Audio Software « Sounding

Audio Software

I try to include recommendable free and open source stuff, let me know if you have any suggestions! craque circle_a craque dot_net.

News and Forums

Editing and Analysis

Tom Erbe’s SoundHack and other assortied FFT goodies.
Roger Nichols Digital has great analysis plugins, including a free one I use frequently called Inspector
SPEAR (Sinusoidal Partial Editing Analysis and Resynthesis) is a fairly new and promising, with some very neato graphic tools
Amadeus Pro is one of the better low-priced audio editors out there.
Wave Editor is an impressive MacOSX app from Audiofile, it may just be my next favorite sound app.
Audacity is a good free, open-source audio editor and recorder.
Sonic Visualiser is a graphical interface for sound file analysis.

Looping and Performance

Brian Eno has a new generative application for the iphone called Bloom.
RjDj for the iphone is based on PD, using “sensory input to generate and control the music…”
Shawn Hatfield (aka Twerk) provides his max/msp patches for free downloads, start with Burnt Toast (one I’ve used live) or Mooquencer.
Musolomo is a performance-oriented sampling looper AU plugin, perfect for use with Live.
noise.io is a synth and sequencer for the iphone, not out yet but looking forward to it!
Renoise uses tracker-style technology for composing, costs some money but the free version is fully featured.

Sequencing

Modular Music Making

Cycling 74 is the home of the ubiquitous Max/MSP
PureData (PD) “is a real-time graphical programming environment for audio, video, and graphical processing” – what amounts to the “free” version of Max/MSP, as it is all based on code by the same guy (Miller Puckette)
Plogue Bidule is a max/msp-like audio manipulator

Free Players and Visualizers

Cog is an open source player for MacOSX only; natively plays OGG and FLAC, among others.
Songbird is a multi-platform player and librarian with a plug-in architecture based on the Mozilla browser engine (same as Firefox); definitely going for an iTunes look, but ultimately a lot more customizable. It also natively supports OGG and FLAC, and can scrobble to your Last.fm account.

Programming Languages

SuperCollider : now free, an “environment and programming language for real time audio synthesis and algorithmic composition.”
ChucK : another free real-time audio synthesis environment, does a lot of what SC can do, but with a simpler approach and much shallower learning curve; see also the chuck user’s wiki.

Plug-in Tech

MDA Effects are some of the coolest free plugins out there.
Destroy FX is a nice (free) suite of simple yet effective plug-ins for granular processing and spectral effects.
Pluggo is a superb and inexpensive collection of great Max/MSP plugins. Download the free Pluggo Junior to get a dozen of very useful basic plugins, highly recommended.
Audio Damage has some very nice sounding simple low cost effects

Stand-Alone Synthesis

Spongefork : really neat graphical noisemaker for MacOSX
Minicomputer : simple digital synthesizer for Linux
AlgoScore : “graphical environment for algorithmic composition” for MacOSX? (includes source code so it could be portable)
Propellerhead has the very popular ReBirth drum machine synth available for free through The ReBirth Museum. This is the software that introduced me to making music with beats!
Synplant

OS Specific