Ah, SunVox. It's like an instrument that Alexander Zolotov (AKA NightRadio) made for his own (excellent) music, and has generously shared with the world, creating a virtuous cycle of refinement in both his music and the instrument.
I can't say enough nice things about SunVox. When I first saw it I was looking for trackers, and didn't spend much time with it. The second time I was looking for modular synthesizer apps, and that's when I fell in love. SunVox was my "gateway drug" to deeper learning about audio synthesis and processing techniques.
You can create entire compositions and useful effects processors with SunVox using only the modular synthesis parts of it. It's very tracker-oriented, and you can do lots of tracker things with it, but don't be fooled into thinking it's a tracker. It HAS a tracker, and that is a strong part of its history and common usage, but it is much more than that. The modular interface is very approachable and powerful once you get accustomed to some of the fundamentals.
"MetaModules" are one of its secret weapons. They let you package an entire SunVox project into a module, and expose an interface of up to 96 controllers, along with audio and note I/O. They can be arbitrarily nested… MetaModules all the way down. Besides sharing full compositions, MetaModules are one of the primary ways people share their creativity in the SunVox community. One prolific producer just released a collection of 236 modules built over the last four years. [1]
Heck, it's even Turing-complete. Someone implemented a CPU using SunVox! [2]
SunVox has a library version that lets you embed the audio engine into your own app [3] and there's even a WASM version. It's particularly well-suited for games, because you can control up to 16 independent SunVox instances at a time (to separate music and SFX for example) and it will mix them together.
During my own explorations of SunVox I reverse-engineered and documented the file format [4] and wrote a library called "Radiant Voices" [5] for Python and TypeScript that lets you read and write SunVox files. If you read/write to specific filesystem locations, you can effectively hook into the SunVox clipboard, making it possible to write auxiliary apps that smoothly integrate with SunVox.
One of my favorite experiments combining those techniques was to create a "MetaModule Construction Kit", which lets you use Python to create and manipulate MetaModules parametrically, experiment with them using MIDI and an alternative UI, then copy them over to SunVox itself once you are happy with the resulting MetaModule. [6]
(Sadly, I don't find myself having enough time as of late to keep those side projects up-to-date with the latest versions of SunVox. YMMV if you decide to explore them. Contact me if you want to chat about them at all, especially if anyone's interested in collaborating to help bring them back in sync with the latest version of SunVox.)
I could go on and on singing praises about this software (and other apps created by the same author), but I'll spare both the reader and myself… for now. :-)
Baffles me that people think sarcasm is a good way to communicate on the internet. You are begging to be misunderstood, either accidentally, or maliciously.
It's not really sarcasm (which usually connotes contempt or mockery, which I suspect the blog writer didn't intend). It's irony, and irony has been widely used in written communication since we stopped using writing exclusively for record-keeping.
It can and does work on the internet, provided (i) the writer is prepared to accept that a subset of readers won't "get it"; they'll fail to pick up on contextual clues that signal irony and (ii) you have to be a good enough writer to include those clues so that at least your intended audience knows not to take it literally.
EDIT: To clarify, in this case, irony was a bad idea because it was badly executed. The context that would allow readers to interpret "The solution is trivial" as ironic was only available to people who were privy to the original conversation, while the blog post was intended to be read and understood by a much wider audience who lacked that context.
Irony should not really be used in technical communication at all, though. The goal of technical writing is that as many readers "get it" as possible. Therefore, any rhetorical technique for which you have to "accept that a subset of readers won't 'get it'" is a bad technique for technical writing.
Writing is hard. Writing for a multi-lingual audience is harder. Writing in your non-native tongue is harder still.
> EDIT: To clarify, in this case, irony was a bad idea because it was badly executed.
That was exactly how I felt reading it. Had it been the last statement of a long and complex explanation, it would have landed differently and warranted a chuckle.
A number of creators, especially cosplayers, have recently shared posts encouraging their use.
I don't know how widespread it is, because TikTok and IG both tend to feed you content relating to your niches. So I may be seeing a disproportionate number.
(I had to Google what NBH was about, it means "This isn't aimed at anyone specific reading this".)
