[HN Gopher] Rack 2 (Virtual Eurorack)
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Rack 2 (Virtual Eurorack)
        
       Author : tosh
       Score  : 126 points
       Date   : 2021-12-27 15:05 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | fredoliveira wrote:
       | VCV Rack is such a wonderful piece of software. And I'm glad that
       | eurorack manufacturers are using it as a bit of a testing ground
       | too.
       | 
       | Lots of people are priced out of hardware modular synthesis, so
       | getting Rack is a solid way to dip ones toes into that world. I'm
       | unaffiliated, but highly recommend Rack if you're curious about
       | modular.
        
         | abletonlive wrote:
         | I used to have >$3000 worth of modular and think VCV rack is
         | great. It gets you completely into the modular world. Dipping
         | toes is like saying pigments or vital is dipping your toes into
         | synthesis. It's just jumping right into the ocean honestly.
         | 
         | Hardware generally slows down my workflow to a crawl. There's
         | no beating the convenience of bouncing digital instruments.
         | Especially for sound design. If you want a new sound with
         | modular hardware and want to reuse your modules, you're getting
         | rid of your existing patch. There's nothing more limiting than
         | feeling like you can't use your gear because the patch it's
         | currently configured for is too good to change. That works for
         | some people but not for me.
        
           | disease wrote:
           | For a beautiful mix of hardware and software, see the Nord
           | Modular G2.
        
           | papandada wrote:
           | So am I correct in concluding that you sold a bunch of your
           | modular hardware and continue to use mainly software now? If
           | so what software do you use besides VCV rack and what if any
           | other (non-modular) hardware do you use
        
             | fredoliveira wrote:
             | Based on their username, I suspect Ableton Live is one such
             | piece of software (it's the main DAW I personally use, and
             | absolutely love it).
        
             | abletonlive wrote:
             | My setup slowly changes as the years progress but things
             | are generally pretty simple. Right now the only hardware I
             | have is a RME Babyface Pro FS, an arturia polybrute, an
             | ableton push2, and Neumann KH310 monitors and the KH750 DSP
             | subwoofer. In the past I've owned the Moog SUB37 CV and an
             | endless list of eurorack hardware.
             | 
             | Software most frequently used: All the stuff that comes
             | bundled in with Ableton Live Suite (their plugins are
             | amazing, don't sleep on it - just because it comes w/ your
             | DAW doesn't mean it sucks), Arturia pigments, Vital (also
             | free, better than serum in my opinion), u-he Diva.
             | 
             | For compressors I'm really using Ableton's stock compressor
             | and glue compressor mostly but reach for DMG TrackComp a
             | lot. Fabfilter Saturn2 for saturation.
        
               | papandada wrote:
               | Thanks for this. I'm such a noob I'm a bit surprised you
               | give special attention to compressors, I'll have to look
               | more closely at those.
        
               | abletonlive wrote:
               | Compressors are super important for character, groove,
               | and general loudness - so that's mostly the reason why
               | there's so much focus on compressors. Also since we are
               | talking about hardware vs software, compressors are
               | generally a hotly debated topic on that front.
               | 
               | I highly recommend this video if you're interested in why
               | compression matters so much
               | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0XGXz6SHco
        
               | mortenjorck wrote:
               | I never understood why someone would go out of their way
               | to get a specific compressor until I tried an LA-2A
               | emulation. Once I heard that signature "squash" from the
               | simulated opto-electrical circuit, it clicked.
        
           | fredoliveira wrote:
           | Definitely a great point. I think for a lot of people, the
           | beauty in modular is in the letting go of the idea of a
           | preset, and creating sound that lives today, but is gone
           | tomorrow. For a long time, most of the music I made was very
           | loop driven (also very quantized and static) -- modular fixed
           | that by rewiring my brain to work differently.
           | 
           | I don't think I'll ever go hardware only. The flexibility of
           | software is just too good. But modular in general flexes
           | different muscles for me, and I like that a lot.
           | 
           | (great username, btw. Been a Live user since version 1)
        
