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Electronic Music and the NeXTcube – Running Max on the Ircam Musical Workstation

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Re: Electronic Music and the NeXTcube – Running Max on the Ircam Musical Workstation

#21

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

coldtea wrote: post #17
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIR, it was a stock Motorola DSP. The only that was odd about it was that it was mounted on the motherboard. You could (and I did) get access that sort of DSP through daughterboards before the Cube, but NeXT took the step of saying "this ought to be a part of the computer itself". I really disagree about it as a direct ancestor of the contemporary plugin API. These have always run on the host CPU, not dedicated DSP…

> I really disagree about it as a direct ancestor of the contemporary plugin API. These have always run on the host CPU, not dedicated DSP chips (excluding of course Digidesign's original ProTools model, but that was DSP farm rather than just a chip). That's like saying "computing in the 80s was all about the home computer market, if we exclude the PC". ProTools was the biggest name (and quite close to a monopoly for…

But it didn't put the DSP inside the computer, which is what made the NeXTcube interesting.

ProTools had a separate box that had the DSP farm in it. There was nothing particular unique about that (at the time) (though running a DAW on it was definitely novel when they did it).

Re: Electronic Music and the NeXTcube – Running Max on the Ircam Musical Workstation

#22

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #18
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIR, it was a stock Motorola DSP. The only that was odd about it was that it was mounted on the motherboard. You could (and I did) get access that sort of DSP through daughterboards before the Cube, but NeXT took the step of saying "this ought to be a part of the computer itself". I really disagree about it as a direct ancestor of the contemporary plugin API. These have always run on the host CPU, not dedicated DSP…

It was the ancestor in the sense that the DSP features were part of the OS and not a bolted-on add-on with non-standard drivers. And also in the sense that you now had an off-the-shelf machine that could do non-trivial real-time synthesis and processing. When NeXT was folded back into Apple, the audio classes eventually became (more or less) the AUs in MacOS. An abstraction layer made it possible to run natively, or…

Using AU/VST etc. to run externally was a development that did not happen until later in the 2000s.

Waves in particular, who I worked with in the 2007-2014 era, did not do this until Linux got into shape to allow them to build plugin/DSP servers.

Re: Electronic Music and the NeXTcube – Running Max on the Ircam Musical Workstation

#23

Post by ggm »

My memory is that IRCAM at one point used the Digital systems Dec-10 for its music production. I have vague memories of visiting the Pompidou Centre in the early 80s, with ICRAM nearby.

At the time, the best most of us got was doing FM by toggling address lines fast and sitting a radio next to the CPU cabinet (there was code to do this on the DECUS tape). -AM was out because digital devices tend to be in the constant volts place.

Re: Electronic Music and the NeXTcube – Running Max on the Ircam Musical Workstation

#24

Post by rodgerd »

johndoe0815 wrote: post #20
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey FooGPT, don't you know that the Commodore and Atari machines were far more influential as platforms for realtime music applications, given that they sold probably two orders of magnitude more than the NeXTcube ever did, and had their own DSP processor for audio generation some years before the NeXTcube was even a concept?

The only Atari machine featuring a DSP (the same Motorola 56001 as in NeXT machines) was the Falcon, which was introduced in 1992 - four years after the introduction of the NeXT system (and one year before NeXT black hardware was discontinued). Less than 20,000 Falcons were produced [1], whereas around 50,000 NeXT machines were built. AFAIK the only Amiga that would have come with a DSP in a default configuration is…

The Amiga vs ST is interesting, because the ST ran away with a lot of the mindshare because of the built-in MIDI capability.

The Amiga, on the other hand, didn't have that (or even a synth chip), but it did have the Paula chip, which gave you the ability to play four channels of samples, which got you (generally) 8-14 bit/22 kHz output on the original machines. On that side of the fence you got a lot of trackers - four channel sequencers - to take advantage of the digital audio.

Re: Electronic Music and the NeXTcube – Running Max on the Ircam Musical Workstation

#25

Post by rvense »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #3
joren- wrote: post #2

The NeXTcube is an influential machine in computing history. The NeXTcube, with an additional soundcard, was also one of the first off-the-shelf devices for high-quality, real-time music applications. Here a restored NeXTcube runs an early version of MAX, an environment for interactive music applications.

