Cycling ’74 quietly released an update for RNBO, their tool for patching sound for web, plug-ins, and hardware. Here’s a look at what’s new, plus their lovely Office Hours series with artists like Jessica Ekomane and Suren Senevirante (My Panda Shall Fly).
It’s buried in the fixes section, but one big bump for Max hackers: RNBO now can work with raw MIDI (like SysEx send and receive) on Raspberry Pi. That instantly transforms RNBO into an easy way to make embedded MIDI gadgets, as they demonstrate in a short with Machinedrum hardware:
There’s also an overhaul for Runner, the bit that loads up your creation – for instance, letting you load your exported patch onto Raspberry Pi. (See also some source code.) The latest release includes patcher migration, OSC capabilities, and a new interface.
That includes some really powerful functionality – and still more patching. (Who patches the patchers?)
Can’t seem to embed the video, but you can see it on X – patch together sets of patches on RasPi with the web editor. Or watch:
Functionality:
- New web based interface with routing capabilities
- Create multiple patcher instances and connect them together arbitrarily, save and restore these graphs as “sets”
- Edit audio and various other configuration details
- Improved parameter editing and visualization
- Improved MIDI input
If you’re lucky enough to have access to an Eventide H9000 – hey, someone has a super-luxe electronic music studio lab in a university, I’ll bet – the H9000 targets are in this release, too. That’s some powerful stuff:
And you get a ton of fixes and enhancements. See the release notes; more in a forum post.
In other news, the Cycling ’74 folks have started an excellent “Office Hours” series on Discord. Love the guests so far – Suren and Jessica below are both don’t-miss, plus the likes of Gábor Lázár and Mark Fell and David Zicarelli himself are also in there.
It’s a great idea; if anyone has a desire for something like that round these parts, give a shout.
Meanwhile, enjoy! (Though I want an all-ancient patching session with Suren on all the vintage computer hardware he’s been running lately!)