Farbrausch and the Demo Scene
March 30th, 2008 by 
Rory Harper
Today’s post is going to be complex and lengthy and geeky. Feel free to bail out, but you’ll be missing some amazing weirdness if you do. I’d prefer that you read all the way through before you click on any of the links.
Here’s why – Unlike our usual practice, none of the links are live streams. I’m going to encourage you to choose whether to download some large video files or to execute some small programs. You should know what you’re getting into, and whether your computer can handle it. You need a monster machine to run some of the programs that I’m about to link to. I have a rig with an Athlon64 3200 CPU, 1.5 GB of RAM, and an NVidia FX5200 video card. My WinXP installation is extremely stripped down, so that I have maximum use of resources for recording. It’s hot enough to run only a few of them.
Okay, let’s go.
As I’ve mentioned I hang out a lot at KVR, which is one of the major sites for computer music geeks. Last week, a group named Farbrausch released a newly-updated version of their synth, which is named V2. It includes a speech synthesizer, so you can even make it talk. Here’s the KVR thread on the subject.
Who cares?, you say. Except that Farbrausch also does one of the coolest things I’ve seen in years. They make computer programs that unfold into music and video. They are a dominant player in what’s called ‘the Demo Scene‘.
The V2 synth is their sound-generation code. I’ve tried it and it’s effing awesome, with virtually no CPU hit.
Here’s one from last year, and it’s already a classic.
:
:
It’s called ‘Debris’. Here’s the link to download the program and the separate non-program video, which is slightly under 200 MB in size.
Here’s the mind-blowing part:
Posted in Music, Pop. Culture, Rory, Technology | 
4 Comments »