             | abletonlive wrote:
             | Yeah for sure. That's the reason why I got into modular in
             | the first place. Different workflow. It's just that the
             | workflow ended up not working for me personally, but it
             | definitely works for some people.
             | 
             | There's also something about for me about being more
             | musical if I have physical knobs to play with that are
             | mapped to every parameter available. This is largely an
             | unsolved problem in virtual instruments. Nobody has really
             | made a digital controller that maps nicely to virtual
             | instruments, and I suspect the reason is it's because the
             | plugin makers refuse to follow a standard to map out their
             | parameters in a consistent way. There's work being done
             | around some of this w/ Omnisphere and its ability to take
             | advantage of your pre-existing hardware to map to all the
             | virtual knobs, but I'd like to have a controller in front
             | of me that consistently controls all of my virtual
             | instruments in a way that makes sense and it mostly can't
             | or doesn't exist.
        
       | spankalee wrote:
       | Why don't they take contributions? They couldn't do a CLA?
        
         | myself248 wrote:
         | The audio world yearns for a VCV competitor with a genuine
         | community rather than a serfdom.
        
           | dmicah wrote:
           | There should just be a standard for a software module, like
           | VST for plug-in instruments. Then they could re-used across
           | platforms, and a DAW like Ableton could theoretically host
           | them directly without needing an intermediary VST host app
           | like Rack.
        
             | PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
             | This is a misunderstanding of the difference between a DAW
             | and a host like Rack.
             | 
             | Rack performs single-sample processing. DAWs (all of them)
             | use block-structured processing.
             | 
             | For a DAW to host modules that are designed for single-
             | sample processing would always require an intermediary. It
             | might as well be Rack.
        
               | dmicah wrote:
               | I know that each cable in VCV Rack imposes a 1-sample
               | delay. However isn't the audio still transmitted to the
               | audio interface in blocks? It's not clear why a DAW would
               | need an intermediary in this case, other than something
               | analogous to the VCV Rack 2 Pro VST instrument host. The
               | reason not use Rack is so that it could be an open
               | standard with multiple host implementations.
        
               | PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
               | > It's not clear why a DAW would need an intermediary in
               | this case, other than something analogous to the VCV Rack
               | 2 Pro VST instrument host.
               | 
               | Because the modules are written to do single sample
               | processing, which creates some design imperatives that
               | are quite different from those used by regular audio
               | plugin APIs where blocks of samples are passed around.
               | 
               | "But, " you may say, " isn't single sample processing
               | just passing around blocks of samples with a size == 1?"
               | 
               | Well, sure, technically that's true, but you don't write
               | code the same way if you know that the size is always 1.
               | 
               | Ergo, you're going to need something to execute the
               | modules in a single-sample style, not block structured.
               | That intermediate will be functionally identical to Rack.
               | 
               | Rack's API is completely open source, and anybody else
               | could reimplement it. It would be horrible as a general
               | audio plugin API, but it's pretty good for "rack
               | modules".
        
             | squeaky-clean wrote:
             | I believe the new CLAP plugin format U-He and Bitwig have
             | recently released is an attempt at this and a few other
             | benefits plugins have been lacking for a while.
        
               | PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
               | CLAP (like every other audio/MIDI plugin API) does not
               | cover single-sample processing, which one of the core
               | design ideas in Rack's module API.
               | 
               | And as an aside, CLAP has almost nothing in it that LV2
               | didn't already offer, and nothing that could not have
               | been added to LV2 using the extension mechanism, but a
               | rather severe case of NIH pushed things in the direction
               | that they eventually went. It's quite unfortunate.
        
         | detaro wrote:
         | My impression is that they view it as their product they are
         | building and want full control. Community is useful for
         | building plugins, but not to be given influence.
        
       | 999900000999 wrote:
       | 100$ isn't a ton of money, but I'd love to test the VST without
       | buying it.
       | 
       | I'll try to checkout the standalone later .
        
