DISTRHO - Cardinal

falkTX · February 11, 2022, 6:51pm

Hi everyone.
I just pushed a little new plugin to beta, named Cardinal and Cardinal FX.

It is not your typical plugin, it requires the use of a desktop application/plugin to actually make it do something.
You can find more information about the project here GitHub - DISTRHO/Cardinal: Virtual modular synthesizer plugin

In short, this is a free and opensource plugin version of VCV Rack, but fully self-contained.
It does not load external modules or connect to the VCV library, the modules you can use are all built-in (around 624 right now).

If you are not aware or never heard of Rack, it is a basically virtual modular synth, following a eurorack-style workflow approach.
The MOD plugin acts as a remote listener (though only the first instance), mostly because I couldn’t make the full GUI work on the browser, not yet anyway. When you run the native/desktop version of Cardinal on your PC you can use the File->Deploy to MOD option (or F7 key) to push the current patch to the MOD unit via USB.
A screenshot is taken from the desktop view and sent over to the MOD side too, so it can be displayed on the modgui, serving as a preview of the patch.

The intention here is to have it alike the MOD, where you build stuff with your PC connected, but can save patches on the unit and then use if offline without the PC connected.
With Cardinal you can use plugin presets to save and later recall your patches. There is a “comment” section as a helper to leave arbitrary notes, and the patch screenshot is also saved in the plugin preset.

It is not the typical workflow, but I am curious to know if it is easy enough to understand.

If you want to try it out, make sure to install 1.11.2 first, as otherwise the plugin will crash when receiving a patch from the desktop side.
Checkout this wiki page for instructions on installing the Cardinal desktop version.

Since Cardinal is a sorta VCV Rack special variant, pretty much what applies to one applies to the other. The way to add modules, connect cables, etc
I will be documenting the Cardinal specific modules in the next few days.

A very cool bonus is that sharing a pedalboard containing Cardinal will, for obvious reason, contain the patch you are using with it. Which makes it quite handy to share and download patches from the community, as it all goes through the pedalboard feed.
As a test you can try to load this pedalboard testing generating sinewave - MOD Audio that outputs a simple sine wave. The 1st parameter of Cardinal controls the frequency of the sine.

Have fun and let me know what you think about the whole thing!
Here are some possible useful links:

github.com

DISTRHO/Cardinal/blob/main/README.md

# DISTRHO Cardinal

*Cardinal, the Rack!*

Cardinal is a free and open-source virtual modular synthesizer plugin,
available as CLAP, LV2, VST2 and VST3 audio plugin for FreeBSD, Linux, macOS and Windows.  
Plus AU and JACK or Native audio standalone for some systems.  
It is based on the popular [VCV Rack](https://vcvrack.com/) but with a focus on being a fully self-contained plugin version.

More specifically, this is a [DPF-based](https://github.com/DISTRHO/DPF/)
plugin wrapper around [VCV Rack](https://github.com/VCVRack/Rack/),
using its code directly instead of forking the project,
with the target of having a **proper, self-contained, fully free and open-source plugin version of Rack**.  
See the [why section](#Why) below for the reasons Cardinal exists,
also for frequently asked questions check this [FAQ document](docs/FAQ.md).

Cardinal contains Rack, some 3rd-party modules and a few internal utilities all in a single binary.  
All "Core" modules from Rack have been replaced by Cardinal equivalents, simplified to better work for an audio plugin.

Cardinal does not load external modules and does not connect to the official Rack library/store.

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github.com

DISTRHO/Cardinal/blob/main/docs/FAQ.md

# Frequently Asked Questions

This document contains a few frequently asked questions (known as "FAQ") regarding the Cardinal project.

## Why does Cardinal exist?

Many reasons, most of them described on the [README](../README.md#why).  
But basically we want an open-source plugin version of "Rack Pro",
where we are free to change things as we see fit, work on new features and fix bugs.  
This is simply not possible with proprietary software, which is the case of "Rack Pro".

## Can I install extra modules?

No, Cardinal is intentionally a fully self-contained plugin.  
Whatever is contained in the current build is what you can use.  
The exceptions to this are loading files from within a module (like samples)
and regular plugin hosting (using Carla or Ildaeil modules to LV2, VST2, etc).

Adding new modules to Cardinal is only possible by making them be part of build.  
As such it is only possible to include open-source modules.

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PS: The plugin is called “Cardinal Mini” because it is the first variant of 2 pushed to MOD. This one has only 2 IO plus MIDI. Later I will make a bigger version with 8 audio IO plus 10 CV IO, also with MIDI.

LievenDV · February 11, 2022, 9:59pm

Wow, this isn’t your regular plugin!
This is a Universe within a plugin!
impressive

Dymaxion · February 12, 2022, 4:00pm

Very, very happy about this.

