The Composers Desktop Project (CDP) is an international cooperative network based in the
United Kingdom that has been developing software for working with sound materials since 1986. Working on a cooperative basis and motivated by user-specific compositional needs, the project has focused on the development of precise, detailed and multifaceted
DSP-based sound transformation tools. Currently, CDP provides sound transformation software (named after the project itself) for Windows and Mac OS X that has been evolving for over 20 years.
In 2014 the main components of the CDP were released as an open-source package licensed under the
LGPL
The GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) is a free-software license published by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). The license allows developers and companies to use and integrate a software component released under the LGPL into their own ...
. Makefiles are now available for Windows, OSX, and Linux.
Originally, after a study to determine if it was possible and/or feasible to port
CMusic from
UNIX mainframe systems, the project released the CDP software along with corresponding ''SoundSTreamer'' hardware for the
Atari ST
The Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the Atari 8-bit family. The initial model, the Atari 520ST, had limited release in April–June 1985 and was widely available in July. It was the first pers ...
[CDP History http://www.composersdesktop.com/history.html ] and later ported the software to
DOS. The software tool-set is designed specifically to transform
sound samples mostly via
offline processing (non-
real time
Real-time or real time describes various operations in computing or other processes that must guarantee response times within a specified time (deadline), usually a relatively short time. A real-time process is generally one that happens in defined ...
); the software is considered complementary to real-time processing and
audio sequencers.
References
Further reading
*A. Endrich (1996), Composers' Desktop Project: a musical imperative, ''Organised Sound'', Volume 2, Issue 01, Apr 1997, pp 29–33.
*R.W Dobson (1993)
''The Operation of the Phase Vocoder''– ''a non-mathematical introduction to the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT)'', a CDP publication, Somerset.
*Wishart T. (1994), ''Audible Design: A Plain and Easy Introduction to Sound Composition''. Orpheus the Pantomime Ltd. ({{ISBN, 978-0951031315).
Electronic music software
Acoustics software
1986 establishments in the United Kingdom