Oh, sure, some developers think it’s a big deal if their software runs on Mac and Windows. (Whoo!) SunVox has a different idea of cross-platform – a slightly more complete one.
Alexander Zolotov is a mad genius. His SunVox has all the patchable sound design of a modular synth. But it also has all the obsessive-compulsive pattern editing of a tracker. So on any single platform, it’s already two tools in one.
And it doesn’t run on just one single platform. It’s on Windows (pretty much any version). It’s on macOS – all the way back to 10.6. (Kudos, Alexander is I think the only person outside Apple apart from me who correctly types that “macOS” according to recently-revised Apple convention.)
It runs on Linux. Oh, does it ever. It runs on 64-bit Linux. It runs on 32-bit Intel Linux. It runs on Raspberry Pi and ARM devices. It runs on 64-bit ARM devices (PINE64). It runs on the PocketCHIP. It runs on Maemo. It runs on MeeGo.
It runs on iOS – all the way back to 7.0.
It runs on Anrdoid – back to the truly ancient 2.3.
It runs on Pocket PC and Windows Mobile and Windows CE. (just on ARM, but … who’s counting at this point?)
It runs on PalmOS.
You get the idea.
And now, impossibly, Alexander has gotten the whole thing running in JavaScript. The library is just 1.3 MB – so (shamefully) probably smaller than the page on which you’re reading this. And song files are just a few kilobytes.
That’s a big deal, because not only does this mean you could soon be running SunVox in your browser, but Alexander promises a library other websites could use, too.
This is all experimental, but I think it’s a big sign of things to come. Check it out here:
http://warmplace.ru/soft/sunvox/jsplay/
The other reason to talk about this now is the secret sauce that’s running this. You could turn your own efficient C code into browser form, too. I don’t think that necessarily means you’ll want to release music software in-browser, but it could be a huge boon to educational applications (for example), and certainly to open source projects that run on both hardware and software:
http://kripken.github.io/emscripten-site/
Anyway, while you wait, you still have no excuse for not running SunVox if you aren’t already, unless you’re using a really non-standard platform. (Yes, Jane, I see you with your AMIGA.)
Or, you know, hit play and sing along.