Bidule is a commercial

Commercial software

Commercial software, or less commonly, payware, is computer software that is produced for sale or that serves commercial purposes.Commercial software is most often proprietary software, but free software packages may also be commercial software....

 software application for the creation of interactive computer music

Computer music

Computer music is a term that was originally used within academia to describe a field of study relating to the applications of computing technology in music composition; particularly that stemming from the Western art music tradition...

 and multimedia

Multimedia

Multimedia is media and content that uses a combination of different content forms. The term can be used as a noun or as an adjective describing a medium as having multiple content forms. The term is used in contrast to media which use only rudimentary computer display such as text-only, or...

 produced by the Canadian company Plogue Arts and Technology. It runs on both Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

 and Mac

Mac OS

Mac OS is a series of graphical user interface-based operating systems developed by Apple Inc. for their Macintosh line of computer systems. The Macintosh user experience is credited with popularizing the graphical user interface...

 computers.

Bidule uses a modular structure based on a patch cord metaphor much like AudioMulch

AudioMulch

AudioMulch is modular audio software for making music and processing sound. The software can synthesize sound and process live and pre-recorded sound in real-time....

, Reaktor

Reaktor

Reaktor is a graphical modular software music studio of proprietary license developed by Native Instruments. It lets musicians and sound specialists design and build their own instruments, samplers, effects and sound design tools. It is supplied with many ready-to-use instruments and effects, from...

, Pure Data

Pure Data

Pure Data is a visual programming language developed by Miller Puckette in the 1990s for creating interactive computer music and multimedia works. While Puckette is the main author of the program, Pd is an open source project with a large developer base working on new extensions to it. It is...

, and Max/MSP. Individual modules are called bidules (the Plogue web site states that the word "Bidule" is French for "thingy" or "gadget"). A set of bidules and connections is called a layout, and sub-patches called groups can be built within layouts and saved for use elsewhere. The program features real time audio, MIDI, Open Sound Control (OSC), and spectral processing. It runs as a ReWire

ReWire

ReWire is a software protocol, jointly developed by Propellerhead and Steinberg, allowing remote control and data transfer among digital audio editing and related software...

 mixer or device. It can be run standalone or as a VST

Virtual Studio Technology

Steinberg's Virtual Studio Technology is an interface for integrating software audio synthesizer and effect plugins with audio editors and hard-disk recording systems. VST and similar technologies use digital signal processing to simulate traditional recording studio hardware with software...

, VSTi or AU

Audio Units

Audio Units are a system-level plug-in architecture provided by Core Audio in Mac OS X developed by Apple Computer. Audio Units are a set of application programming interface services provided by the operating system to generate, process, receive, or otherwise manipulate streams of audio in...

 plugin, and can host the same. ASIO/CoreAudio is supported for low latency audio. Parameters can be linked to MIDI or OSC input or to other module parameters. Over one hundred modules and groups are available, and modules include the ability to perform high-level math on signals.