I’m getting back into software modular synthesis. I’ve had some experience with Creamware/SonicCore Scope (still have two 6-dsp cards, actually) and I’m looking to see if there’s a modern replacement. Has anyone done a comparison to the late 90’s Creamware/SC stuff?
I use both. Creamware for sound design, VCV for sequencing and all sorts of stuff. Also for sound design
Creamware is a bit harder to learn, but it sounds amazing, as you will probably know. The sequencing options in the creamware are less developed. In fact, I use VCV to sequence the creamware (sonic core, actually) sounds.
Rack will take you wherever you want to go with software modular. It has a somewhat different UI metaphor than the Creamware stuff. Creamware is less skeumorphic, more like one of the u-he modular plugins [ACE or Bazille]). Rack, at its core, is essentially a very close emulation of a hardware Eurorack system, although of course modules are free to be as software-like as they please. The main fundamental differences (other than the price ) are that (1) cables (and many modules, especially official and modern ones) are 16-channel polyphonic and (2) each cable incurs a 1-sample delay. The polyphony is obviously great and elegantly implemented, though you’ll need to glance at your CPU occasionally. The 1-sample delay sounds like a drawback and needs occasional manual managing (if you do parallel processing, you’ll need to manually sync the chains at the end) but what you get in exchange for the 1-sample delay is complete freedom to do feedback patching, including self-patching, of arbitrary complexity. I don’t know if the Creamware modular architecture imposes a delay, but I’m guessing it does since I think patching is pretty flexible.
Also, like Creamware, you get audio rate patching anywhere you want it (some modules don’t support this, or do some amount of smoothing, but I’d say that audio rate is the norm). No separation between audio and control signals.
… No separation between audio and control signals.
But note that, like in Eurorack, someaudio paths are dc coupled (high pass filtered at low cutoff), but cv paths are typically dc coupled (no high pass filtering)