitar.

It probably will never fully replace DAWs because editing audio in PD is almost impossible, but it can replace both musical instruments and audio effects.

[–] pieceofcrazy@feddit.it 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

What concepts would you suggest looking into to start entering the audio data rabbit hole

So far I did very basic things such as a multi voice synth that plays chords starting from the root note or hi-hats using [noise~] and [vline~]. I was thinking about looking into granular synthesis next, but I'd also want to gain more fundamental knowledge (the kind of stuff that once you know it, you can apply it to do all sorts of stuff).

I started reading The Theory and Technique of Electronic Music, but it's very technical and mathematical from the very beginning and it feels a bit overwhelming for someone who had to google "cosine" to remember what it was.

[–] DigitalAudio@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 year ago

I think a lot of the more interesting exploration can be done via connecting PD with either a MIDI controller, or another software that produces MIDI output more efficiently than PD itself. Like a DAW, for example. That way you can leave all the sequencing or playing side of things to something else, and the processing and sound design to puredata. So be sure to check and understand the MIDI and OSC protocol for control. It's pretty simple fortunately.

Other than that, I think just familiarising yourself with concepts such as sample rate, buffer size and bit depth will make everything easier.

For example, understanding that audio is nothing more than a sequence of numbers that get distributed into buffers makes everything audio processing quite simpler to grasp. It's also convenient to know that these audio samples will have a minimal value of 0 and a maximum value of 1, that way you can adequately scale them to control the volume.

I would also suggest studying the overall anatomy of a signal. Like understanding what the frequency, amplitude and phase of a signal is and how changing it can change it's sound.

Other important terms:

LFO, ADSR, Modulation, Filter and Compressor. That's like a starter pack and general overview for a DSP begginer. Hope it helps!