         | _fzslm wrote:
         | cardinal [0] may be of interest to you
         | 
         | [0] https://github.com/DISTRHO/Cardinal
        
           | bambax wrote:
           | Cardinal is absolutely fantastic. It's advertised as a "work
           | in progress" but already works really great. You can download
           | frequent builds in Github actions / artifacts; they are
           | available for almost all platforms.
           | 
           | The limitation is it comes with its own modules (most open
           | source modules available for VCV) and you can't load external
           | modules. But it's already super powerful. Highly recommended.
        
             | PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
             | It is important to understand the reason for the
             | limitation(s).
             | 
             | Cardinal is intended to be usable just like a conventional
             | plugin, which includes having presets that can be exchanged
             | between computers (or even between users).
             | 
             | If Cardinal allowed arbitrary modules to be loaded, there's
             | no guarantee that when the preset was used on a different
             | computer or by a different user it would work, because
             | modules could be missing. One idea for Cardinal is to be
             | able to build "synths" with it, and then represent the
             | result as a preset that could be used anywhere.
             | 
             | The regular Rack plugin version doesn't have this as an
             | explicit goal, and therefore it can allow arbitrary modules
             | to be loaded. You can certainly have presets, but there's
             | no way to ensure that any context in which you use the
             | presets have all the required modules.
        
           | 999900000999 wrote:
           | This is why I love HN.
           | 
           | I'll try this tonight
        
           | mxmilkiib wrote:
           | A quick note that for chat there is #cardinal on Libera
        
       | icambron wrote:
       | Question for music folks (I've played with modular synths but
       | only in a superficial, toying-around way): is this skeuomorphic
       | paradigm really the best way to do this? With a physical system,
       | running wires everywhere might be the only way to do it, but it
       | seems like in software you have more options on how you manage to
       | connect all your components together, and how those components
       | are laid out on the screen. But since this tangle-of-wires design
       | is popular, perhaps it really is the way to go?
        
         | siver_john wrote:
         | With respect to why the developer of this particular developer
         | went the way he did, he specifically wanted to give people the
         | feeling of working with a modular synth. So while strictly
         | speaking it may be "better" that was not the goal. The
         | developer in particular has always been fascinated with the
         | tactile experience.
        
         | popctrl wrote:
         | I have experience with physical eurorack modular synths, visual
         | sound programming tools (VCV rack, Max, audioweaver), and DSP
         | programming (Supercollider, Matlab). I think the simulated
         | wires paradigm IS the best one...for someone who doesn't want
         | to learn at least programming and probably also matrix algebra.
         | In my experience, sound code is generally a LOT of ugly
         | boilerplate code surrounding a few really brilliant lines of
         | code that require years of education to understand. But in a
         | code-based version of VCV rack, the brilliant code would all be
         | inside some object.
         | 
         | You're essentially dealing with connected one-directional
         | graphs of arbitrary complexity. Feedback loops are required for
         | the eurorack experience. That's pretty easy to lay out
         | visually, but I haven't seen good ways of laying it out in
         | code. There's room for innovation here; Someone in the
         | programming world has a more intuitive, more informative way of
         | visualizing data in a graph that could be adapted into DAW
         | paradigms.
        
           | sporklpony wrote:
           | You might be curious to check out Faust[0] which is a
           | functional programming language specifically designed for
           | audio dsp, sort of based on a simulated-wire structure.
           | 
           | [0]: https://faust.grame.fr/
        
             | PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
             | Faust really operates at a much lower level than Rack. You
             | could write a Rack module with Faust, but you wouldn't
             | (probably) do the sorts of things you do in Rack in Faust.
        
         | njharman wrote:
         | > do this?
         | 
         | What is "this" for you?
         | 
         | For me it is a cheap intro/evaluation tool for the very
         | expensive Eurorack hobby. To meet that goal it must be
         | skeuomorphic. I can mess around with VCV + maybe a cheap
         | (relatively) midi control to get some physicality. To discover
         | my interest is superficial and lasts only a few months. Saving
         | me from thousands of dollars of more "toys" that just sit on
         | shelf.
        
