First Impression : Reaktor is not worth the high price for me !

I dont know i havent tried it i just knew about it. GL the ui cant be daunting at first.

I know this is an old thread - apologies, I should probably start a new one, but I wanted to explicitly react to @RachmanEnough and hope to get his attention, and itā€™s relevant to this thread.

I came here by searching ā€œReaktor alternatives linuxā€.

I still buy occasionally NI updates (and have some windows running on an external disk) mainly because of Reaktor. Probably I am not the ā€œnormalā€ Reaktor user (if that exists): What I like most of Reaktor is the fun factor digging through the immense library of presets of the existing ensembles/instruments and getting usable professionally sounding stuff quickly and easily. I donā€™t use its potential in custom sound design at all.

For me, indeed there is quite nothing like it in the linux world. Unfortunately. I use linux since the end of the 90s for work. I am a software deveoper, but funny enough, when it comes to music, so tend to be on the ā€œlazyā€ side and just want to go quickly. I use bitwig on linux, so I DO pro audio on linux too.

But I am really also an open source enthusiast. I pay for good linux software (also have some u-he items).

In short: I want to get off Windows completely and do linux only, I pay for linux software but I also prefer open source.

Again - couldnā€™t find anything replacing Reaktor on linux so far. I am curious about if @RachmanEnough can give me some pointers though.

I mean - I have also tried SuperCollider (didnā€™t go the CSound route, perceived that as pretty outdated). But the most I get out of it so far are simple synth soundsā€¦I would love to get the same flexibility and ease of use of Reaktor with SuperCollider - or ANYTHING really allowing me the same quality and flexibility. I am also thinking of the graphical interfacesā€¦the curve sequencers which quickly can be editedā€¦the wav presets which Reaktor uses I guessā€¦which with one click basically change the nature of the soundā€¦Love the grooveboxesā€¦

How can I get to something comparable on linux?

I am willing to accept a completely different workflow, interaction concepts, configurationā€¦I am really after this: a library of great presets of instruments I like most, stable, and quick and easy interaction patterns (MIDI, mouse, keyboard - whatever).

Achieving this with SC and the likes seems kinda impossible, but maybe I just didnā€™t grasp the potential and the philosophy of these tools, and how to get there (my learning curve so far has been steep too).

Hope someone can give me pointers here. Happy to clarify on any point. And again, sorry for reviving this old thread for this., but felt appropriate.

Hi! one of my favourite subjects :slight_smile:

Wellā€¦it all depends what you want to do and achieve and how much effort youā€™re willing to throw at it. Iā€™ve tried pretty much all of them - Pd, Csound, SuperCollider, ChucK, Biduleā€¦ - and Iā€™d say Iā€™ve come to appreciate each of them in their own right. But what I realised after a good many years of learning, is that Iā€™m all about results, and what gets me there the most efficiently. With all the environments, and Reaktor is no exception, the potential of rabbit hole is all too great.

Pure Data is simple to pick up and get results, and capable of great results if you know what youā€™re doing. Thankfully itā€™s come a long way in recent years. Iā€™ve a soft spot for it, and come back to it repeatedly.

SuperCollider is elegant in its client/server paradigm, but you have to grasp a programming language in its own right - and that paradigm adds another layer of mental overhead, before you get anything really useful from it. Very powerful once you do. I get frustrated, go way and come back to it knowing a bit more, but itā€™s a long game that one.

ChucK is a nice idea, but lacking in ugens, but can do made glitchy shit in a snap.

Csound can be archaic is some areas, but the archaic is still powerful. Itā€™s a syntax mashup of C and Assembly in its markup, but it does work, and well at that. It feels close to the metal and I like that. The perception of Csound being outdated I think is somewhat misplaced. Itā€™s still a very relevant and deeply powerful tool, and for text based environment, easy to get decent results quickly, in part due to the amazing array of opcodes that sound great.

Plogue Bidule is a lovely modular toolkit - sort of in between Pd and Reaktor - but in some ways simpler but still deceptively powerful. Itā€™s a joy to plug objects together, start modulating parameters and mapping midi controllers. If you have C++ chops then well, really you can code your own plugins for it and then itā€™s super deep and quick. Iā€™ve used it for years and get results. The only hitch here is that itā€™s only Mac of PC, but I think you can run it in Wine on Linux?

VCV rack is worth a look too, heavy on the cpu tho. On Linux too.

THe upshot is that youā€™re going to have to throw yourself into these environments and aim for results. Not knowing everything is fine just as long as youā€™re creating musicā€¦unless youā€™re looking for a massive distraction!

hope this helps

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The neverending thread :smile:

Thanks @boonier , I appreciate your hands on experience run down.

I think it made me understand why I haven yet found my replacement for reaktor on linux.
As I described, I use reaktor mainly to just quickly get productive - I can just use some existing ensembles/blocks, tweak parameters a bit and I can be using something pretty quickly.

With most of the above alternatives (I am not going to try Bidule; I am explicitly looking for linux-native stuff, if I have to use wine I stick to reaktor), you have to actually sit down and first spend hours - many hours - until you get the basics right and THEN you might get the powerful tool they are to meaningfully create (at least at the level I am interested in).

So I guess the gist is - there is nothing like reaktor in the sense that it gives you a plethora of great sounding presets just available at your fingertips immediately.While everything else can get to the same power, you have to invest time and effort to actually learn it.