what language does the code window understand?

MichaelBenjamin · 3 Mar 2010

thats a strange question since youre registered since 2007 sm understands sm language - its like c++ for idiots, and the asm box understands a small subset of x86 assembly, mainly the sse commands plus some other.

overhishead · 3 Mar 2010

i am not a coder or a synth designer, but i got real interested in the idea like 3-4 years back. im always trying to learn, but im hitting kind of a brick wall when it comes to understanding the answer to the question i asked. i figure the info in a concise form might help the next guy.

trogluddite · 3 Mar 2010

It's important to make the distinction between the code primitive and the assembly primitive - they are similar, but not interchangeable - each has it's own syntax.

The opcode list for the assembly primitive is here on the Wiki... [old link]

The code primitive syntax is very like C, but there are very few commands other than just maths/logic operations - there are no functions/subroutines etc. and only simple fixed iteration looping. If you look at examples on the Wiki and forum, you'll see that they are mostly just a list of float and boolean equations.

The only communication is within the schematic itself - this uses the streamin and streamout declarations, which work like the input/output connectors do on a module so that you can cable streams in and out of the code. The export to vst function deals with all the VST sdk stuff - you can't manipulate that directly with the code or assembly primitives.

It's best to think of the code and assembly primitives as a way of creating custom modules that handle DSP number crunching very efficiently.

overhishead · 4 Mar 2010

thanks, now i understand. its tricky to get clues to the subject of dsp especially when i ignored math in school. i am digging around where i can for stuff that makes sense, and at my level (which is in the minus range) i get my epiphanies wherever i can!

oddson · 4 Mar 2010

I spent much of my first months avoiding the Code component as knowing basic C or C++ isn't enough; it also involves how SSE processes streams of data in parallel and therefore you may need to know how to do conditional statements (which are very different).

I'm still avoiding the Assembly component - the difference is anything* you can do in Assembly you can do in Code but it may take a few more cycles. I strongly recommend against trying to learn Assembly until you've learned the Code module.

The code syntax is very similar to a number of programing languages... the code section of the User Guide has most of the operators listed but I think there might be one or two gaps... there is a decent thread here somewhere that talks about these gaps but damn'd if I can find it right now.

Probably the best way to starting to learn the code module is to try to code something and finding out what you don't understand about it. Or you can take existing code and try to work your way through it.

Often people start with trying to take some C code for a filter and translating it. This can work well but make sure you understand how the trigonometry functions -- sin1() for example -- take a normalized value in the [0,1] range instead of [0,2*pi] as that has caused people grief on a few occasions.

You also should make sure you understand the difference between Poly and Mono and Quad data types and in particular how Poly channels are created and destroyed from the M2P components.

* I know there are a handful of things that cannot be done without assembly but for the most part my statement is correct.

MichaelBenjamin · 4 Mar 2010

ok so trogluddite and oddson both get 5/5 points for answer quality and i give myself 1/5, just for the record.