           | icambron wrote:
           | Fair; I get that if we're simulating a physical system and
           | just trying to be as faithful as possible, the virtual one
           | will look just like the physical one, and inherit its
           | limitations.
           | 
           | But I guess by "this" I mean "making the sounds I want to
           | make". If I'm interested in composing modular software
           | components into a synth without regard to its physical
           | analog, a wider range of designs is available for how
           | "composition" or even "component" are reified. But the patch-
           | cables-between-2d-boxes paradigm still seems dominant in that
           | domain too, from my casual browsing of it.
        
         | kall wrote:
         | I find working with "modules and wires" interfaces that embrace
         | digital more productive/fun but I can see the appeal. Two
         | patching UIs that I really like are Audulus and Reaktor.
         | 
         | I like the panel/patching split in reaktor, but it's an extra
         | abstraction. They added "front panel patching" after all, so it
         | must be more appealing to some people.. Audulus with it's
         | parameters+patching on one level but no skeumorphism is at the
         | other side of the spectrum.
        
           | icambron wrote:
           | Right, I found Audulus 3 much more intuitive when playing
           | around (I have the iPad app). It was skeuomorphic in the
           | sense that the components were little doodads you connect
           | together, but, yeah, the patching and "space" was much
           | more...softwareish?
        
         | gfour wrote:
         | This isn't just skeuomorphism as found in e.g. a VST plugin
         | with a sci-fi UI or a patching language with a UI resembling
         | studio-like effect chains. This is a simulator of a real
         | implementation of modular patching (Eurorack), for example
         | signals mimic real Volt scaling and the dark mode is like
         | actually dimming your room lights. So, questions of how to
         | "develop" in this mindset can also be directed to users of the
         | actual hardware, who do not go through a computer UI.
        
         | squeaky-clean wrote:
         | I prefer it for synths that are very modular like these. There
         | are other synths with just as deep a modulation capabilities
         | and capabilities to route inputs and outputs and create
         | feedback loops, etc. But the jumbled mess of cables is easier
         | to follow than a big table of dropdowns, or a massive N x N
         | matrix, or dynamic labels that appear over controls being
         | modulated.
         | 
         | But also part of the whole thing with modular synthesizers is
         | you use whatever modules you want. As few as you want, or as
         | many as your CPU can handle (or more if you're willing to ditch
         | realtime).
         | 
         | So you would need a UI paradigm that can work for 2 modules
         | with a couple inputs and outputs each, but also with a massive
         | rack of hundreds of modules with up to dozen of inputs and
         | outputs each. Do I want my fifth VCO to plug into input 3 of my
         | fourth VCA? I'd rather just follow a cable visually.
         | 
         | Some synths do have a great UI that works for them. Razor and
         | the original Massive are still among my favorite UI's for
         | usability. But they're also more limited in their scope. (Yeah
         | Massive is a really complex synth and could be your only synth
         | for life, but true modular emulation style synths have an
         | infinitely higher ceiling of possibilities).
        
         | udbhavs wrote:
         | It's certainly messy because it tries to mimic the hardware
         | 1:1, but there are more ergonomic alternatives.
         | 
         | Some examples: Bitwig's Grid (https://www.bitwig.com/the-grid/)
         | and Patcher in FL Studio (https://www.image-line.com/fl-studio-
         | learning/fl-studio-onli...). Afaik there is no equivalent in
         | Ableton which I really miss sometimes (unless you consider
         | Max4Live which is on a different level of usability).
        
           | PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
           | What do you think that Rack "tries to mimic [ from hardware
           | ]" that Bitwig's grid does not? Are you just refering to the
           | knobs etc.? If so, that's not in Rack's domain at all: module
           | developers control their module's appearance, and there some
           | which are extremely skeuomorphic, and some which are not.
           | Bitwig's Grid is uniform and consistently non-skeuomorphic,
           | but is also (IIUC) not open to 3rd party device/module
           | development.
        
