Re:Rack 2 (Virtual Eurorack)
by syntheweave on Monday December 27, 2021 @07:51PM
(#29708947)
To convey freeform "modularity" sends you in one of two directions: visual diagram notation of this sort, and source code "audio programming languages", eg Supercollider, which let you define things more symbolically/declaratively.
To simplify this interface you have to relax the assumption that you will create a graph with arbitrary feedback loops: then your signal path can be acyclic or linear. Most things you will want to do in sound design use feedback in a very limited sense(e.g. a delay line effect) and can be turned into black boxes for a linear chain. Linear by itself is slightly too little power since you do want to mix and split signals at various points, and most commercial synthesizers use a "semi-modular" design that assumes a linear default and then adds particular methods of choosing modulation input at various points.
Regardless, modular's power to do anything is tempting to dive into. It's just a case of "not worth the effort" most of the time since having any input anywhere creates multitudes of obscure ways to get no output.
To simplify this interface you have to relax the assumption that you will create a graph with arbitrary feedback loops: then your signal path can be acyclic or linear. Most things you will want to do in sound design use feedback in a very limited sense(e.g. a delay line effect) and can be turned into black boxes for a linear chain. Linear by itself is slightly too little power since you do want to mix and split signals at various points, and most commercial synthesizers use a "semi-modular" design that assumes a linear default and then adds particular methods of choosing modulation input at various points.
Regardless, modular's power to do anything is tempting to dive into. It's just a case of "not worth the effort" most of the time since having any input anywhere creates multitudes of obscure ways to get no output.