Clemens · February 12, 2022, 4:12pm

I’m very curious about this plug-in. But I’m a hardware-based dumb-ass musician not familiar with GitHub. “Download the desktop version” is too brief a description for me to pull off on my own.

I’ve downloaded the desktop version of GitHub. Didn’t create a GitHub account. (Do I need to have one?) Don’t understand what ‘repositories’ are and whether I’m at all on the right track.

If someone has some pointers on this (or a link to a GitHub idiot’s guide) that would be wonderful. If your pointer would be to keep my amateur hands off of this if I cannot pull off the installation by myself, I would appreciate that advice, as well.

Thanks in advance!

Cheers.
Clemens

falkTX · February 12, 2022, 5:23pm

If you do not have a github account, there are no downloads available for you at the moment.
Just wait 2 more days, then I will tag a release and upload binaries ready to use on desktop.

khz · February 12, 2022, 6:13pm

github.com

DISTRHO/Cardinal/blob/main/docs/BUILDING.md

# Building

This document describes how to build Cardinal from source,
if you rather use Cardinal pre-built binaries please check [this wiki page](https://github.com/DISTRHO/Cardinal/wiki/Install) instead.

Before you begin, make sure you have the needed tools installed to build code, such as gcc or clang.  
How to install those for your system is a bit outside the scope of this document.  
It is expected you generally know how to build software by yourself.

Worth noting that, if cloning Cardinal from git, use of submodules is required.  
So either clone with `--recursive` or use `git submodule update --init --recursive` after cloning.  
If you are building from a release tarball you do not need to care about git.

## Build options

Cardinal uses [GNU Make](https://www.gnu.org/software/make/) as build system.  
So you just got to run `make` within the Cardinal main directory in order to build.

There are a few useful options you can pass as arguments when building though.  
Use them as `make SOMEOPTION=SOMEVALUE` syntax. You can specify as many options as you want.

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falkTX · February 12, 2022, 6:28pm

Even though it is not that complex to build, I dont think most people will be up for that.
The install has instructions to follow, but until the release is tagged there are no builds to use unless with github.

Clemens · February 12, 2022, 6:50pm

Thanks for your very quick reaction. I’m happy to wait a couple of days and see what is available then. And thanks to you all for all of this continuous and dedicated work!

Cheers,
Clemens

fer · February 12, 2022, 8:39pm

Uauu really looks impressive! Probably out of my reach… But I gave it a go just for a simple test with Chowdsp and Rackwindows guitar effects.

Download a nightybuild from GitHub and try it with an old avlinux laptop. The standalone just didn’t start, but with Carla it showed a message about Glibc 2.9… so I tried with a newer Linux pc and it worked nice. I deployed a simple test to Mod and it seems to work…

Next step would be to try to map the ChowDer knobs within the mod… Is this possible? I found some midi cc map engine.

Tomorrow I will play a little more…

falkTX · February 12, 2022, 8:43pm

some mapping is possible with the host params module.
mapping those parameters to knobs inside cardinal is not possible yet. but sure, you can use midi map to do so via midi cc

khz · February 13, 2022, 8:28am

Are CV I/O connections also planned for the Cardinal in a future version?

dreamer · February 13, 2022, 10:52am

They are! Of course the mod-ui layout will need some work.

The full plugin has 8 audio i/o and 10 cv i/o, not sure how we best fit that on the limited MOD gui …

pollen · February 13, 2022, 5:35pm

This is HUGE! It is giving us endless extra pedals with one plugin. This is not the plugin of the month or year - its the plugin of the century! Thank you for all the work you put into this project.
I just tested Cardinal on my old Linux Mint laptop and it worked fine. Very cool to have an real open source fork of vcv.

Now I am waiting even more for my dwarf… Its a dream within a dream!
Cheers

dreamer · February 13, 2022, 9:14pm

It’s not a fork

Cardinal uses upstream repositories directly, and combines them in a way to have a tightly integrated plugin.

pollen · February 13, 2022, 9:20pm

Ok, even better.

falkTX · February 13, 2022, 11:06pm

While that was certainly the case at the start, I begin to wonder if we can still call it that way.
There are only a couple of files changed, but there are files changed

avenir · February 14, 2022, 8:56am

I don’t see installation for MAC on github yet and was wondering if this was normal.

Thanks:)

jon · February 14, 2022, 11:12am

Scroll down to the artifacts here and you will see it

avenir · February 14, 2022, 11:23am

great Thanks!

avenir · February 14, 2022, 11:40am

two questions, i managed to install the mac version but i can only open it via ableton as vst (i don’t see standalone version). From Ableton selecting deploy on MOD fails to make any copy of the rack on MOD (should I be able to see a correct print screen?)