Pure Data (or Pd) is a graphical programming language developed by Miller Puckette in the 1990s for the creation of interactive computer music and multimedia works. Though Puckette is the primary author of the software, Pd is an open source project and has a large developer base working on new extensions to the program.

Pd is very similar in scope and design to Puckette's original Max program (developed while he was at IRCAM), and is to some degree interoperable with Max/MSP, the commercial successor to the Max language. Unlike the original version of Max, however, Pd was always designed to do control-rate and [audio] processing on the host CPU, rather than offloading the synthesis and signal processing to a DSP board (such as the Ariel ISPW which was used for Max/FTS). Pd influenced the underlying design of David Zicarelli 's MSP extensions to the Max language to do software audio processing.

Like Max, Pd has a modular code base of externals or objects which are used as building blocks for programs written in the software, also known as a Dataflow_language. This makes the program easily extensible through a public API, and encourages developers to add their own control and audio routines.

External links

• Pd Documentation at UCSD
• pure-data.info is the new home for the Pure data community site, after the old one at pure-data site (from archive.org—) has been squatted)
• pure-data.sf.net - home of hundreds of Pd externals.
• Download page for Pure Data