Csound Alternatives
Csound
Csound is a sound design, music synthesis and signal processing system, providing facilities for composition and performance over a wide range of platforms. It is not restricted to any style of music, having been used for many years in the creation of classical, pop, techno, ambient, experimental, and (of course) computer music, as well as music for film and television.
Csound 5 is the current version and its software architecture has been greatly redesigned, presenting a number of significant advantages over Csound 4 for both the user and for developers wishing to call Csound from their own software. Csound 5 supports the most popular operating systems in use today, including Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. Csound 5 will also probably compile and run on other Unix-based systems. (Success has been reported with NetBSD). A package for MacOS 7-9 is updated from time to time as well.
Csound is now free software released under the GNU Lesser General Public License. It is developed by a community of volunteers and new contributors are welcome. Csound was originally developed by Barry L. Vercoe at the Music and Cognition Group of the M.I.T. Media Laboratory, with partial support from the System Development Foundation and from the National Science Foundation Grant #IRI-8704665
Best Csound Alternatives
Looking for the best programs similar to Csound? We reviewed our top picks below. Let's see if there are any Csound alternatives that work on your platform.
Pure Data
FreeOpen SourceMacWindowsLinuxPd (aka Pure Data) is a real-time graphical programming environment for audio, video, and graphical processing. It is the third major branch of the family of patcher...
Max/MSP
CommercialMacWindowsInteractive visual programming environment for music, audio, and media In use for over twenty years by performers, composers, artists, scientists, teachers, and...
Features:
- Real-time processing
- Visual Programming
SuperCollider
FreeOpen SourceMacWindowsLinuxBSDA real time audio synthesis engine, and an object-oriented programming language specialised for music. SuperCollider was created in 1996 by James McCartney, Since...
Sonic Pi
FreeOpen SourceMacWindowsRaspberry PiSoinc Pi is a live-coding audio software. Learn to code creatively by composing, improvising or performing in an incredible range of styles from classical through to...
Features:
- Live coding
- Music Composer
ChucK
FreeOpen SourceMacWindowsLinuxChucK is a programming language for real-time sound synthesis and music creation. ChucK presents a unique time-based, concurrent programming model that's precise and...
Shoebot
FreeOpen SourceMacWindowsLinuxShoebot is a pure Python graphics robot: It takes a Python script as input, which describes a drawing process, and outputs a graphic in a common open standard format...
ORCA
FreeOpen SourceMacWindowsLinuxOrca is an Esoteric Programming Language and live-coding environment for musical experimentation. In Orca, each letter of the alphabet is an operation, lowercase letters...
Features:
- Modular System
- Real-time processing
Overtone
FreeOpen SourceMacWindowsLinuxOvertone is an open source audio environment designed to explore new musical ideas from synthesis and sampling to instrument building, live-coding and collaborative...
Pyo
FreeOpen SourceMacWindowsLinuxPyo is a Python module to help DSP script creation. Pyo contains classes for audio signal processing. With pyo, the user will be able to chain such classes directly in...
PraxisLIVE
FreeOpen SourceMacWindowsLinuxPraxisLIVE is an open-source, visual programming environment. Experiment with and create projects using a visual patching system coupled with the power of programming in...
Features:
- Modular System
- Real-time processing
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