u/themetameta

Hey r/webaudio — following up on the DreamRack post here a few weeks ago. That one was from my other account, u/chrisgr99. Going forward I'll be posting as u/themetameta.

This is a new module rather than a re-introduction. It imports the Strudel package, so Strudel's own superdough voices play alongside voices you patch yourself in the rack. Routing lives in the pattern itself — .rack(1) and .rack(2) send parts out to voice tabs, while parts that name a sound instead of a jack stay inside Strudel and play from its sample engine on the same clock.

Each of the eight note outputs carries a full polyphonic pattern down a single composite cable, every note carrying its own pitch, level, duration, pan and timbre. At the far end a Voice In module unpacks it and gives each note a voice, turning those properties into control voltages. Everything downstream of Voice In is duplicated per sounding note — you draw one oscillator, and as many run as there are notes.

Two things had to land before this could work: tabs, which I'd listed as "coming soon" last time, and per-note polyphony.

Five-minute walkthrough: https://youtu.be/-zu7oc7BWHI

Run it: https://dreamrack.dreamerdevelopment.app/

Source: https://github.com/chrisgr99/DreamRack

Still alpha, and this is the first time it's been in other people's hands — feedback and bug reports welcome.

Hey r/vcvrack — sharing a personal project called DreamRack (in browser, free). It's written natively in JavaScript/Web Audio from the ground up, and the real experiment here is around the patching interface itself — trying out some ideas for how a modular's UI could work.

A few of the interface experiments I've been playing with: the ability to patch cables and adjust knobs without dragging; cables show which direction the signal is actually flowing, so you can tell at a glance what's feeding what; terminals are visually distinct depending on whether they're an input or an output; cables automatically take on a colour based on the type of signal at the destination, so a patch becomes readable just by looking at it; and video synthesis modules (work in progress) (and many more…). There's also a knob design I'm trying out called the knAck, which combines a knob and its CV input in the same spot instead of splitting them into two separate controls, and clip-on oscilloscopes you can drop anywhere in a patch to see or hear a signal without rewiring anything.

Modules will be organized into tabs (a bit like sheet tabs in Excel), so you can group and switch between sets of modules instead of scrolling through one long rack (coming soon).

Modules so far: a Complex Oscillator, a Quad Low Pass Gate, a Quad Function Generator, a six-channel Mixer, an eight-step dual CV sequencer, and five video synthesis modules. It's free to try, no installation, right in the browser: https://dreamrack.dreamerdevelopment.app/

Source is on GitHub: https://github.com/chrisgr99/DreamRack

Genuinely curious what modular folks think of these interface ideas, and what you'd want to see explored next.