Software Alternatives & Reviews

Pure Data VS Csound

Compare Pure Data VS Csound and see what are their differences

Pure Data logo Pure Data

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

Csound logo Csound

The Csound Community
  • Pure Data Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-01-18
  • 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.

Pure Data videos

Introduction to Pure Data

More videos:

  • Review - Pure Data Guitar Pedal
  • Tutorial - How to Design Sound Art Installations with Pure Data (Part 1)

Csound videos

No Csound videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

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Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Pure Data and Csound)
3D
90 90%
10% 10
Music Generation
83 83%
17% 17
Prototyping Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Music Tools
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Pure Data seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 37 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.

Pure Data mentions (37)

  • AI can now master your music
    For node based workflows, check out Max or Pure Data. https://cycling74.com/products/max https://puredata.info/. - Source: Hacker News / 3 months ago
  • New To Lighting Design, Looking for guidance
    Tools like Ossia Score, Chataigne and PureData (pd) can also help a ton in building interactive art and triggering other A/V software. Source: 12 months ago
  • WebPd 1.0.0 alpha released !
    WebPd is a highly modular compiler for audio programming language Pure Data allowing to run .pd patches on web pages. It converts the audio graph and processing objects from a patch into plain human-readable JavaScript or WebAssembly which can then be integrated directly into any web application. Source: about 1 year ago
  • Is there any alternative to sonic pi?
    You might also be interested in the very different Pure Data (http://puredata.info/) environment, which is also free and open-source. It uses a visual programming approach, which many people like but if you are already a programmer it might seem inconvenient in comparison. Source: about 1 year ago
  • Generating sine wave audio tone in kotlin/Java.
    Personally I got started with pure data, which is open source and a good place to learn DSP basics. I think there are even a few wrapper libraries for building things into apps (libpd, mobmuplat, to name a few). Source: about 1 year ago
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Csound mentions (0)

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

What are some alternatives?

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

SuperCollider - A real time audio synthesis engine, and an object-oriented programming language specialised for...

TouchDesigner - TouchDesigner is a visual development platform that equips you with the tools you need to create stunning realtime projects and rich user experiences.

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.

VCV Rack - A cross-platform modular synthesizer.

ChucK - A strongly-timed music programming language

MadMapper - The Mapping Software