Even though I could have spent a lot more time on it… I didn’t want to wait any more: I’ve finished (for now) a new version of CVCenter.

What is CVCenter?

I’ve started working with SuperCollider as I’ve always been fascinated by synthesizers: Mysterious boxes with cables, lamps, faders and knobs which you could move or turn and the sound would mysteriously change its character. And eventually that would even become music. But somehow in SuperCollider things weren’t laid out that conveniently. Instead of plugging in cables, turning knobs, moving sliders you’d have to write your cables, knobs and sliders in code, potentially a lot of code.

CVCenter should make things a bit easier: Instead of creating GUIs for controlling synths etc. manually, GUIs that allow you to set the values for all controls in your running, synths, NodeProxies (Ndefs, ProxySpace), Patches (created from Instrs) can be created from one line of code. Also, CVCenter can easily be used within Patterns.

However, though CVCenter has lots of convenient features to offer, it’s not exactly what I hoped it would be after this current update. I’d like to keep on working on that but can’t make any promises when it will happen or a next release will be finished. Meanwhile here’s list of missing features:

• A CVWidget (resp. a slot within a CVWidget2D or CVWidgetMS) can only take one MIDI- or OSC-responder at a time. Probably that’s enough in many cases but not always.
• Though CVWidget GUIs are modelled in after an MVC paradigma they are kind of monolythic. Rather they should be built in a modular way, so, any of its elements are objects of unique classes from which the user may create an unlimited number of instances whose appearance gets determined within the MVC scheme.
• OSC- and MIDI-connections are still being established via OSCresponderNodes resp. MIDIResponders. Instead they should use the newer MIDIFunc/defs resp. OSCFunc/defs.

Also in a new version of CVCenter I will very likely drop Cocoa support. Qt is only slightly more CPU-expensive and has a number of nice features that Cocoa doesn’t offer. And, of course, Qt is cross-platform compliant.

Read more about CVCenter and see how to install it within SuperCollider.