           | JodieBenitez wrote:
        
         | mortenjorck wrote:
         | In general, the wire tangle is an integral part of any signal-
         | routing system, whether physical wires in hardware, a
         | replication of those wires in software, or a less skeuomorphic
         | box-and-pin model like Reaktor (which itself has a hardware-
         | style layer with "cables" called Reaktor Blocks).
         | 
         | The one drawback I find to replicating hardware, as VCV Rack
         | does, versus something originating in the digital realm, is
         | that more complex modules bring over their hardware-based UI
         | compromises.
         | 
         | An example of this is the Plaits module from Mutable
         | Instruments, called "Macro Oscillator 2" in VCV Rack. The
         | hardware Plaits module is very compact, and uses a series of
         | LEDs with little icons next to them to denote which DSP
         | algorithm it's running. The only way to know what anything does
         | is to look up that icon in the manual and read what each of the
         | knobs do in that mode.
         | 
         | In a software-first paradigm, the UI would use a software UI
         | pattern rather than a hardware one, most likely a drop-down
         | menu instead of a row of icons, and the labels on the knobs
         | would change based on the mode (this is actually how a port I'm
         | working on of Plaits to the Reason environment is designed).
         | 
         | All that said, many modules in VCV Rack are quite simple and
         | would be no different if they originated in software. Things
         | like basic oscillators, envelope generators, and filters need
         | no manual diving if you understand the fundamentals.
        
         | Applejinx wrote:
         | I don't think so. The project that got my love was Bespoke,
         | which is node-based but not skeuomorphic :)
         | 
         | Right now I'm polishing a hybrid system, with hardware Eurorack
         | coming into Bespoke through multichannel audio.
        
         | papandada wrote:
         | Only a partial answer because I never get around to digging
         | into it myself, but there is at least one other paradigm out
         | there, "live coding", such as supercollider, csound, uh, more
         | I'm sure.
        
           | martyvis wrote:
           | Sonic Pi and Chuck are two others
        
         | dmicah wrote:
         | No, but there were already other software synthesis options
         | available for people who don't want a skeuomorphic interface,
         | as various levels of complexity - Max/MSP, PureData, Reaktor,
         | CSound, SuperCollider, Audulus, KarmaFX, etc.
        
         | tomcam wrote:
         | Absolutely not, in my opinion. And I was using those rack
         | systems 50 years ago when it was all they had. For a good UI
         | try Korg Gadget 2 on iOS.
        
           | tomcam wrote:
           | I don't mean to denigrate the VCV team, who do amazing work.
           | I love everything but the UI, but I also understand it's the
           | UI they wanted. But even as a kid I couldn't wait for patch
           | cords to be replaced.
        
         | fredoliveira wrote:
         | I guess the design ethos of Rack is really to be a software-
         | based Eurorack "simulation", and in that case, being fully
         | skeuomorphic makes sense -- you can't have eurorack without the
         | rack system or the wires for CV/audio.
         | 
         | That said, in general, what you see in software is a lot
         | different. Mentioned elsewhere in this thread is Ableton Live
         | (that has been around for many years) and is a DAW with a very
         | clear design language that is all about the workflow and quite
         | far from any real world device. But that's not to say that
         | either approach is right/wrong - they both work.
        
           | PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
           | There are essentially no dataflows within Live that model
           | what happens in Rack. That's not true in some other DAWs, and
           | is certainly not true in various other audio software.
           | Consequently, Live's approach to "what you see" is just not
           | an appropriate comparison here. It's different, but that's
           | because it's really a completely different kind of workflow,
           | not just "a different way of doing similar things".
        
       | fartcannon wrote:
       | All I can say is wow. Looks great.
        
       | indigochill wrote:
       | I'm curious about the pros/cons of Rack vs Reaktor. A Reddit
       | comparison says VCV is better for modular by a mile, but not
       | exactly why. Is it that it has a better library of modules? Or is
       | more focused on emulating hardware modules than Reaktor is?
        
         | PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
         | A much bigger library of modules with a lot more funky ideas
         | about module function and operation.
        
       | capableweb wrote:
       | Would have been better to submit
       | https://vcvrack.com/news/2021-11-30-Rack-2-released since it goes
       | through the new features. Also, not sure why the full name is not
       | in the submission title? (VCV Rack)
        
         | borepop wrote:
         | Or just https://vcvrack.com/ ? I don't understand the impulse
         | on HN to make everything as technical as possible.
        
