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Home Forums Products Rackmount 9000/RNBO integration for the layman? Reply To: 9000/RNBO integration for the layman?

#180819
studionebula
Participant

Commenting on a couple of posts above:

First: It is important to note that RNBO is not Max, and hence RNBO patches are not Max patches. As it says right at the top of the main RNBO web page, https://rnbo.cycling74.com/ , RNBO is “A library and toolchain that can take Max-like patches [emphasis mine], export them as portable code, and directly compile that code to targets like a VST, a Max External, or a Raspberry Pi” and now the H9000. RNBO patches are similar to Max patches and are built inside Max, but you cannot take an existing Max patch and immediately export it to the H9000 without first translating it to a RNBO patch. RNBO has many, but not all, of the vast library of Max objects. Hence any given Max patch may or may not be able to be translated to RNBO.

Second: As Puppeteer said, currently RNBO is able to create only severely limited user interfaces on the H9000. I was initially excited to be invited to participate in the early testing of RNBO because I wanted to evaluate it as a possible means of creating 3rd-party effects (commercial and/or freeware) for the H9000. My enthusiasm waned rapidly when I found that it is not possible to create a user interface with RNBO that even approaches the expectations of H9000 users. IMHO the current situation is such that there’s little point in creating software of any complexity with RNBO because the resulting signal-processing system can’t be presented to the customer in a usable manner. My professional experience with audio software development and publication tells me that the user interface of a product is at least as important as how the product sounds, and right now I don’t think that I can produce a satisfactory user interface with RNBO. I hope that this situation will be improved with ongoing development of RNBO, but my brief investigation of RNBO’s capabilities with other targets (as described above) did not bolster my enthusiasm.

I’m sorry to rain on anyone’s parade, but there’s been a lot of speculation flying around about RNBO and not a lot of substance flying around with it.