Hey FooGPT, don't you know that the Commodore and Atari machines were far more influential as platforms for realtime music applications, given that they sold probably two orders of magnitude more than the NeXTcube ever did, and had their own DSP processor for audio generation some years before the NeXTcube was even a concept?

I think it depends which type of 'electronic music' you're talking about.

You're probably right that approximately noone was making rave and jungle on NeXT machines, but on the other hand it's true that approximately noone was doing academic electronic composition on Amiga or Atari, which is really the tradition that this is referring to. And these were mostly separate worlds for another decade.

Re: Electronic Music and the NeXTcube – Running Max on the Ircam Musical Workstation

#26

Post by rvense »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #13
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confused. What influence do you think the Cube had?

The development of custom DSP. The Cube had its own powerful DSP processor which could process sound in programmable ways, rather than simply playing an 8-bit sample or two. It was the direct ancestor of today's VST/AU/AAX/etc synth and FX plugin market.

There were many things going on at the time. Digidesign made the Sound Accelerator boards for Mac and Atari in 1988 or so? Roughly contemporary to this. I don't remember the exact year, but I think the first instance of commercial 3rd party plug-ins for a software platform is Waves's dynamics plug-ins for Digi's Sound Designer editor. These ran (non-realtime!) on the 56k DSP on Digi's expansion card for Mac (I don't know if the plug-ins were available for Atari).

Re: Electronic Music and the NeXTcube – Running Max on the Ircam Musical Workstation

#27

Post by joren- »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #3
joren- wrote: post #2

The NeXTcube is an influential machine in computing history. The NeXTcube, with an additional soundcard, was also one of the first off-the-shelf devices for high-quality, real-time music applications. Here a restored NeXTcube runs an early version of MAX, an environment for interactive music applications.

Hey FooGPT, don't you know that the Commodore and Atari machines were far more influential as platforms for realtime music applications, given that they sold probably two orders of magnitude more than the NeXTcube ever did, and had their own DSP processor for audio generation some years before the NeXTcube was even a concept?

I do recognize that 'one of the first off-the-shelf devices for high-quality, real-time music applications' it is somewhat murky and a lot was happening in the late 80s, beginning 90s. This thread already contains pointers to other - more accessible alternatives. Giving more proper definitions helps: With real-time I mean that audio (or a MIDI event) can enter the system and, with a low latency in the order of 20ms, a sound can be produced. With high-quality I mean that it is capable to generate 16bit samples at 44.1kHz (CD-quality, at the level of human hearing). This combination made it one of the first (the first?) truly general systems for electronic music applications.

Re: Electronic Music and the NeXTcube – Running Max on the Ircam Musical Workstation

#28

Post by vodou »

You gotta love that Tcl/Tk node based user interface in Max/FTS - something that is still alive today in Pd (Pure Data). Sure, it is clunky, probably not in line with any modern UX design rules. But, at the same time, it is kind of timeless, brutalistic and stylish in all its monochrome ugliness.

Re: Electronic Music and the NeXTcube – Running Max on the Ircam Musical Workstation

#29

Post by hurtuvac78 »

About IRCAM, I remember experiencing a spatial audio demo there, almost 30 years ago.

Put their headphones on. The sound seems to come from one side. Turn your head towards it. The sound comes straight in front of you. Intuitive and neat. In all VR headsets nowadays... Very cool place.

Re: Electronic Music and the NeXTcube – Running Max on the Ircam Musical Workstation

#30

Post by rurban »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #3
joren- wrote: post #2

The NeXTcube is an influential machine in computing history. The NeXTcube, with an additional soundcard, was also one of the first off-the-shelf devices for high-quality, real-time music applications. Here a restored NeXTcube runs an early version of MAX, an environment for interactive music applications.

Hey FooGPT, don't you know that the Commodore and Atari machines were far more influential as platforms for realtime music applications, given that they sold probably two orders of magnitude more than the NeXTcube ever did, and had their own DSP processor for audio generation some years before the NeXTcube was even a concept?

Influental in the hobby scene, for sure. He was talking about the revolution to do all this without extra DSP's, all in normal software, with standard HW.

And it was used in serious modern music, as practiced in the various modern music departments on the best universities, even when they did have the big money. In Graz they had this MAX/Next setup from IRCAM and simulated opera singers, in Paris at the IRCAM which did a famous movie with it, the Neitherlands, Gent and Montreal.

They continue to work on PureData, but it began taking over the industry with Ableton then. And with all it free clones.

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