pouët.net

"In case any doubts about realtime synthesis (some VST plugins are based samples), author of VST plugin will have to confirm realtime synthesis of his instrument."

Replaying samples in real time _is_ real-time synthesis.

You'd do yourself and other people a great favour if you just provided a list of samples and/or plugins to use. This concept smells like it's going to fail already.

@trc_wm, @xyz
Please, see definition of what is 'sample' on the compo page. It's recorded audio bitstream. Something what you record first and only play at the and.

Sample as a single-cycle waveform or one module in quite complicated synthesis algorithm - this is not an problem.

@gloom,
Yeah, you are right, I should be more polite even if I don't work as customer service, my boss always tells me this story.

In different worlds... what kind of VST host should I additionally consider?

@Saga Musix
I would prefer to cancel the competition than define list of plugins/list of samples to use.

I think we are on good way to define the border.
I think it's quite easy to record audio bitstream and just play it.
It's quite easy to put this bitstream into the VST and just play it.
Even if we add some chorus on the audio bitstream, even if we add a filter, we still can hear the main character of original audio bitstream.
I think it's quite easy to understand - this is not allowed.

It is quite funny that simple 'don't play the samples' may be so complicated in definition :)

@SuperNoise: No offence but there's a good reason why the "scene" has streaming compos (anything goes!), modules (show us your old school tracking skills!), and (size-limited) executable music compos (show us your synth-coding and composing skills!)

The limitations you impose on your audience seem rather arbitrary to me, and, as trc_wm already pointed out, hard to validate.

Now, you might think that I am a nit-picking coder bastard (my boss pays me for that ;)) but yea, as a (hobby) musician, I get your point somehow.

That does not mean I wholeheartedly agree and IMHO you should consider what Saga Musix said. Make a list of approved plugins and set some
boundaries to that competition ;)

I'm using Psycle and LMMS for VSTi stuff. They are free. I can't afford 58 euro for Renoise, $500 for Cubase, $100-400 for Sonar, $130 for Reason, $225 for Reaper, ~$100 for FL Studio, ~$500 for Ableton, or even 40 euro for MadTracker. Currently only three hosts of your list are free, and most of other allowed hosts costs a lot. This makes not much sense to 'only freeware VSTi's' rule. I think if you want to make a compo that rely on freeware VSTi's, all the allowed hosts should be freeware too.

@Shiru: Some of the commercial hosts SuperNoise mentioned are actually "free" but only in the sense that the "good stuff" your friendly neighbourhood dealer offers you for a taste is truly free \o/



+1

I think you shouldn't bother hosting a compo and go grab some beers.

You should allow all of them, and list the allowed VST(i)s instead. Then you'll rely on the honor-system for people who submit. You'll never be able to check all the entries anyway, and that way you'll actually (maybe) get some contributions.

An even better way would be to team up with someone who actually knows what they are doing (like the Fnuque-guys, Gargaj, KB (heh) or whoever), and use their synth for the compo.

Related: The KVR audio forum has a monthly (I think) One-Synth-Challenge competition, they just recently used V2:

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=324947

+1 for honor system

OK folks!
First of all thank you very much for all your ideas, you made me unsleep this night, I don't know what you did but it works :)

I will put a 'VST-host list allowed' in compo rules.
Everyone interested in compo will send me the vst-host name he is going to use.
In this case I have no reason to deny anything, I will just update the list with your proposals.
Honor system sounds nice but I will do my best to run all music sent for competitiom.
So, send me any VST-host you want...

I will put a 'VST/VSTi list allowed' in compo rules.
Everyone interested in compo will send me vst/vsti names he is going to use.
In this case I may have some reasons to deny anything, I will update or not, the list with your proposals.
So, send me any vst/vsti you want...

Additionaly, I will propose some VST stuff I think is worth to have look on.

After one month I will froze VST-host list and VST/VSTi list.
From this time no discussion to add or remove something from the list.

After stuff is frozen you will get two months time to compose your music.

Any comments?

One remark, I talk about free vst/vsti instruments.

To make my point above more clear: by allowing pro hosts that costs a lot of money you make source files useless for many people. Not everyone able to afford to have few pro hosts at once. This could turn the compo in a MP3 compo. If you allow free VSTi's only, iit makes sense to allow free hosts only as well - then everyone be able to freely download everything that needed and open any of submitted source files, to learn something etc.

Don't know if I'll be able to make it in time, since I'm competing in quite a few executable compos the next couple of months. But if I manage to do, I'll be using Quiver ... as always ;) Might want to add that to your list anyways.

@Shiru,
Please remember, compo is started. I just can't modify rules in the way may interrupt someone.
For rules above, it's not problem so far to go follow even if somebody started to compose.

By the way...
It's not that the file created in comercial VST-host will be useless for everybody. You may download 30-day trial versions for most of commercial vst-hosts.

An update in compo-rules, please see:
http://www.netblok.pl/~noise/

Best regards,
SNoise