In Praise Of Plogue...

So, now that Discord 2 is out, Adam is on a forced leave (because D2 made him a little crazy, and he’s started talking to the Bat People) and I’m spending some quality time with new software I’ve aquired in the last couple months. First up is Plogue Bidule, one of the many boxes-n-wires environments currently available. (You can read all about it here if you’re not in the know.)

Obviously, having worked for C’74 for a while, I have a good working knowledge (and summary hatred) of Max/MSP. In looking at the self-playing patch pictured above, I’m wondering at the size (and CPU usage) of the Max patch necessary to pull that off. It took me about 20 minutes to make that in Bidule; if I wanted to do something similar in Max, I would have had to set aside the weekend.

So, Plogue Bidule gets two initial thumbs up from me. I’ll see how I feel once I spend some more time with it, and attempt some esoteric shit, but for quickly setting up sophisticated synth patches, it is quite good. Suffice to say that, for the money, it is a far better deal. It’ll get you 95% of Max/MSP’s features for 1/10th the cost. That’s money in the bank right there.