Cardinal - DPF-based Rack wrapper (VST, LV2, JACK, WASM)

Work on redoing the fundamental UIs has finally been done (non NC/ND).

Also an audio to CV pitch module, which is based on GitHub - DISTRHO/PitchTrackingSeries (aubio) has been added;

866 modules total atm.

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922 modules total atm

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that’s pretty cool. Does it all run on the main browser thread?

Afaik, Cardinal itself runs in a single thread.

What’s the latency like?

There is no audio (or midi) input (yet), but the responsiveness and load is what you can expect from a browser :stuck_out_tongue:

i have found the cpp code cross compiled like this runs pretty well in the browser. I have worked on commercial products that do this. But never any that require super low latency.

Oh, just tried it today, I really needed modular stuff done inside Maschine and I don’t own VCV Pro.

My experience :

I opened a patch, half of modules missing (a few premiums and @Squinky’s stuff not available). So i opened the library, (very slowly, uhh) and I typed to… wait typing doesn’t work. So I scrolled in a few categories to find replacements, and as I never used all these legacy modules, it made me mad angry, couldn’t recognize stuff, I just wanted to sketch something fast and record it, didn’t find good replacements, then I searched a light mode and changed every bogaudio module to white (apparently they deliberately made everything grey/black cuz they wanted a dark mode in VCV), and was not enjoying anything

So at this point I was literally MELTING, so I rage quit, I went online, and I bought VCV Pro x)

Thanks Cardinal, you made me a happy customer of VCV. My patch worked as intended, and I could make my stuff without trouble

Now, more seriously, I know there is no comparison possible, as it is really barebones (functional, but barebones) and VCV is a finished, commercial product. I think I’ll try when I’m not in a rush to reach some result I have in mind, as I think it could be nice to test modules I can’t have in VCV. But the few things I did inside the VST, well, I could play the keyboard without latency, connect modules, the typing thing is very annoying tho, sometimes it works but rarely. Overall it feels clunky but it’s somehow cool to have an alternative to VCV

Edit : Oh crap, you were talking about the web version, my bad

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I just noticed that squinky modules are not available as well. Why is that, I guess it’s a license issue?

I can echo the typing issue, unless you type at grandma speeds letters are missed.

For sure a dark/light mode would be helpful. I like dark modules most of the time but I do find it a bit much with Cardinal somehow. I feel like a lot of UI stuff could be improved, I’m really not a fan of the Fundamental re-skin both in terms of looks and usability (there’s a reason the VCV VCA has the in and out next to each other).

I’m very glad this exists though, I bought Pro without a thought because I really want to support the brand/product but about a month later it stopped working in Bitwig for me. Cardinal works so I am using that but there are many modules I miss. But something is better than nothing and there are a lot of great modules available.

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I tried the web version and found it completely unusable - there was a mismatch between where my cursor was on the screen and what I was apparently clicking on - so when I’m in the module browser and click on a module to select it, a completely different module ends up in the patch, and when right clicking on a module in the main window, I’m getting settings for a different module, or maybe the background which opens the module browser… Great idea but…

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Re-skin was necessary because of license restrictions. Intentionally the width is kept the same as the original modules, but obviously the placement of sockets and knobs had to be different as to not be too similar to the original designs.

It’s a compromise, but a better alternative than not having these modules at all. I think they are totally functional and by now I tend to use other vendors’ modules over the Fundamental ones anyway.

Now, contributions from the community to improve designs, code and functionality are appreciated of course. However it’s much easier to complain than to contribute :wink:

@emmanuelsynthetiseur I don’t think I’ve ever read such a melodramatic post on the forum, lighten up man. You clearly go around life having unrealistic expectations, just setting yourself up for failure. But I’m glad you are happy with the Pro version, it’s meant to give the “full” experience that you are expecting.

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Once again insulting everyone who wants to support the original developer of VCV Rack and has bought the Pro version…

To paraphrase: “You’re melodramatic, you need to lighten up, you have unrealistic expectations and you set yourself up for failure - Rack Pro was made for people like you.”

To put it another way: “You want stuff to actually work? - Rack Pro was made for people like you.”

