What you need for this book

To use the code provided with this book, you need the latest version of the SuperCollider programming environment, which may be downloaded from http://supercollider.sourceforge.net/downloads/. As of this writing, Version 3.6.5 is the official stable release, while 3.7 is still under development. While some of the code heretofore is backward compatible with older versions of the program, the reader is encouraged to use version 3.6.5 or newer. Bear in mind that the GUI part of SuperCollider, on which this book relies a lot, has been substantially changed over the last major updates and, thus, you need to have at least Version 3.5 installed. Other than the SuperCollider programming environment, several examples rely on the SC3-plugins library, which can be downloaded from http://sourceforge.net/projects/sc3-plugins/. In some exceptional cases, you will also have to install some Quark extensions or even third-party softwares; these are all discussed in the relevant chapters. Yet, you should know how to use the Quarks system. Finally, for those examples that depend on a working Internet connection, you should make sure that your computer has access to it.

To make the best of this book, it is both expected and assumed that you are already familiar with the fundamentals of sound synthesis and have some experience with SuperCollider. In particular, you should be comfortable with variables, SynthDef/Synths, functions, routines, object-oriented programming, writing classes, scheduling, client/server architecture, and so on. Those readers who are not sure whether their SuperCollider skills are sufficient are encouraged to study the tutorials found on http://supercollider.sourceforge.net/learning/.