Gosh this seems like a brilliantly effective next step in the TikTokers’ campaign to drain life of any and all colour and playfulness and spontaneity. As an autistic person, I’d cast my vote for ‘occasionally misunderstand things’ over ‘have ridiculous sarcasm warnings on everything so that you can’t actually be sarcastic, or anything but grimly solemn and annoyingly earnest 100% of the time’.
(Also, Lord save me from people who call themselves “allies”. It’s just called being a normal decent person, but that doesn’t let you brag about it or use autistic/black/etc people as fashion accessories, so I s’pose that’s off the menu..)
I think it's about writing for one's audience, and being inclusive.
I've got autistic friends who struggle with open questions. They strongly dislike opening greetings without quickly taking the conversation somewhere.
They often miss stuff that's implied in conversation. It has to be explicitly stated.
They suck at gauging tone and intent in written language. They worry about the feelings and opinions of others. It can be upsetting and stressful for them.
But they're smart, capable, fun, artistic and creative, kind, thoughtful and inclusive.
They are certainly not lacking in colour or playfulness. (Possibly lacking in spontaneity to a degree, but I don't think that's a deal-breaker.)
And it's great that you're comfortable enough with misunderstanding things for it to be preferable to an alternative.
I choose to change my language to suit them. If using /s and /nbh or whatever helps them to correctly parse what I write, and assists in me communicating, why would I choose not to do that?
When using spoken language, I denote sarcasm through tone of voice. Does that render it pointless? If not, why would using /s?
> Poe's law is an adage of Internet culture stating that, without a clear indicator of the author's intent, every parody of extreme views can be mistaken by some readers for a sincere expression of the views being parodied.
The internet lends itself to immediate/premature responses. People read headlines without reading the article. People stop reading in the middle as soon as they feel they have something to say about what they’ve read. People don’t take the time to think about what they’ve read before responding.
And that’s before you even get to the internet’s tendency to read what’s written in the least generous way possible in order to score internet points with a response to something wholly divorced from what the author intended.
Now add sarcasm to that mix. Pulling sarcasm out of context often leads to quick-draw responses to the exact opposite of the point the author was making.
If you limit your communication online to a subset that cannot be willingly or unwillingly misunderstood, then you will say nothing at all. People's capacity to misread is infinite.
"It's generally not good communication to use intentionally ambiguous language" != "It's only good communication if you literally can't misunderstand it"
Re-read what you just wrote and break down what you said:
> Baffles me that people think sarcasm is a good way to communicate on the internet.
The subtext here is that the idea of using sarcasm on the internet should be obviously stupid to everyone, thus you're stating anyone who exercises it is stupid. That or you're clearly smarter than everyone else.
> You are begging to be misunderstood, either accidentally, or maliciously.
Thus, if you're using sarcasm you're either stupid or evil.
Was your intent to insult people?
Sarcasm and irony can be effective means of communication, the same as exaggeration. Communication is hard and people posting on the internet don't() invest much thought most of the time.
What I haven't understood yet is what significance "The solution is trivial" being sarcastic or not has on the article itself. I understand it's reflecting poorly on it due to what I said earlier, but is there something that makes the article harder to understand due to this?
(I realize this question sounds a bit rude, but I'm genuinely curious and I don't know how else to phrase it.)
Firstly, I think people are making a mountain out of a molehill. The article remains comprehensible on the whole. It’s a good article.
What is presumably meant is the following: sarcasm and irony require a lot of skill and nuance to get right, precisely because they can be understood as saying something along with its inverse. More often than not, a sarcastic written comment will divide the audience into people who understood it to say P and those who understood it to say !P. This is especially true when your audience is large, culturally diverse, and (on average) rather literal-minded.
But don’t beat yourself up too hard. It’s a good article by any measure, and even more so for someone who is not a native English speaker.
Thank you for being reasonable here. A lot of "feedbacks" saying that person should "avoid personal stuff" in technical articles are more likely showing their taste instead of actually work on how the writer could express better his irony. Which I understood reading the "trivial" not so trivial xD
> What I haven't understood >yet is what significance "The >solution is trivial" being >sarcastic or not has on the >article itself.
If there’s no significance either way it shouldn’t be part of the blog. It adds no value and takes away from your goal of being succinct which you stated in one of your responses.
