Vol. 25 Issue 2 Reviews
Richard Boulanger, editor: The Csound Catalog With Audio
CD-ROM, 2000; US$ 19.95; available from http://www.cSounds.com.

Reviewed by Daniel Hosken
Northridge, California, USA

Introduction
The Csound Catalog with Audio (CCWA) is a CD-ROM containing over 2000 Csound orchestra and score text files along with their rendered audio (in mp3 format in the most recent version). This project is an outgrowth of The Csound Book, also edited by Richard Boulanger, a recently published, authoritative reference guide to the popular, if somewhat arcane, direct digital synthesis software. The first chapter of The Csound Book, an extensive tutorial on instrument design written by Richard Boulanger, is provided on CCWA disc in HTML format. The disc also includes Csound binaries for Windows, Mac, and Linux; the Csound source code; and a large collection of WAV and AIFF sound files grouped under the heading "Impulses and Samples."

Because CCWA is an offshoot of the book—it has been described as the "missing 3rd CD-ROM" from that publication—the question arises as to how much it depends on the user owning the book as well. CCWA duplicates the score and orchestra files from the book’s CD-ROMs, except for most of the instruments actually referenced in the book chapters (though some are provided in collections listed under the authors’ names), and adds pre-rendered audio. Because the first chapter of The Csound Book is also available on CCWA, the score and orchestra files (without rendered audio) for that chapter are included.

For those who own the book, the primary value added to those materials by CCWA is the provision of pre-rendered audio for the Csound instruments. This is a significant feature in that the time required to render the audio for such a large number of instruments would be prohibitive. The presence of the pre-rendered audio enables a more experimental and experiential approach to examining the instruments than would otherwise be possible. The only drawback is that, because most of the instruments from the book chapters themselves are not included on CCWA, one must still render all of those examples manually.

For users without the book, the material provides a wealth of Csound examples to imitate and explore. Of particular value is the inclusion of the comprehensive Csound instrument design chapter from The Csound Book in HTML format. At US$ 19.95, CCWA provides an inexpensive entrée to the large set of features available in Csound, while still providing some valuable written tutorial materials via the included chapter.

Description
The interface to the resources of CCWA is provided in HTML format with separate index pages for Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer. After a "splash screen," the catalog is set up as a "navigation" frame and a "content" frame. The primary sections in the initial navigation frame are "The Csound Catalog," "Learning Csound," "Csound References," "Csound Music," and "Csound Software."

The Csound Catalog
The "Csound Catalog" section—by title presumably the most important—has several categories, each of which leads to score and orchestra files along with the rendered audio. In general, it is not clear what aspect of Csound each of the instruments in the catalog is meant to demonstrate. Some instruments are clearly documented in the orchestra and/or score files, but many contain no documentation whatsoever. Even as a fairly experienced Csound user, I often had difficulty gleaning the purpose of an example from its naming shortcuts and cryptic comments. Only by carefully examining the orchestras is it possible to discover their purpose. For a new user looking for clear examples of specific techniques to emulate, this is a problem.

The most important category in the catalog section is "Instruments with Audio," which leads to the subcategories "Collections," "Students," "Internet," and "Authors." The "Authors" section refers to instruments provided by authors of some of the chapters in The Csound Book (and some of the chapters on the book’s CD-ROMs) that are sometimes related to the content of the chapters, but not necessarily so. These seem to be generally just some random instruments contributed by those authors. The "Internet" subcategory leads to a long list of names that presumably were respondents to Mr. Boulanger’s open call for Csound orchestra and score files. Many of these name links lead to just one or two instruments. The "Students" subcategory is organized by institution and then by student name.

The "Internet" and "Student" subcategories demonstrate the often confusing organization of CCWA. There is little reason that you would choose to audition instruments listed under names that you do not know, and only a few names are "household" names even in the Csound community. By organizing the instruments under the name of the contributor, the editor forces the user to engage in a hit and miss process with each miss requiring the re-loading of another page of audio (usually 10 audio examples per HTML page). Copying the disc to your hard drive to decrease loading times is an absolute must.

The "Collections" subcategory is grouped into "Anthologies," "Catalogs," "Books," and "Psychoacoustics." The cryptic "Anthologies" grouping provides fairly large collections from a number of Csound users. However, what makes a group of instruments an "anthology" as opposed to just some instruments grouped under their creator’s name, as in the "Internet" subcategory, is generally not clear.

The "Catalogs" grouping provides the Amsterdam Catalog of Csound Computer Instruments (ACCCI) that has been available on the Internet for a number of years and, presumably, includes the famous 1969 computer music instruments catalog by Jean-Claude Risset. It’s useful to have Csound versions of some of the Risset instruments (particularly since the original catalog is hard to come by), but the ACCCI catalog is missing the Risset catalog’s most valuable features—the flowchart graphics that show the instrument design and categorization of instruments by synthesis method. The "Books" grouping contains Csound realizations of a number of examples from Computer Music by Charles Dodge and Thomas Jerse. Unfortunately, the specific example is often not cited in the score or orchestra file or in the file names. In addition there are some odd artifacts in the infinite glissando instrument (better versions of which are on the CD-ROM in a number of different places). Under "Psychoacoustics" there are listings for "Sumy’s Rossing" and "Pavan’s Deutsch and Noorden." Just who are these people? Users familiar with the literature will have an idea who some of them are, but otherwise, one must assume that the examples are just some random psychoacoustic demonstrations. None of these orchestras and scores contain references to the original publications, and only the Rossing examples contain descriptions of the psychoacoustic effect being demonstrated.

