Any FL Studio users among us? I had a look at it, but don't like it much (reminds me too much on the old tracker era). Anyway, one thing that is really interesting is one special plugin. It is FL Synthmaker, a slightly stripped down FL Studio version of Synthmaker.
I must say, I instantly fell in love with it. The way, how the flow and the math is represented makes it so easy to understand and work out really complex things.
It is also a good tool for learning purposes. Just a very simple example, a self-made clamp module:
<img src="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11182740/construct/clamp01.png" border="0">
All inputs are on the left, all outputs on the right, that's consistent throughout SM. This example is equivalent to
Clamped Value = clamp(Value, min, max)
Now let's look inside the module:
<img src="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11182740/construct/clamp02.png" border="0">
The first primitive (the one with the little m) is the min-primitive. It takes two inputs and sends the smallest of them both to the output. The inputs are connected with "Value" and "max". The output is connected with the max-primitive (the one with the capitalized M), that compares two inputs and sends the greater of them both to the output. The second input is connected to "min", and the output gets sent to the module output "Clamped Value".
In this example, the flow is as follows: The first primitive compares 1 and 8 (value and max) and sends 1 (the smaller one) to the output. The second primitive now compares 1 and 2 (output and min) and sends 2 (the greater one) to the output. It's that easy, programming visualized in very intuitive way.
Well, sorry for the lesson, I wanted to post something else. I worked a while with SM and created something that I think is quite useful. My ambient noise generator works with a ultra low frequency oscillator fed by brown noise, then sent through a series of effects, with all components modulated and fine-tuned to give the best possible results. Even the GUI is hand crafted, built with primitives to have it all vector based.
<img src="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11182740/construct/ANG.png" border="0">
ANG is straight forward, you don't even need to play a note. Add it to your FL plugin/generator folder (not VST!), then insert it in the pattern editor. Open it and switch it on, select the ambiences or change the gain. You will see that it is realtime generated, no repetitions or loops. You can literally listen hours to it, feels very natural.
There are a few issues, but I didn't want to wait any longer. Be careful when switching it on for the first time, as it may produce a click sound close to 0 dB. Loudspeaker or headphones should be turned down to a reasonable volume. Also, the ambiences are at different signal strengths, don't gain too much when you intend to still switch a lot between them. And finally, there is an error that shows a filled rectangle on the area (instead of lighting just the buttons) of the ambience buttons, when you click them.
Here you are: ambient noise generator