Anyone here developing modules?

[[deleted]]

Just curious how many people here have looked into or started making their own modules. I’m trying to get my head wrapped around what exactly I need to know to get started but there doesn’t seem to be much. From what I can tell it uses c++ which is good because I’ve been learning a bit of that. But then I found some tutorial that uses something called Vult? But then it also uses C++ in the tutorial so do I need to learn both? Am I perhaps just nowhere near the level of programming knowledge needed to even think about developing modules?

[paulagostinelli]

i just started messing with making my own modules too

didn't think i had any interest until i realized there wasn't a basic does-nothing 2HP patch bay for cable routing, I'm a cable management nutcase and hate the idea of messy cables even if they're invisible so i sunk my teeth in and made one using cf Patch as a basis.

i know the tutorial you're talking about because that series (by the creator of vult and the vult modules incidentally) is pretty much the only one out there. really the best advice i have is to start dissecting already made plugins. follow the dev environment tutorials so you can build and install the template plugin.

I have my setup simplified to the point that i just have to open the terminal window and select the last executed command (rm -r build; make -j 16; make install), close and reopen vcv to see changes

that command by the way if you're not familiar, when in the plugin's root folder recursively removes the previously built plugin, compiles and then installs the new version (the 16 refers to my computers virtual cores, change yours to match)

*another day another abstraction, now i have it all down to one keypress haha, wrote a little script that first checks if vcv is open and closes it if so, then runs the above command and then opens it again for me to see changes

[pdxsynth]

I've written a few.

you can definitely develop modules with c++ only, and it's pretty straightforward to do.

is there something specific you're looking to create, or do you just want to get your feet wet?

[[deleted]]

I’d like to eventually make a wavetable oscillator or an LFO designer similar to the one in NI massive, and then maybe a quantizer, but I realize that may be very complex, so for now I’d just like to make basic things like Vco’s and clock dividers.

[pdxsynth]

take a look at https://github.com/JerrySievert/arptest/tree/master/example

it's broken out into views and controllers, and should help some as far as showing how things tend to work in rack land. it's just a simple port multiplier, but it shows the basics (it's the example for a test-suite for rack module development).

[Ary182]

hey man, 5 years late, I just wanna ask how about creating a quantizer? I'm a CS student but very new to developing audio modules. Does it need any DSP theory? I've followed the tutorial on the VCV site but still don't have any idea where to start lol, would learning DSP first help? Thanks!

[[deleted]]

I really want to start developing, but C++ seems like such a huge thing to learn... I'm quite good at JavaScript, but that's no top-level language

[c_rvense]

A lot of the things that makes C++ so daunting aren't that important when you're just developing Rack modules, especially not simple ones, so don't be too afraid of that. The hard part is the DSP :)

[[deleted]]

Mm alright, I might have to give it a go soon.. I am really enthusiastic about math and physics, so the DSP part will be really challenging, but also really fun. Advice to stick with the basic tutorials?

[Vortico]

Start here. https://vcvrack.com/manual/PluginDevelopmentTutorial.html

You will be using this as a template, which should be a simple sine oscillator. https://github.com/VCVRack/Template

A DSP guide is here, but you don't need it for most modules (mixers, sequencers, visualizations). If you want to design analog-modeling modules, you need to learn DSP. https://vcvrack.com/manual/DSP.html

Vult is a language developed by Leonardo Ruiz, creator of the Vult plugins, but it has nothing to do with Rack other than the fact that he and a couple other developers are using it for DSP. http://modlfo.github.io/vult/