The other "Catalog" subcategories are "Impulses and Samples," "More Instruments," and "Csound Sample CDs." The latter two links take you to the cSounds.com Web site where other instruments can be found by digging around a bit and a Csound sample CD for sale has just recently been added (some ten months or so after CCWA went on sale). "Impulses and Samples" leads to a collection of soundfiles in Audio Interchange File Format (AIFF) and WAV format that can act as input to Csound instruments. The sounds here come from a wide variety of sources and can act as a sort of "starter" sample CD.

The Csound Catalog section of the CD-ROM contains most of the important material on the disk. Many of the instrument examples are excellent if you can find what you want and figure out what it is when you find it. The biggest problem is the lack of a useful organization of the materials. Since much of it is placed under individual names, you must first seek out the name and then hope to find the instrument you desire. If the chances are you don’t know most of these people, why would you look for their instruments? An organization by type of sound or synthesis technique would have been much more useful.

To be fair, my criticism favors a kind of analytical approach to seeking instrument examples. If you’re comfortable wandering through the garden smelling whatever flowers you find, then you may well like the lack of categorization by sound type or synthesis method. One small quibble with many of the examples themselves is that the scores (the "musical" material played by the instrument design) often don’t demonstrate the capabilities of the instrument. There are many examples whose scores consist of a few nondescript bleeps and bloops that fail to convey to the listener the primary intent of the instrument.

Learning Csound
The Learning Csound section of CCWA contains Mr. Boulanger’s original TOOTorials—thirteen instruments of increasing complexity that demonstrate a variety of sound design techniques—and his "Introduction to Sound Design in Csound" chapter from The Csound Book. The user must obtain the orchestra and score files for the "toots" and the book chapter from a zipped archive on the CD-ROM. They do not included the pre-rendered audio component. Both the tutorials and the book chapter cross-reference unit generators via hyperlink to the HTML version of the Csound [Reference] Manual contained on the CD-ROM.

Considering CCWA as a stand-alone CD-ROM, the inclusion of the book chapter is one of its best features. The chapter provides a full-blown introduction to using Csound along with good discussions of topics such as digital audio sampling rates, resolution, and aliasing. In addition, there are sample exercises that can serve as self-guided explorations of the topics under discussion. The CD-ROMs that accompany The Csound Book contain this chapter and many others in HTML format with similar hyperlinking to the Reference Manual.

Csound References, Csound Music, and Csound Software
The Csound References section includes links to the Csound manual (on the CD-ROM), the Csound Frontpage (mitpress.mit.edu/e-books/csound/frontpage.html), the Csound Magazine (www.csounds.com/ezine/), and the Csound Book (via cSounds.com). These links provide the core of available information on Csound, with the Csound Frontpage acting as the Web nexus. The reference manual is probably the most useful inclusion in this category, although Hans Mikelson’s Csound e-zine consistently contains interesting articles on a variety of synthesis techniques in Csound (including a regular section "for beginners").

The Csound Music category contains links back to cSounds.com where there is a link to audio files for several pieces by various composers and a new Csound CD for sale entitled "Young Masters, Vol. 1" (and perhaps more by the time you read this). The Csound Software section contains links to Csound binaries for the PowerMac, Linux, and Windows versions, including a real-time version of Csound for Windows.

Practical Issues
Because of the amount of audio that loads for each page, users really must copy CCWA to a hard drive for it to be of much use. Otherwise, the time required to load the examples discourages exploration—even the limitation of ten examples per page doesn’t mitigate the problem much. Another useful practice to avoid the page-loading delay is to set up your browser to bring up score and orchestra files in another application such as a word processor or Csound itself. A number of hints like these are included in a "tips" section, part of which is found on the cSounds.com Web site. Unfortunately, these tips are accessed by a separate icon at the bottom of the primary navigation frame and could easily be missed.

The CD-ROM is in ISO 9660 format, which should make the HTML files accessible on a large number of computing platforms. The inclusion of the rendered audio in mp3 format should make the sounds widely accessible as well.

Summary
The Csound Catalog with Audio provides a large number of examples of the vast array of sound synthesis techniques available in Csound. The inclusion of the rendered audio for these examples makes browsing for interesting sounds merely a matter of clicking a button rather than having to render the examples yourself in Csound. The addition of the chapter "Introduction to Sound Design in Csound" from The Csound Book in HTML format turns CCWA into an excellent introduction to the use of this complex program.

My largest criticism of the disc is the lack of a readily useful organization of the wealth of materials it presents. There is no introduction that explains the contents and the organization by contributor name makes the process of discovery somewhat random. This problem could be mitigated somewhat by the inclusion of a sentence or phrase next to the audio links to describe each example.

It’s clear that the publication of the CD-ROM independently of the book was an afterthought. If built from the ground up, a better organization would turn this disc into a nearly perfect resource for learning and mastering Csound. As it stands, it is quite good if you are willing to follow some winding roads.