General (well meaning) advice from a stranger:
1. Always leave personal feelings out of blogs, technical and professional communication - especially the broadcast type communication. We tend to think about a small number of people but a larger number of people without context will interpret things very differently.
2. Sarcasm, irony etc need context and sometimes are also differently perceived by people from different cultural backgrounds. Your goal is to represent your and your teams efforts while helping your users. Everything else will detract from it.
3. When faced with feedback take it gracefully even if it you disagree completely or it makes you mad. You don’t need to get defensive and explain ‘your side of the story’. It almost never goes well.
Also why the hell were there such rude responses in the community post in the first place? I’ve worked at Microsoft before and I’d have roasted my team if one of them responded in that disrespectful manner - even if the community member may have trivialized work.
I think there is a lot of overreacting here to your blog post. That’s just the final piece. What rubbed me the wrong way was how your colleague castigated this person in the issue. I know people can be rough around the edges. I know they can be blunt and sometimes rude. But I think as MSFT you have a duty to rise above that by not engaging in it.
In any event, this whole thing is blown out or proportion and doesn’t deserve 300+ comments let alone another from me.
"The solution is trivial: [possible solution]! Well, unfortunately, [problem with solution]."
The issue here isn't so much sarcasm than that "is" should be read as "seems" here. But I don't see any other idiomatic reading that is sincerely calling the solution trivial.
I for one caught on that the writing was analogous to, but more subtle than, "It sounds simple, you can just do blah, right?!; but actually you can't! So we had to do this complex thing to get it to work."
So yeah, as noted, sarcasm is a tricky tool in writing. While I enjoy it in technical writing often, it's definitely not as common on a company-associated blog post (for various good reasons).
My own takeway for myself is a reminder: be careful crafting snark/jokes/sarcasm. Length of the statement probably increases the chances of being misinterpreted.
Upon reading the parent comment, I don't think this is what they were suggesting. They were making an analogy between what a band chooses to play live at a show based on context of the show, and what a streaming service could do to suggest songs based on context of the listening environment.
Yes, if you want to curate an entire playlist. Not everyone does. And if anyone has the enough data to generate these kinds of disparate playlists on their own with minimal user input/direction, it would be Spotify.
I don't really follow. If we're talking about something so specific as "what songs would a band play on their own set list" that should be manually curated, and in a very short amount of time.
If it's just general vibes... spotify already does this for you. They have an entire section called "Made for you" which seems to cluster your tastes and generate playlists of them.
Perhaps you just want to generate a cluster off of your own chosen centroid of song profiles. That could be cool I guess. I vastly prefer to just play albums.
They’re saying they want even more specific ”made for you” features - not just tailored for a person, but tailored for a person and a certain context (like they mentioned as examples - when they’re on their own, when they’re having dinner with friends, when they’re throwing a party etc). Presumably you would tell the app what your current setting is.
I guess I don't really buy that this isn't served well by genre or artist based playlists. How much more nuanced are you going to get than saying "I want to play some alt pop" for this party.
Inspired by the recent post about simulating Pong circuitry, I thought I'd share this video that was recently shared amongst SunVox groups.
It's a working Game of Life implementation, with output to an oscilloscope view. The video goes into detail about each subsystem and how it's organized.
What does this have to do with Pong? His previous video is a working, interactive game of Pong, also implemented in SunVox using oscilloscope output.
I followed this advice right after the last time I spent 20 minutes having an ink-jet printer clean its nozzles thrice before I could print one sheet of monochrome text. I print infrequently enough that the nozzles would often dry up and get clogged.
It had been so long since I looked at laser printers, I didn't realize their prices had become so affordable for home/personal use.
Now, when I print something, I know it'll "just work", and that the text will be crisp and legible every time, with no banding and wasted paper.
Plus, it's so much faster.
The cost and reliability of toner vs ink is one thing... but the lack of stress surrounding the occasional small print job at home? As stated by a much-parodied ad campaign, "priceless"!
(Edit: and I still have 60% capacity in the complimentary toner cartridge it came with!)
Armin Ronacher has recently been making some good points about tool composition: https://lucumr.pocoo.org/2025/8/18/code-mcps/