Software Alternatives & Reviews

Csound VS SuperCollider

Compare Csound VS SuperCollider and see what are their differences

Csound logo Csound

The Csound Community

SuperCollider logo SuperCollider

A real time audio synthesis engine, and an object-oriented programming language specialised for...
  • Csound Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-10-21

Csound is a sound and music computing system which was originally developed by Barry Vercoe in 1985 at MIT Media Lab. Since the 90s, it has been developed by a group of core developers. A wider community of volunteers contribute examples, documentation, articles, and takes part in the Csound development with bug reports, feature requests and discussions with the core development team.

Although Csound has a strong tradition as a tool for composing electro-acoustic pieces, it is used by composers and musicians for any kind of music that can be made with the help of the computer. Csound has traditionally been used in a non-interactive score driven context, but nowadays it is mostly used in in a real-time context. Csound can run on a host of different platforms including all major operating systems as well as Android and iOS. Csound can also be called through other programming languages such as Python, Lua, C/C++, Java, etc.

One of the main principles in Csound development is to guarantee backwards compatibility. You can still render a Csound source file from 1986 on the latest Csound release, and you should be able to render a file written today with the latest Csound in 2036.

  • SuperCollider Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-04-25

Csound videos

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SuperCollider videos

Making Music with SuperCollider

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Csound and SuperCollider)
Music Generation
15 15%
85% 85
3D
14 14%
86% 86
Music Tools
21 21%
79% 79
Email Marketing
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, SuperCollider seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 30 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Csound mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of Csound yet. Tracking of Csound recommendations started around Mar 2021.

SuperCollider mentions (30)

  • Csound
    Csound is... "interesting". If you want to play with something more modern, have a look at https://supercollider.github.io/ instead. - Source: Hacker News / 8 months ago
  • MuseScore 4.1 is now available
    For the intrepid, especially those annoyed with the purported input-sluggishness of musescore et al, an interesting text-based alternative is LilyPond https://lilypond.org/ My dad wrote an opera using LilyPond in vim, though I believe these days he's actually doing more with supercollider, which skips sheetmusic and goes right to sounds: https://supercollider.github.io/. - Source: Hacker News / 10 months ago
  • Why'd you choose programming?
    Weirdly enough,I got into programming through music. I got into making experimental electronic music and ended up learning SuperCollider. Figured I’d have to get a real job at some point and I liked learning Supercollider enough that I figured I should try to go back to school and learn some more useful programming languages. Source: 11 months ago
  • 13 Years of History Teaching - Now Thrown Into CS.
    So you’re wondering what would making music with code look like? The tools I’m familiar with are TidalCycles, Sonic Pi, and SuperCollider. I’m having a hard time describing what it’s like to make music with tools like these so here’s a video of a performance. One person is live coding the music and the other is live coding the visuals. I think it’s super cool how the music is improvised and built over time by... Source: 12 months ago
  • Clicks & Cuts Minimal Sounds & One Shots
    I would say no there aren't any sample packs for this kind of stuff because this entire scene developed around using a samplers and sampling as well as some computer tools like Max/Msp, SuperCollider, Recycle, Cool Edit Pro and some other stuff I am quite likely forgetting at the moment. Also you might look at some of the IRCAM stuff too. Source: about 1 year ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Csound and SuperCollider, you can also consider the following products

Sonic Pi - Sonic Pi is a new kind of instrument for a new generation of musicians. It is simple to learn, powerful enough for live performances and free to download.

Pure Data - Pd (aka Pure Data) is a real-time graphical programming environment for audio, video, and graphical...

ChucK - A strongly-timed music programming language

Overtone - Overtone is an open source audio environment designed to explore new musical ideas from synthesis...

VCV Rack - A cross-platform modular synthesizer.

Klangmeister - Klangmeister is an open-source, live coding environment for composing music in your browser.