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Jeskola Buzz

  • Published: 2023-04-05 12:36

I switched from Fasttracker II to Buzztracker as my main DAW for my bedroom studio around ‘98.

Real-time audio synthesis wasn’t a commonly available thing

DAWs Sequencers were used for arranging MIDI information. CPU's were clocked up to 500MHz, Windows 98 ran comfortably with 32MB RAM. The few real-time audio applications were standalone executables. Often running under DOS.

What made, and still makes Buzz stand out in the DAW landscape:

Its highly extendible, and CPU-friendly core concept (read: machine = plugin)

  • Provides machine developers with opportunities beyond other plugin formats, because:

    • Audio signals aren’t restricted by traditional console/bus paradigm
    • Event triggers are not exclusively tied to notes
    • Its tracker view extends to the capabilities of each machine

  • An open, accessible and active user and developer community on IRC2

I contributed to the development of:

  • RnZnAnFn… VST adapters
  • Polac VST adapters
  • LD Mixer
  • BTDSys PeerCtrl
  • Farbrausch V2

I WISH I DID A BETTER JOB A DOCUMENTING THE CHANGES WHEN IT CAME TO THE RNZNFN… VST LOADERS FOR BUZZ. At least the late versions I was involved in. It would certainly make it easier for users from back in the day to open their old projects.

Nomenclature

  1. aka machine interface ↩

  2. IRC = Internet Relay Chat, the most widely used social network for realtime communication, if you will https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Relay_Chat ↩