           | capableweb wrote:
           | VCV Rack has been featured a lot of times on HN
           | (https://hn.algolia.com/?q=vcv+rack), and judging by the "2"
           | in the submission title, I think OP wanted to highlight the
           | new version that was just released, hence appropriate to link
           | to the release logs instead.
           | 
           | > I don't understand the impulse on HN to make everything as
           | technical as possible.
           | 
           | Well, it is called "Hacker News" and hackers tend to be
           | technical, kind of makes sense.
        
         | oarsinsync wrote:
         | Having multiple links would be helpful here, so I've upvoted
         | yours in the hopes it stays near or at the top.
         | 
         | In a place like this, I'd rather see the source code as the
         | headline link, rather than a press release, but the press
         | release is still valuable.
        
           | SweetLullaby wrote:
           | agree!
        
       | Cyclical wrote:
       | Wonderful to see this finally get released. A lot of people
       | (myself included) have been awaiting with bated breath for 2 full
       | years for VCV Rack 2.
       | 
       | It impresses me to this day that Andrew Belt is the sole
       | developer on the project. He's been able to do something
       | tremendous in a relatively short amount of time for just one guy.
        
         | PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
         | While what Andrew did in _code_ is great, what I think has been
         | even more impressive than that is to have created, sustained
         | and nurtured a community, an API and an ecosystem that has in
         | turn allowed hundreds of other people to construct the modules
         | that actually make Rack what it is.
         | 
         | I'm not too jealous of the code accomplishments, but the
         | ecosystem is a really strong envy point for me.
        
       | aspenmayer wrote:
       | Some context from a third party VCV Rack plugin developer:
       | 
       | > The last straw concerned the policy about taking over inactive
       | modules. About making it possible by default for someone to take
       | over my very name, Aria Salvatrice, and releasing their own fork
       | of my software under my name.
       | 
       | > That's right: if I'm inactive for just one short little month,
       | someone else can just go ahead and release software under my
       | name, my name as a person, with no process in place for me to
       | reclaim it later, even if their releases have low quality
       | standards, even if they add ill-conceived features that work
       | against my long-term plans.
       | 
       | > It would be easier to continue my work if there existed a
       | healthier fork to migrate to, but VCV has been trying to prevent
       | forks both through legal and social means, so there's no viable
       | fork yet.
       | 
       | > There's MiRack[0][1], a fork of VCV for Mac OS and iPhone. Any
       | mention of it within the VCV community is immediately deleted,
       | and its author is banned, so it exists completely disconnected
       | from the VCV community, despite offering a smaller selection of
       | the same modules with mobile support, which is something the
       | community really wanted badly. Being only for Apple devices makes
       | it impractical for me to use, so moving my development to it
       | isn't an option, unfortunately, if it were on PC I might have
       | done that.
       | 
       | https://aria.dog/barks/why-i-will-never-create-modules-for-v...
       | 
       | Discussed on HN:
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27032669
       | 
       | [0] https://mirack.app/
       | 
       | [1] https://github.com/miRackModular
        
         | PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
         | I cam across Aria's complaints about their experience as a
         | developer within the Rack ecosystem, and I was very
         | disappointed to read it. It made me reevaluate what I thought
         | about Rack and Andrew's handling of the project.
         | 
         | However, somebody then gave me a link to what is apparently one
         | of the main threads [0] in which they and Andrew Belt's main
         | developer "got into it", and after reading that I was much less
         | certain about who was behaving badly here (if anyone).
         | 
         | [0] https://community.vcvrack.com/t/do-open-source-plugins-
         | need-...
         | 
         | Regarding the MiRack fork ... I am not certain, but I suspect
         | that this author acted in specific ways that upset Andrew. I
         | talk regularly to the developer of Cardinal (mentioned below),
         | which is another fork of Rack, and thus far, things between
         | them and Andrew have remained reasonably cordial.
         | 
         | Certainly as the developer of another open source audio
         | project, if someone behaved the way the MiRack developer
         | _seems_ to have done [1], I would likely seek to exclude them
         | from our community too.
         | 
         | [1] I stress the _seems_ because it really is not entirely
         | clear what took place.
        
