CDP Review
I’m not exactly sure how to begin this review, CDP is very old software that has existed for decades, recently there was a stand alone visual program for editing CDP called Sound Thread, you’ve likely seen it referred to as “the software Aphex Twin used”. This review is for the new plugin version of CDP, which is styled very similarly to Sound Thread, but with a more retro appearance. Using CDP as a plugin is a bit odd as you have to render each action individually, this does not generate or process audio actively. I will say, installation was incredibly easy, where Sound Thread requires (or perhaps used to require) following various steps to get everything running.
Why use this as a plugin? No reason probably, might be a little easier to drag and drop, you may just like to keep access to various sound tools in one place rather than using different standalone programs. Also, be forewarned, this thing is a bit buggy, sometimes closing the window will clear your patch, sometimes it “runs out of memory”. I don’t know if these are issues with Sound Thread, but you’ll want to grab any audio you create as you make it and just don’t rely on recalling the program’s state.
As for the UI, I kinda like the retro computer style. This amber theme I used feels like I’m making sounds on some 80s sci-fi terminal in a space bunker. The node system is ok, modular anything is always fun, but there’s no hover-patching or input replacement and other ease of use features. There is however a little [+] Icon on the cables which will auto-patch a module into that cable. Also, many controls can easily be placed outside of their acceptable range, so you’ll run into a lot of errors.
The sounds you can make are pretty out there. I’ve seen people say this is the craziest plugin ever, and no, I disagree, load up Spec-Ops and Infiltrator and you can make incredibly wild sounds with significantly more ease of use. That said, there are some cool things in here. Given everything is rendered offline, there’s some things that can be done to audio that just can’t be accomplished via DSP. Specifically some of the sorting and stretching stuff.
I can’t say I played with every module, nor do I think this plugin version even has every CDP module. But the ones I played with were hit and miss. Some are just outright boring, some just didn’t seem to work or do anything, or perhaps required a specific set of modules to take action, others were just ugly and awful sounding, and some did incredible things that I would have never come up with on my own. It’s really a mixed bag, and one that eventually rewards experimentation and patience. There is a kind of flatness to the sound, and it gets crunchy easily, but maybe that’s part of the charm.
I’d say the two most interesting modules were accumulate and interpolate. I can’t quite describe what they do in words, but they really mess up the sound in a way that I haven’t quite heard before. Maybe not in a “good” way to most ears, but a unique way that I want to explore more. The spectral modules require you to use analyze and resynthesize modules to process audio, so keep those in mind if you want to try any spectral stuff.
There’s also some generator modules, so you can make sounds entirely from scratch. These can come particularly in handy with some of the spectral modules that compare two different inputs against one another. It’s also worth pointing out that many controls can be ”automated” durring the rendering, giving some motion and further complexity to your sounds. I also saw there was a “Faust” module, which allowed for scripting and had a few preset algorithms available. I’m not familiar enough with Faust at all to comment on this, but it just goes to show how deep and weird CDP gets.
While I can’t say I’ll use this on any sort of regular basis, I did enjoy giving it a spin. I think I’d love to see some small community built around sharing different experiments and results, so that everyone can build upon a collective experiment rather than always starting from scratch. It does force you to go completely off your normal path, you WILL not fall into your normal habits here. I definitely have an appreciation for anyone who used this back before it had a visual editor. I guess you’d type all these commands into a console, if the visual version wasn’t already frustrating enough, I could only imagine. Complaints aside, I did have fun. Every time you make a combination that works and sounds cool, you get a big sense of discovery. I felt a lot more appreciation for each result, where normally I might just scrub past many of these sounds as I explore the instant spectral and granular processing tools of today
You can check out CDP here: https://www.kvraudio.com/product/composers-desktop-plug-in-by-oli-larkin
Also take a look at SOUND THREAD here: https://jphiggins.co.uk/software/