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Cardinal – Virtual modular synthesizer plugin

cardinal.kx.studio

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Re: Cardinal – Virtual modular synthesizer plugin

#31

Post by drmr »

vegadw wrote: post #28
drmr wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think over 1200 modules is small? Definitely enough for endless hours of modular patching.

I'm not saying the quantity is small, I'm saying the subset is. There are 3,336 VCV modules. So, 1200 is only ~35%. Notably, for myself, only about 1/3 of the modules I have developed are there (some of mine are paid), and it lacks some of the truly great analog modeled modules such as those from Vult, Cytomics, and Lindenberg Research.

Any proprietary or GPL3.0-only modules would of course not be able to be built into the binary (also bit cheeky to consider those as "missing" since they are fundamentally incompatble). And this gives VCV Rack a better value proposition, so a reason for people to specifically use it.

We also have several modules that are missing from VCV Rack because they were never ported to 2.0 Some of our own modules are missing from the VCV Library because of their commercial restrictions.

And while the idea of an "infinite" rack of modules is really cool, that is also not the goal of Cardinal or how we feel it is best used. Quality of quantity first.

There is still a big list of potential modules to include: https://github.com/DISTRHO/Cardinal/wiki/Possible-modules-to... However we are somewhat limited by what we can even build in a single CI job on github. Our current builds are already quite stretching of what is possible. And again quality over quantity.

Re: Cardinal – Virtual modular synthesizer plugin

#32

Post by drmr »

fp64 wrote: post #30
drmr wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can read about all the main differences in this document: https://github.com/DISTRHO/Cardinal/blob/main/docs/DIFFERENC... One could argue that a plugin version is more than a minor feature. Cardinal is not affiliated with VCV in any way. We use the upstream Rack source-code as a base so any support towards VCV will ultimately "trickle down" (in the form of code) back to Cardinal as well.

Ah, thank you. The Plug-in version is one of the main selling points of VCV Pro though, no? I have VCV as a VST plug-in, plus the ability to use any VST plug-in inside VCV which were for me the main reasons to purchase it (apart from wanting to support the project and buy commercial modules).

Exactly, you said "little set of features" but this is anything but little.

You can also use any VST plugin inside of Cardinal using the Carla and Ildaeil modules.

Re: Cardinal – Virtual modular synthesizer plugin

#33

Post by goblin89 »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #15
kibibu wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VCV Pro has the DAW plugin feature as a paid extra. Cardinal seems to be taking the GPL version of VCV and using it to undercut the main income source of the VCV project.

That was never the intent. There are some technical issues with VCV Rack, and the lead developer is ... gently resistant to accepting patches/fixes from anyone else. Cardinal started as an attempt to do some things better than VCV Rack does. Most people involved think it would probably have been better if those changes had been upstreamed, but that's not VCV Rack's development model.

What technical issues are there with VCV Rack that are addressed by the forks (Cardinal, MiRack, etc.)?

I recently switched to VCV Rack 2 as my main creative tool, and it has been very stable and performant with frequent updates[0]. My experience led me to pay for Pro just to support this work (even though the free feature set is more than enough).

[0] My only beef, I suppose, is that those frequent updates can alter the sound in case of long-running projects; it never happened with the rack itself, but it did happen with some modules. That said, regular copies of the app and the plugins directory is a sufficient workaround for my purposes, it’s less than 50 MB after all.

Re: Cardinal – Virtual modular synthesizer plugin

#34

Post by gausswho »

drmr wrote: post #19
gausswho wrote: post #9

I'm a little torn on how I feel towards the Cardinal project. It claims not to be a fork on a technicality. It brings some improvements certainly and VCV dev has felt stagnant the last couple years, but it's also a little uncomfortably (to me) ideologically trying to GPL VCV. At least they are transparent about it. I like their community presence. I wonder if most users of Cardinal are aware how much of what they app…

What do you mean `trying to GPL VCV`? The Rack 2.0 project was always licensed `GPL3.0-or-later` so we are using it exactly as intended. Cardinal also contains MIT, BSD and CC0 modules. As long as all the code is compatible to GPL3.0-or-later since everything is built into a single static binary. A lot of work has gone into due diligence in order to vet all the resources that have gone into the project: https://githu…

I misunderstood the licensing choices. Thanks for correcting.

Re: Cardinal – Virtual modular synthesizer plugin

#35

Post by gausswho »

goblin89 wrote: post #33
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was never the intent. There are some technical issues with VCV Rack, and the lead developer is ... gently resistant to accepting patches/fixes from anyone else. Cardinal started as an attempt to do some things better than VCV Rack does. Most people involved think it would probably have been better if those changes had been upstreamed, but that's not VCV Rack's development model.

