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SOUL: The First Universal Sound Language

Posted: Wed Dec 05, 2018 9:04 pm
by CrocoDuck
HI There!

Thanks to the Faust mailing list, I discovered this new project by Roli, the guys behind JUCE and Tracktion:

https://soul-lang.org/

There are also few threads about it:

https://forum.juce.com/t/soul-lang/30480
https://llllllll.co/t/soul-sound-langua ... roli/17752

Not sure what to think about it yet, but I though it would be interesting. So, I am dropping it.

Re: SOUL: The First Universal Sound Language

Posted: Sat Dec 08, 2018 6:33 am
by Lyberta
I wonder if the default implementation will be a spyware like Juce is.

Re: SOUL: The First Universal Sound Language

Posted: Sat Dec 08, 2018 7:05 pm
by mike@overtonedsp

Re: SOUL: The First Universal Sound Language

Posted: Sat Feb 02, 2019 11:46 pm
by CrocoDuck
After thinking about the thing some more, it seems all like Faust, but not functional, with some C++ style syntax, and with support for DSP chips which I think it could be built into Faust anyway.

So... Faust is cool I guess.

Re: SOUL: The First Universal Sound Language

Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2019 2:20 pm
by davephillips
CrocoDuck wrote:After thinking about the thing some more, it seems all like Faust, but not functional, with some C++ style syntax, and with support for DSP chips which I think it could be built into Faust anyway.

So... Faust is cool I guess.
Faust is an awesome environment.

SOUL's "first universal sound language" is more than a little advertising hyperbole, IMO. Does anyone else remember SAOL ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structure ... a_Language

And Mike's reference to the well-known xkcd cartoon is more than a little appropriate. :)

Best,

dp

Re: SOUL: The First Universal Sound Language

Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2019 8:51 pm
by mike@overtonedsp
So... Faust is cool I guess.
I prefer to think of these things as 'Rapid Application Development' tools, and by that I mean prototyping tools - something you can use to test an idea, before you commit time to coding it up and optimizing it in a real language like C / C++, (as God and nature intended...) and if you can't figure enough C / C++ to hack together even a basic plug-in, you *really* shouldn't be attempting something as complex as DSP)

The problem is that (like other RAD tools such as the venerable synthedit - an unintended consequence of which was a million barely usable free VSTs, thereby illustrating the downside of making something so simple that anyone can use it) they can encourage a 'save as' approach to development.

There's nothing wrong with coding and optimizing specifically for the target hardware - I think there's another thread on this forum which references this aspect of software development, specifically its not the programmer's job to write code, its to solve problems, and writing code is the way that you do that. I would be cautious of abstracting too far away from the hardware - not least because the use of such massively complex toolkits and abstractions offends against my sense that a good design should be as simple as possible - often the best design choice identifies itself by being the most elegant, (both in software and hardware).

Re: SOUL: The First Universal Sound Language

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2019 4:56 am
by tramp
mike@overtonedsp wrote:I prefer to think of these things as 'Rapid Application Development' tools, and by that I mean prototyping tools - something you can use to test an idea, before you commit time to coding it up and optimizing it in a real language like C / C++
The faust compiler does a really good job in generating optimized dsp code in C++. Truly, faust has its limits, but when you are able to read and understand the compiler output, you could use this code for much more then "just" prototyping. :wink:

Re: SOUL: The First Universal Sound Language

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2019 12:46 pm
by CrocoDuck
mike@overtonedsp wrote:
So... Faust is cool I guess.
I prefer to think of these things as 'Rapid Application Development' tools, and by that I mean prototyping tools - something you can use to test an idea, before you commit time to coding it up and optimizing it in a real language like C / C++, (as God and nature intended...) and if you can't figure enough C / C++ to hack together even a basic plug-in, you *really* shouldn't be attempting something as complex as DSP)
That's pretty much what I use Faust for, at the moment. I think nothing really beats it for that. Getting around implementing things with C++ is part of the fun, also. But I like Faust too, it is good fun. And sometimes maybe you need a simple tool to do a simple specific thing one afternoon, like a delay line to measure your soundcard response, and it just makes more sense to me to use 6 lines of Faust rather than spend one week to write that from scratch.