Bidule
Bidule is a visual programming environment focused on audio signal processing. For spatial audio applications, it is best suited as a modular plug-in host or as a designer for your own spatial processing algorithms. It can host VST2, VST3, Audio Unit and CLAP plugins alongside ReWire devices, and combines audio, MIDI and OSC processing with a dedicated set of spectral modules for working in the FFT domain, splitting time-domain audio into frequency and magnitude data that can be manipulated band by band. Bidule can play and record multichannel audio files of up to 64 channels, working in real time with suitable multichannel hardware, or using an offline mode to render Ambisonic audio files considerably faster than real time. Collections of connected modules can be saved and reused as "groups", letting users build and share their own custom instruments and effects.
tech specs
history
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Bidule comes from Plogue Art et Technologie, an independent audio software company based in Montreal, whose name itself plays on its subject matter, "Bidule" being French for "thingy" or "gadget", and "Plogue" a Québécois slang term for "to plug". The company grew out of weekly meetings in the late 1990s between David Viens and Sebastien Beaulieu, who initially gathered to write VST plugins extending Ross Bencina's AudioMulch software, then a regular late-night ritual capped off with beer at a Montreal minimal-techno pub. Their first release was the VST plugin ReBuilder, followed by MixedGrains, before the pair set out to build Bidule itself, conceived from the start as an improvement on both AudioMulch and Max/MSP. Plogue went on to license its technology to other companies, with Garritan and Sibelius becoming its first clients, and in 2005 the company began developing a new audio engine in collaboration with Garritan, work that would later form the basis of its ARIA sound engine.
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