What is cmix? An Introduction

Thanks to Luke DuBois and some other folks at Columbia's CMC, there is actually some really good documentation which answers this, and some other questions. See the RTcmix pages for more complete information.

But basically, RTcmix is a synthesis engine for creating digital audio. It works in real time and disk time. It's a very open system, which is to say that you can get the source code and start mucking around with it. The whole effort to make Cmix into RTcmix is testimony to that openness. The aforementioned pages give some instruction wrt. designing your own instruments.

The Source Code (REAL-TIME VERSION)

There are basically two places to get RTcmix source code:

1. Columbia (Irix)
2. UVA (Linux)

Note that if you're building on a libc6 Linux box, you may need to hack out references to -libpthreads. This should be possible (and easy) from the toplevel makefile in the 2.0 version.

Redhat users might have trouble with -ll (lex) libraries. Just change the Minc/Makefile to use -lfl. You also might have trouble with PI, in which case you'll have to define it to something close to 3.14...

Benchmarks!

Click here to see some benchmarks run on some simple wavetable oscillator test code. Download the code yourself and contribute some numbers if you like!

Compilation Notes / Tips

Here are some steps to help eliminate some confusion:

• Make a directory called /musr and copy the source file to that directory.
  
• Type "tar -xvzf RTcmix.WHATEVER.tar.gz" from that directory.
  
note that if your version of tar does not support the z|Z options you will have to use gzip|uncompress.


• Go to the /musr/cmix directory and type "make; make install" to compile everything.
  
• You should add the following directory to your $PATH variable: /musr/cmix/bin
  

But check out the README and INSTALL files (viewable from the above ftp's) the latest scoop.

Some Examples

I hope that this section will continue to grow. Right now, I offer one of my own projects as an example of how one might use RTcmix. I call it The 8 Puzzle Composer: Hearing the Solution.

If you really want to speed up RTcmix

Check out the Pentium GCC compiler from The Pentium Compiler Group (PCG). They've done a really great job at upgrading GCC to support -O6 and -mpentium flags. I noted a 30% speed increase when using the "strum" instrument compiled with it.

WARNING: Working with experimental compilers can be very risky (and time consuming) business. Do so at your own peril!

Before leaving, I invite you to sign my guestbook and/or visit my Home Page

I'm very interested to hear from anyone using RTcmix (either with Linux or otherwise) and would love to add anything you like to this page so as to help others come to use and enjoy making music with their computers. If you have anything to comment or offer, please feel more than free to send me some email at topper@VIRGINIA.EDU.