Cade Runtime

Sound Editor

Sound Editor

The Sound Editor is a visual node-graph tool for a table’s entire audio system. One canvas covers four layers of sound: sources (sample clips, synth voices, music, playlists), synth patches (the DSP inside a synth voice — oscillators, envelopes, filters, modulation), mix/bus routing (channel strips, buses, effects, panning, ducking, down to the device output), and trigger rules (event-driven decisions that pick and fire sounds). You can also hear your work: a synth patch auditions live through the browser.

See Node Editor Basics for the shared canvas gestures. Which graph is on the canvas — the top “Sources” scope, a synth’s patch, a clip-selection graph, or the mix graph — is shown by the breadcrumb in the top-left toolbar.

The audio rail

The live-audio panels live in a right-side rail rather than crammed into the toolbar: audition transport, output meters and oscilloscope, the clip-selection panel, the mix/bus strip, and the selected-node parameter preview. The rail reserves canvas width (the graph shrinks to make room) instead of floating over the nodes, so nothing hides beneath it. The top-left toolbar keeps the light chrome — provenance dots, breadcrumb, the find-nodes filter, the add-node palette, and the status line.

The node palette

The Add node palette is scoped to where you are — it offers only the node kinds that belong on the current canvas rather than every category at once. Which scope you’re in — the top Sources graph, a synth patch, the mix graph, or a clip-selection graph — decides what you can add. A Show unavailable expander reveals the kinds that scope knows about but can’t add directly, each greyed with its reason (for example Music, which redirects you to a playlist or layer).

By scope:

  • Sources ✦ (the top graph) — Audio Clip (sample playback), Synth (a voice that encapsulates a DSP patch you drill into), Playlist (an ordered/shuffled set with crossfade), Music Layer (a base track with conditional overlays).
  • Synth DSP ∿ (inside a patch) — Oscillator (waveform generator; its amp doubles as FM depth), Filter (biquad low/high-pass with modulatable cutoff), Envelope (ADSR control value), and a signal Mixer. The Output and the Amp VCA are managed for you and stay greyed.
  • Mix / Bus ▤ (the mix graph) — Channel and Bus. Inserts — Effect (reverb/compressor/EQ/mod), Pan, Duck (sidechain), Spatializer, Limiter, Device Out (the terminal sink to the audio device) — are added in context and stay greyed in the palette.
  • Triggers ⌁ (a clip-selection graph) — Selection plus the decision kinds Condition (gate on a var/expression), Probability (weighted sampler), Anti-Repeat (no-repeat / cooldown), and Selector (pick from a pool and fire). Event references are authored in the Rules and 3D editors, not here.

Ports are rate-typed and color-coded — signal (audio-rate PCM), control (control-rate CV), trigger (sparse events), gain (a scalar), and bus (named routing). A wire only completes between compatible classes (plus the one control↔gain “modulation” cross). When a connection is refused the wire snaps back and the status line tells you why — a transient warning (for example “rejected connection — … is not rate-compatible with …”, or cade’s own reason for an illegal modulation) that clears after a few seconds. Refusals are no longer silent.

Opening a synth patch

A Synth source node encapsulates a DSP patch. Double-click it to drill into the patch scope; the canvas repaints to the oscillators/envelopes/filters and the breadcrumb extends (e.g. Sources › bassSynth). Press Escape, double-click empty canvas, or click an earlier breadcrumb crumb to drill back out. Inside a patch you can add/connect/delete/rename nodes and edit their params inline — envelope times are scrubbable millisecond fields (drag, wheel, or type a plain number like 120), matching the freq and gain controls. A wire onto a param slot becomes a modulate edge (for example an envelope onto carrier.freq).

The smallest patch that makes a sound is one oscillator wired to the output — no envelope required. cade fills in a default amplitude gate so the voice still plays and releases cleanly. When you do add an envelope, the first one is auto-named amp (later ones become env, env_2, …), so you never have to remember the magic name. The amp → output gain wire is drawn as a muted, translucent “documentary” wire: cade binds the amplitude VCA by the reserved amp name, not by that edge, so it’s there to show the amp is the voice level, not as a connection you manage.

Auditioning a patch

The Audition transport lets you hear a synth patch play through your speakers. The engine renders the same bit-accurate sound the real machine uses and streams it to the browser, so the preview is the true patch, not a re-synthesis.

  • ▶ Play / ■ Stop — start and immediately silence the patch.
  • Note buttons — a small keyboard (A3, C4, E4, G4, A4; A3 by default) sets the audition pitch so you can demonstrate the patch across notes.
  • Status line — reports readiness (ready — bit-accurate synth via cade), auditioning…, done, stopped, or an error. If the patch can’t play yet it tells you exactly what’s missing — “Add an oscillator and an output to audition this synth.” An amp envelope is not required: an oscillator wired to an output is enough to audition.

By default Play auditions a bundled demo patch; once you’ve drilled into a live synth, Play auditions that patch. Audition is a user gesture (it starts the audio engine on first Play, satisfying browser autoplay rules). In a headless environment or an engine build without audio, the transport is disabled and reads “audition unavailable” — it never errors.

Meters, scope, and parameter preview

Two visualizers help you read a patch — don’t confuse them:

  • Output meters — a live oscilloscope of the waveform plus stereo L/R level meters with peak-hold and live dB readouts. It only moves while audition is playing; idle it reads “press Play to audition.”
  • Parameter preview — a static inspection panel that follows the selected DSP node and draws its shape from its numbers with no sound: an ADSR curve for an envelope, a frequency-response curve (with cutoff marker) for a filter, or a single-cycle waveform for an oscillator. Select an oscillator, filter, or envelope to populate it.

Clip selection and triggers

The Clip selection panel has a scope dropdown listing selection scopes as owner · name (clip count); picking one loads that decision graph — event sources, conditions, probability, anti-repeat, and selectors — onto the canvas so you can see how a sound is chosen and fired for an event.

With Follow 3D selection on (an Options-menu toggle, on by default), picking a sound-bound device in the Object Editor surfaces that device’s selection graph on the Triggers canvas. The same happens when you open the Sound editor from the object editor’s right-click Open in editor ▸ Sound editor deep-link — it lands focused on the device you came from.

Mix and bus routing

The Mix / bus panel shows the routing as a read-only row of strip chips — one per channel or bus (buses prefixed “⇢”, effect counts shown like “(2 fx)”) — with a status such as “3 strips · 1 flagged route(s).” A flagged route is the engine pointing out a routing concern worth inspecting. The single top-level mix graph loads directly onto the canvas; the chip list is a summary, and the routing itself is the graph you edit on the canvas.

Live vs. sample

The editor draws on two data sources that can be live independently — the catalog behind the palette, and the synth patches you drill into. When live, edits round-trip through the engine and a rejected edit reverts with an explanation — and they persist across a reload and sync live to other open windows on the same table. In sample mode the palette and a faithful sample catalog are available but editing is optimistic, and audition, selection, and mix editing all need the live engine.