I did not want to hijack the OSC prototype thread with my Csound boosterism, so I created a new thread for this. Csound is really not particularly difficult.
Obviously I am biased, but to me Csound is very much easier to use than Max or PD. The built-in opcodes allow one to create many different types of synths with very few lines of Csound code, which is basically simple C-like syntax with few idiosyncratic aspects.
Csound has some distinct advantages including :
- Totally freeware and open-source
- OSC compatible
- up to 96k 32bit sound quality
- Extensive library of built-in opcodes
- Extensive tutorials and examples available online
- Strong and helpful user community
Ableton users may be interested in the recent release of Csound4Live, which allows Csound to be run as a plugin for with Max4Live.
Basically I just wanted to post this so people would not be scared off Csound due to prevalent misconceptions about it being "not suited for realtime" or "difficult".
I hope someday being able to write synths in Csound for the Eigenharp via OSC or directly through the Csound API, but am a relatively inexperienced C++ programmer and as of yet been unable to get EigenD to build. However I believe it should be quite feasible to achieve something similar to what barnone has done with Max/Msp and the OSC prototype using Csound. Alternatively the Csound API would allow direct software communication without OSC, but would definitely require a strong C++ programmer to implement and integrate it with EigenD.
I have tried to get some of the Csound gurus interested in this, but have not been successful. Perhaps some folks here might consider it.