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Well, I took time to write with such detail because I found this little adventure hilarious. You missed the “x)”, obviously

I’m autistic so my mood can casually go savage for whatever reason, habit-changing stuff is the villain of my life unfortunately. And, yes, I expected VST2 version to work cuz it is actually said on Github that it’s available and VST3 version is experimental. It is not unrealistic.

And in fact, I said a lot of good stuff about Cardinal that you missed to just take the bad stuff as an excuse to flame a stranger online for no other reason than you don’t like what I said, and you needed to shit on VCV Pro users. I said that I understand it’s ongoing and not finished, that I could use the keyboard without latency and connect modules, which means that core functions work as intended, and nowhere, absolutely nowhere, I said something close to “I will never file a bug report” dude. I report stuff when I got time to use it in depth, not like these days.

And to be honest, such a broken thing, on a clean install with almost nothing on my hard disk, i’m obviously not alone to get this, so the issue will be reported way before I have the chance to spend more than 30 minutes on music software.

Won’t make heat out of this petty stuff, it doesn’t belong here. Chill out

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Yeah, I think mine were gpl3 and they require gpl 3+?

Indeed, it is intended for the plugin to have future compatibility, so the + is required. Everything is statically compiled into a single binary, so everything has to be compatible with the main Rack source license, which is GPLv3+.

@emmanuelsynthetiseur I think there are varying definitions of “work” here. There are many DAWs and Operating Systems and bugs exist. If they get reported, they maybe can be solved. It’s as simple as that. So far any kind of bugs like this are very niche to specific DAWs and OSes. For most people it just works™. The same thing holds for Rack2Pro, some people experience very specific bugs, if they get reported they maybe can be solved.

Now if you expect “premium” (I assume you mean “closed”?) plugins to be included in an opensource project then you don’t understand how software works. That’s ok, but again setting yourself up for failure. It’s clearly explained how the project works and what can and cannot be included. This very explicitly says that closed and incompatibly licensed projects are not a part of it. The wiki does include a list of potential modules that may be included in the future.

If you want the exact same features as Rack2Pro then of course you should buy that!

I would suggest folk seek to manage their expectations, and if someone talks about rage, realise it could only really be at their own expectations (even if it appears they are projecting externally), there’s no need to get upset at that (i.e. at your own expectation), it just creates a feedback loop. Listen to the needs not the words, so recommends NVC.

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Once again, assuming stuff and lecturing me. So I thought about it, I begin to understand a little bit how you could be upset about my post, as a software engineer etc. Even tho it was a funny post to write, wouldn’t expect to upset people.

So, I never expected anything besides “hey let’s try that”. As I already stated, it was not the right tool at the right moment, who cares. There’s a big difference between trying a tool on my free time to get some music done and failing in life, fortunately

I won’t expect it to have premium modules (not “closed”, paid for) in an open source and free project, it just strucked me cuz I loaded a random patch full of those instead of creating a new project. Next, how the fuck could I want the exact features in Cardinal than in Rack ? I didn’t expect it to behave like Rack, as it’s clearly stated that it won’t : and you keep thinking that I will use Rack OR Cardinal just because it’s not polished, which is not the case. As I said but it seems it didn’t reach your eyes, it’s cool to have an alternative to VCV. Also I can try Aria’s modules, which is another reason.

Anyway, trying to lecture me inside a neurotypical framework is setting yourself up to failure.

@milkii

Ok, so you think I blame Cardinal for being upset ? Hmm that explains the fuss. Dude I can be upset because somebody talked a bit too loud, that’s called a meltdown, in actually useful books about psychiatry and autism, not NVC. Tho I admit I learned a few useful tricks from these guys back in the day.

But I think indeed, folk will benefit from your suggestion, as getting angry at some stranger is not the best way to introduce people to the software you believe into

That being said, a Discord could be useful for users to share stuff about Cardinal or reach the devs, users won’t necessarily come to IRC and Discord is pretty common these days.

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There’s now https://minicardinal.kx.studio which is a very cut down version of the above for quicker loading.

Re Discord; my personal preference, as a leftie FOSS advocate, is to divest my time and energy from propriatory systems as much as possible, to try ratchet my life away from them. falkTX is of the same mind. Also, as they are not short of things they would like to do with Cardinal, as well as other projects, having a load more folk interested but bugging them for help and/or requests would not be as fun for them.

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15 posts were split to a new topic: VCV - NI Maschine — and Midi