[LAD] AlsaModularSynth and LV2

David Robillard d at drobilla.net
Thu Jul 14 05:17:22 UTC 2011


On Wed, 2011-07-13 at 22:55 +0100, Aurélien Leblond wrote:
> Hi everyone!
> 
> I have been using AlsaModularSynth for the past several years and I
> just love the sound of its internal modules... But AlsaModularSynth is
> a bit old looking, and it doesn't support LV2...
> 
> On the other hand, Ingen looks brilliant, but I have never been able
> to recreate what I was able to do with AMS... I always had some weird
> issues to set a simple VCO/VCA/VCF setup...

Indeed.  To provide the simple high-level "modular synth" approach
comparable to AMS we need some new plugins...

> - extract the AMS internal modules and create LV2 plugins from them...

++

> - first of all, would porting the AMS modules to LV2 change the sound?

Nope.

> - is it actually possible to do it? Or did I miss something?

Yep.

> - what is the future of Ingen? Altough it has be around for a while,
> it is never available in official repositories of Ubuntu for
> example... Is Ingen more meant to be testing LV2 plugins or can it be
> uses as a proper modular synth? I believe only Ingen and AMS have this
> modular way of creating synthesis?

It is currently unreleased, and has been for a very long time.  I am
aware this situation is less than ideal :)  It will be stable/released
at some point.  My work on LV2 is pretty much a direct offshoot of
working on Ingen - if you want a powerful modular environment that uses
(almost) exclusively generic plugins, you first need a powerful enough
generic plugin interface.  We're getting there. :)

The nice thing about generic plugins, though, is that porting e.g. the
AMS modules to LV2 benefits any program that uses LV2 plugins.  Ingen
will some day fill that role (and more, being designed to go beyond the
VCO/VCA/VCF "modular synth" thing into Max/Pd like territory).  I am, of
course, biased, but personally I think porting any valuable DSP bits
currently jailed within a single program to (LV2) plugins is one of the
best contributions to LAD that could be made right now.

-dr





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