I am learning the basic concepts of music production by exploring the capabilities of Cakewalk by Bandlab as well as Pure Data. My question is about how to capitalize on the sounds one generates in Pure Data.

I assume that although it is possible to write music entirely in Pure Data, most producers in some fashion export sounds from Pure Data into a DAW for further arrangement. The most sensible way to do this that I can see would be to make virtual instruments out of one's Pure Data creations.

Suppose I create a sound I like in Pure Data, either using a synthesizer written in Pure Data, or by some unstructured process of playing with sinesums/drawing freehand sound waves in tables/etc. How can I make a custom virtual instrument in Cakewalk from such a sound? I found this (

) tutorial for creating virtual instruments, but it doesn't discuss Cakewalk, and the tutorial involves audio recording from a physical instrument. Would sound generated in Pure Data have to be recorded in order to be ported to a DAW, or could it be transferred through an entirely digital process, since the sound in Pure Data originates digitally?

If this is not the right way to go about utilizing Pure Data sounds in a DAW, then what is?

I believe you could make a virtual instrument or effect out of a Pd patch using Camomile https://github.com/pierreguillot/Camomile - then it would appear as a VST instrument in Cakewalk.
Another option would be to route the sound from Pd into an audio channel on Cakewalk but I don't know how internal audio routing works on Windows.
Or (least complicated but maybe less interesting) you could of course just sample the sounds you make in Pd and collage them together in Cakewalk or perhaps load them up as samples in a virtual sampler instrument.

@Metronome The simplest way is just to route midi from cakewalk to puredata and audio from puredata to cakewalk. I believe there are some ways to create plugins from puredata patches but they are limited somewhat regarding externals?

There are also a few DAWs which support loading of puredata patches directly, I believe Ableton does and Radium certainly does.

Linux has Jack audio routing.

Windows:
Jack on Windows
https://jackaudio.org/faq/jack_on_windows.html
seems not to be supported by all the DAWs

and VB-Audio Cable
https://vb-audio.com/Cable/

Did not try any of those two.
On some soundcards, like RME, you can do virtual routings, too.

Thank you everybody for the suggestions.

@oid said:

@Metronome The simplest way is just to route midi from cakewalk to puredata and audio from puredata to cakewalk.

Sorry if this is obvious, but are there instructions for how to do this? I'm on Windows 7, but I can't really find a tutorial for any system, including in the Pure Data documentation.

It's not obvious!

Routing MIDI internally requires a 'virtual midi driver' which you can set up with something like MidiYoke http://www.midiox.com/ or LoopMidi http://www.tobias-erichsen.de/software/loopmidi.html
I'm not on Windows so I can't give you anything more specific.

For routing audio you might need something like Jack https://jackaudio.org/downloads/ or Virtual Audio Cable https://vb-audio.com/Cable/

Ah ha, I was assuming this was a process performed with the OS/drivers. I didn't realize lacuna had already answered the question!