Are you all Core savants?

<rant>
I am struggling to understand how anybody builds anything event mildly complex using Core. Are you all Core savants? Or do you have the patience of saints?

Even allowing that Reaktor debugging is practically non-existent in the first place I can't observe boolean connections & quite often values are <not available>.

I really didn't think Reaktor had more frustrations to strew in my path. I should have realised that NI engineers are more resourceful than that.
</rant>

There are days when I wish I'd never looked to see what was making that Abaska Bong sound.

Matt.

 

I'm with you. I find that Core is graphically complex.

My first exposure to Reaktor was with version 5, so it was all new and Core seemed to be just a more bewildering version of Primary. Now that I understand Primary to some extent, Core still seems bewildering.

I just can't follow the steering logic behind the graphics in Core - the symbolism is lost on me. I know someone tried really hard to make all that symbolism meaningful, but the effort was lost on me.

 

Yes. I share your pain. I am OK with the Primary level stuff, as I've used Reaktor since v4. But analying core structures can get very frustrating. What makes it even more so is that there seems to be a "standard" of using one letter port labels, or not using one at all, which makes it even harder to decipher for people such as myself who are not familiar with math/calculus and DSP variable naming conventions and/or typical formulae.

However, I've been driving myself nuts and giving myself severe migranes for the past several weeks, trying to get my head around Chebyshev filters and the theory behind them. By looking at all those formulae, and then digging deeper into the rabbit hole by following the numerous links in Wikipedia (at one point I had somewhere around 6 web windows going with a ton of tabs in all of them ) I am getting to the point where I can look at some of these structures and understand what some of these one-letter ports mean.

It is also very difficult to follow stuff as there are no conventional comments as you'd see in your typical VB/C++/Java code, and it seems nobody wants to put descriptions in their macros either including within instruments built by NI that come with Reaktor.

 

i agree with you all, i am just put off by Core.

sowari

 

oh no!

core is fine but there has to happen something because core is half finished since five years and there were only a few addOns. They promissed uploading more macros and updating REAKTOR.

 

I think its been misinterpreted to mean they are are going to develop and distribute those any time soon...

as long as they intend to do that at some point in the future they have indeed made good, as long as they really do intend to do it at some future time in the future...at some point...

 

I haven't built anything complex in core, but I'm not generally put off by it. The trick is to not learn how to build stuff in the primary level well enough

 

+1

I've tried read the Core manual a few times but realizing that primary level is enough for me. I'm happy that Core and primary are separated...

It's a bit when I was at school - I did OK with electronics but sucked at physics.

If NI produce extensive documentation/tutorials and fix all things that are unfinished (R5 provided Core 1.0 and we all know that no software is mature until 3.0) I might reconsider and spend a year of training....

 

the trick is that i like mathematics and physics and grafical programming

It seems to be hard to go into core: how to start? here is my way:

1. event processing (converting formulas and routing, arrays f.i.)
2. simple osc (ramp, sinus), learning read and write processing
3. complex oscillators (see examples in core additions)
4. linear control curves (multiple ramp generators, understanding linear growing in ADSR-corecell, multiple-memories)
5. exponential control curves
6. sequencer
7. filter and effects
8. complex synth in core

ciao herw

PS: after five years (core programming) i am just between 4 and 5, a little bit of 6 and 8.

 

Isn't that a bit too much ? :|

What about making music ? :S

 

yes - sometimes i think i have to make more music - both is satisfying - often i am thinking about some core macros while jogging

but listen (product of thinking )

http://reaktions.com/compilations/music_modular/fuenf.mp3
http://reaktions.com/compilations/music_modular/bolero.mp3
http://reaktions.com/compilations/music_modular/angriff_aus_dem_all.mp3

and fun for others: http://reaktions.com/compilations/herw_modular_mini.htm

ciao herw

 

making instruments is more fun

Concerning core...
I like the way that I can work in core, I find it much easier to organize and keep a clean structure. This makes building much easier for me as I truly hate the mess that building in primary creates. I wish that primary was done the same way as core. I also like that once I have an audio/event signal in core I can treat it all the same.

I've been trying my hand at core since the day I installed Reaktor, dreams of really designing my stuff, filter, osc, env etc then translating them into code :lol: (boy had a dream what can I say), several years latter I haven't done any of that. In my case the difficulty is not really core but DSP.

When I understand core it makes sense and I can work with it, its not always easy for me to make sense of it, this is a math problem for the most part. Studying the efforts of people like Herw has certainly helped more then the manual, I’ve read the manual several time but it make much more sense to actually see something in a structure as it has a context and application rather then vague generalized hints.

Truth is I can see the advantages of core but still don’t have the knowledge or skill to make use of them, NI has done very little for the user in this area, sure they posted EZ fft and some articles that are for DSP experts but that's not really helpful unless you are one those people, so that places me and leaves me in the savant category, at times I can’t really help but feel that is what is intended…

Edit: I should note that I have recently had the privilege of seeing an actual programmer do things in core, it was a learning experience I am still trying to delve into and learn from. It is possible to make much more advance things then we are currently seeing in core, but it also cause problems as my interpretation of the some of the problems I saw there have to do with the way Reaktor works, different from programming.

 

Reaktor has many levels and I can't have a problem with core just because it is low-level DSP and thereby somewhat removed from "making music". However, there are many things that can be improved. E.g. debugging, testing and monitoring are all cumbersome. A few years back I got to use LabView which is another graphical programming product, and, there the debug tools were more developed, so it can be done.

I also like Clist's suggestion to complement the graphical programming of core with an interface for text-based programming. Apparently, there has been few new cells added since core was introduced and there's probably more than one reason for that.

 

I have no illusions that I could program a filter without DSP knowledge. Just because Core is a graphical language doesn't take away the need of knowledge.... so the suggested path by Herw is probably very wise. I guess learning Core should be companied by a good book on DSP!

 

Once you understand the fundamental difference between Core and Primary which is essentially only event ordering there's not much difference in it IMHO. I dedicated a couple of hours to the Core manual and have no issues understanding it anymore.

One thing that most people complain about is that same thing. Not much difference between them. Like Reaktor engine in Reaktor engine. With enough persistence you could probably do the same things in Primary which are done in Core. The only real upside of Core is optimization when going low-level and a few misc modules that aren't available in Primary, like memory modules.

Maybe they focus more on Core in the upcoming Reaktor and make it more feature rich and appealing.

 

When I was taking art classes, I found it hard to draw things I didn't like. In fact, artists have a term for this - they call it 'resistance'.

I have this problem with Core. I started off being neutral, but my few first tries with it were so painful to debug and figure out that it left a lasting bad taste in my mouth.

I think a very large improvement would have been just having differently colored wires with different line styles - like red wires for events, green for audio, orange dashed lines for memory busses, and blue dots for decisions...

 

inside of core there is no difference between events and audio events.

 

The problem with core is that people able to use it are probably able to code in the common way.Wiring in reaktor can get more complex than writing code and that's probably a kind of dilemn because core reachs the level where it's really no more usefull to wire pins because, for example, when wiring the in/ou lets of a delay its ok ( a delay is owning a lot of stuff: reading, writing so it's a time gain), but when wiring a simple add in core, you lost some time with your mouse.

Even when you talk about booleans, in a code you don't need to debug them it's really easyer to deal with bools in a code than using wires.

 

Right, but in practice there is a difference. Perhaps I should have said these line styles are forms of documentation.

Some of the NI core cells don't even have input/output labels, and the level of documentation is rather poor.

 

started a new core lesson

ciao herw