What technical issues are there with VCV Rack that are addressed by the forks (Cardinal, MiRack, etc.)? I recently switched to VCV Rack 2 as my main creative tool, and it has been very stable and performant with frequent updates[0]. My experience led me to pay for Pro just to support this work (even though the free feature set is more than enough). [0] My only beef, I suppose, is that those frequent updates can alter…

I wouldn't lump Cardinal and MiRack. The latter is more audaciously wrapping an outdated VCV and selling it on the App Store. I would like to throw my bones at VCV for such a thing. Hopefully they are working on it.

Re: Cardinal – Virtual modular synthesizer plugin

#36

Post by camtarn »

xxyyzzddss wrote: post #25
dag11 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When can I get this module in VCV? :)

They got you covered:(11:30) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qB4A32yrcwI&t=684s

Sort of.

I think in the video you linked, what's being shown is an instance of VCV Rack representing the modules running within the MetaModule, and there's a non-interactive MetaModule faceplate in that rack that you can use to map from the real MetaModule's controls to the virtual knobs of the modules it's running. Which is a pretty cool interface.

But I reckon what the GP is asking is for a real interactive MetaModule within VCV Rack, running the real firmware - i.e. VCV Rack hosts the MetaModule, which hosts VCV Rack, which could presumably host another MetaModule, which could host another VCV Rack ... etc etc.

Re: Cardinal – Virtual modular synthesizer plugin

#37

Post by drmr »

camtarn wrote: post #36
xxyyzzddss wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They got you covered:(11:30) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qB4A32yrcwI&t=684s

Sort of. I think in the video you linked, what's being shown is an instance of VCV Rack representing the modules running within the MetaModule, and there's a non-interactive MetaModule faceplate in that rack that you can use to map from the real MetaModule's controls to the virtual knobs of the modules it's running. Which is a pretty cool interface. But I reckon what the GP is asking is for a real interactive MetaMod…

You can host Cardinal inside of Cardinal inside of ..

Re: Cardinal – Virtual modular synthesizer plugin

#38

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

goblin89 wrote: post #33
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was never the intent. There are some technical issues with VCV Rack, and the lead developer is ... gently resistant to accepting patches/fixes from anyone else. Cardinal started as an attempt to do some things better than VCV Rack does. Most people involved think it would probably have been better if those changes had been upstreamed, but that's not VCV Rack's development model.

What technical issues are there with VCV Rack that are addressed by the forks (Cardinal, MiRack, etc.)? I recently switched to VCV Rack 2 as my main creative tool, and it has been very stable and performant with frequent updates[0]. My experience led me to pay for Pro just to support this work (even though the free feature set is more than enough). [0] My only beef, I suppose, is that those frequent updates can alter…

the plugin implementation and audio I/O backend are not designed in what would be considered "standard" ways among other audio developers.

it works fine, but it can work better.

cardinal also provides some of its own modules to provide better integration with host provided time.

cardinal also, of course, is now compilable to wasm allowing it to run in-browser. the fact that Rack itself can't be used that way is not, however, an issue or flaw, just a choice.

Re: Cardinal – Virtual modular synthesizer plugin

#39

Post by drmr »

goblin89 wrote: post #33
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was never the intent. There are some technical issues with VCV Rack, and the lead developer is ... gently resistant to accepting patches/fixes from anyone else. Cardinal started as an attempt to do some things better than VCV Rack does. Most people involved think it would probably have been better if those changes had been upstreamed, but that's not VCV Rack's development model.

What technical issues are there with VCV Rack that are addressed by the forks (Cardinal, MiRack, etc.)? I recently switched to VCV Rack 2 as my main creative tool, and it has been very stable and performant with frequent updates[0]. My experience led me to pay for Pro just to support this work (even though the free feature set is more than enough). [0] My only beef, I suppose, is that those frequent updates can alter…

The core differences are documented here: https://github.com/DISTRHO/Cardinal/blob/main/docs/DIFFERENC...

Re: Cardinal – Virtual modular synthesizer plugin

#40

Post by Archit3ch »

drmr wrote: post #26
Archit3ch wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Loading proprietary binaries at runtime is still GPL-compliant.

Cardinal does not load any external module binaries, the entire plugin is a single static binary. This is done on purpose for stability and resolving symbol conflicts within a single namespace. We believe this is the best way to operate an audio plugin. There is an LV2/VST2/3/CLAP/JSFX plugin loader (Carla or Ildaeil) that can load audio plugins, but these don't sit directly in the Rack DSP graph and do not modify th…

Or run VCV Free with all the modules and run a virtual cable to Cardinal. ;)
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