           | aspenmayer wrote:
           | Thanks for that added context. I think it is a tricky
           | situation but I guess the rights of the author would extend
           | to them requesting that their name be removed from forks that
           | they don't agree with, including from the title. However, I
           | don't know if the author should be able to force you to
           | change the title of a fork that they themselves didn't make,
           | whether they currently maintain the software or not. It is
           | still accurate to say that it is a fork of a prior state of
           | the project, even if it has since been modified. It gets into
           | Ship of Theseus territory.
        
           | AriaSalvatrice wrote:
           | It's unfortunate that my article, that was only meant to
           | reach fellow module developers after my messages were deleted
           | from the VCV community, was Streisanded and misinterpreted
           | like that.
           | 
           | Most of us who have quit have not quit due to one incident,
           | but due to a pattern of behavior over months. The incident
           | you are bringing up was just the last straw. And what you are
           | linking to is only what remains of the incident, as posts are
           | often deleted, and disagreeing with moderation goes against
           | VCV's code of conduct. Please do not assume you can read the
           | archives of any incident and see an honest account of the
           | full chronology.
           | 
           | The last time my article showed up on HN, a few people
           | complained that my "product announcement" was too long and
           | confused. Had I known it'd be on HN, I would never have
           | mentioned what I was up to, as I have nothing to sell. I
           | operate in an entirely different way than HN startup culture.
           | These are passion projects done on my own time, and passion
           | is fickle. Writing about my experiences was in part about
           | making my peace with half a year of lost creative drive about
           | music hacking. The audience was meant to be the dozen of
           | fellow third-party developers who were fed up with coping
           | with hostility and impostor syndrome.
        
             | PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
             | As I said earlier, I was very disappointed to read of your
             | experience as a Rack module developer (not least of the
             | reasons: I use your modules often!)
             | 
             | However, this is a bit of a problem:
             | 
             | > Please do not assume you can read the archives of any
             | incident and see an honest account of the full chronology.
             | 
             | The fact that Belt's handling of the module developer
             | community has gained some notoriety that cannot be
             | evaluated by reading "the full chronology" makes it
             | extremely hard for those of us not involved in the original
             | exchanges to make any confident assessment of what has
             | taken place.
             | 
             | At this point, to be honest, the reading around of various
             | threads (edited as they may be) related to all this left me
             | with this as my only conclusion: your own personal style
             | and beliefs and andrew belt's are deeply incompatible and
             | it is probably best for everyone that you've chosen other
             | pathways (you seemed deeply and personally hurt, and I
             | could pretty much guarantee that it would happen again). I
             | felt sympathy for both of your positions (at least as far
             | as I could read them), and saw them as mostly
             | irreconcilable.
             | 
             | I'm open to having my mind changed in the future. Your
             | experience has certainly made me wonder if and how often I
             | ever acted in a similar way that you feel Belt did, within
             | the community of Ardour developers. I can remember only one
             | (recent) incident in which someone felt they deserved
             | explicit recognition for their part in a process. I hope
             | that's the extent of it.
        
         | StyloBill wrote:
         | Wow. Thank you for bringing perspective, I wasn't aware of
         | Aria's work (which is absolutely incredible) and of what's
         | happening behind the scenes of VCV. It's very disappointing as
         | the product is amazing and lowers the barrier to entry to the
         | eurorack ecosystem.
        
       | klinskyc wrote:
       | Saw this, thought it was a new version of the Ruby server, and
       | got excited. Synths are cool too though!
        
       | strenholme wrote:
       | Since some people don't like the cathedral development style VCV
       | rack uses, I point people to a fork of an older version of VCV
       | rack with two features VCV rack 2 doesn't have:
       | 
       | * It can run as a VST plugin, so one can use it with their
       | favorite digital audio workstation (DAW)
       | 
       | * The code is BSD licensed
       | 
       | Here is that VST plugin fork:
       | https://github.com/bsp2/VeeSeeVSTRack#downloads
        
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