best digital modular enviroment?

what do you noodle heads think is the best digital modular environment to work with or maybe is your favourite to use for whatever reason?

consider.....

features/depth

flexibility

ease of use/intuitiveness

compatibility to external elements

user interface/control

reliability

innovation

sound

Reaktor would be if it wasn't so goddamn buggy. especially for the mac.

i throw Vaz, AudioMulch and Numerology out there. There aren't very many modular sequencing environments like those purely on computers.

max/msp

g2

edit: and vaz.

but really, G2

G2

best interface for programming modularly ever. Sounds great too!

  On 6/5/2010 at 2:09 PM, Adam Beker said:

max/msp

why?

biggest abilities. You can almost make reaktor with max. You can make almost anything. It doesn't end with sound. Of course if you want to use it just for sound, reaktor may be better, easier and more intuitive. Don't know about g2 but if you want most features/abilities/depth/compatibility to external elements you should choose max/msp. Also check Pure Data, it's free and very similar to Max.

plogue bidule, anyone?

Reaktor and especially max are certainly very deep and versatile environments. But when it comes to layout and usability (in a musical sense) the g2 smashes everything else. And when it comes to live use pretty much no contest in the box. Granted you can get all kinds of controllers and such to use with reaktor and max, but nord is just there and ready to go, and well laid out. imo. :)

I second the above.

=D

Yeah I'll have a lil surprise for ya in a week here. :x

You bought me a micromodular?! That kind of little surprise?! :D

  On 6/5/2010 at 2:22 PM, Jonas said:

http://www.andyware.com/abox2/download/abox239.zip

If ABox2 was updated with a few features such as ASIO sound card abilites or, even better, Mac compatibility, it would probably be my favourite. A hybrid between that and the Nord G2 would be immense.

i tried max/msp before reaktor, and i had a hard time getting into it. i feel max/msp gives you a lot more flexibility in exchange for being a lot more of a pain in the ass to figure out. with reaktor, on the other hand, i've managed to blunder along on my own just fine... i haven't felt constrained, either, so i feel no reason to bother with max/msp for now. in a couple months, when i feel i 'know' (get bored of) reaktor, i intended to figure max/msp out.

never tried the nord modulars, but they look nice.

buzz seems powerful but had too much of a ghetto "open source" feel, and not in a good way

acid1 used to go on about EnergyXT, it seems properly mental but i haven't really used it

  On 6/5/2010 at 9:32 PM, hahathhat said:

buzz seems powerful but had too much of a ghetto "open source" feel, and not in a good way

I for one like Buzz's Excel 95 feel. When I first started experimenting with making music on computers Buzz was the only thing I could wrap my head around.

  On 6/5/2010 at 9:32 PM, hahathhat said:

acid1 used to go on about EnergyXT, it seems properly mental but i haven't really used it

I used energy xt for a good while when it had just come out and was being talked about on various forums. I really liked it in many ways but it already felt outdated when it came out and it never really meshed with me. I used it for one ep that I gave out for a while (never internetted it) . After that. I never opened it again.

edit: by outdated I don't mean to say it isn't useful, or that it isn't complex. It is, but the interface and the way you go about doing some things seems counter productive. There could be some huge update to it i'm unaware of, but I'm never really looking for new stuff like that these days as i'm pretty well covered.

edlab 702

woah so wait, does the nord g2 require the hardware to work? can it function like a normal plugin????

  On 6/5/2010 at 2:22 PM, Jonas said:

http://www.andyware.com/abox2/download/abox239.zip

Nice one!

For me, it's been Jeskola Buzz since '98.

http://www.buzzmachines.com/getbuzz.php

  On 6/6/2010 at 11:21 AM, slightlydrybeans said:

woah so wait, does the nord g2 require the hardware to work? can it function like a normal plugin????

yes the G2 requires the hardware (and better for it in many respects) but the demo is all software but only has one note polyphony and you can't save anything or process audio

does anyone know if any other digital modular has the morph functions like the G2?

It was a powerful feature on the G1 but on the G2 you can assign more than one morph group to any (or several)parameter at different rates and have that morph group controlled by a MIDI CC or even a modulator (LFO,Env) within the synth itself, I think the NL3 had a similar feature.

man the ability to make something with the flexibility of digital modular, and then run it on an external box is fucking mental. too bad it's like 3 grand. D:

put it on the list. :(

  On 6/6/2010 at 12:20 PM, slightlydrybeans said:

man the ability to make something with the flexibility of digital modular, and then run it on an external box is fucking mental. too bad it's like 3 grand. D:

I've seen them go for under £1k.

Played around with ABox2 last night for the first time in quite a while - forgot how good it is. If only it was being updated :(

You CAN save on the demo actually...

When I moved coasts, I didn't have my hardware so I use the demo for several months to hash out ideas.... It got me to experiment a lot more with the sequencer modules and various randomization techniques, since I couldn't use a sequncer program with it, as well as finding work arounds or the mono limitation.

4 months later my hardware arrived and I was able to load up all my patches right into the synth!

Hell, even if my hardware died, I'd probaly still use the demo to come up with ideas..... It's just faster and more intuitive. Then I could load up reaktor it something and go through the far more tedious process of designing the same sound from that model.

I'm a Reaktor man myself. Although I also love the Micromodular.

To me the Nord is much more like a modular synth, in that you can fire it up and start patching pretty much off the dome, and still achieve useful results. Reaktor kinda sucks when you try to use it like that.

The thing I like about Reaktor is that you can spend a lot of time creating an ensemble with it, get the panel how you like it, and then basically forget about what you just did and use the synth or effect you just made as if it was a regular plugin. So to me there's more of a defined two-step process there.

  On 6/6/2010 at 6:39 PM, Ascdi said:

The thing I like about Reaktor is that you can spend a lot of time creating an ensemble with it, get the panel how you like it, and then basically forget about what you just did and use the synth or effect you just made as if it was a regular plugin. So to me there's more of a defined two-step process there.

yess, the way reaktor is laid out is very good for establishing that feedback loop between composing and developing tools... you build up a library of widgets, which you use to make more widgets, and using those widgets gives you ideas/makes you want to make more widgets.

akai MPC has the same kind of subtly-inspiring-over-the-long-term recursive layout... sample->program->sequence->song->project, if you are clever and put in the effort to name/organize your shit, you can build up a library and get anything you want going fast by pulling out relevant bits