ZynAddSubFX

ZynAddSubFX is a fully featured musical software synthesizer for Linux, MacOS, BSD, and Windows. ZynAddSubFX exposes a wide array of synthesis parameters to make it flexible tool for sound design and a fun experience for playing instruments.

Features

• Polyphonic with support for legato and mono playing modes.

• Three synthesizer engines:

  • Additive Synthesis for classic synth sounds composed of a variety of voices with powerful modulation. This exposes modulators ranging from LFOs and envelopes to oscillator modulators for FM, PM, and AM.

  • Subtractive Synthesis for creating variable bandwidth harmonics from filtered white noise.

  • PAD synthesis for creating beautiful pads and other instruments.

• Powerful waveform generator with up to 128 sine/non-sine harmonics.

• A variety of filters including analogue modeled filters, formant filters, and state variable filters.

• Envelopes can have ADSR (or ASR, etc..) modes or can be free modes (with any shape).

• Effects for Reverb, Echo, Chorus/Flange, Phasing, Wave-shaping, Equalizing, Dynamic Filtering with flexible signal routing.

• Instruments can be organized in kits, which allows you to make drum kits or layered instruments; this makes possible to use more than one instrument for a single part. It is possible to choose what items from the kit should be processed by the Part’s effects.

• Randomness settings to create subtle differences in each sound to help create that familiar analogue warmth.

• Microtonal capabilities with any scale, up to 128 notes per octave, and key mapping.

• Extensive MIDI/Audio driver support including JACK, ALSA, OSS, and PortAudio. The following MIDI protocol extensions are provided:

  • Floating point notes via MIDI SysEx. Allows the exact pitch of a note on event to be specified as a 28-bit value.

  • Per-note controller events via MIDI SysEx. Allows individual active notes to receive MIDI control events.

  • Per-note pitch bend events via MIDI SysEx. Allows individual active notes to change pitch.

• Session Management Support via LASH/NSM.

• Plugin Support via DSSI/LV2/VST.

• Over 1100 high quality instruments included.

For more information see:

• The project page: http://zynaddsubfx.sf.net

• The mailing list: https://sourceforge.net/projects/zynaddsubfx/lists/zynaddsubfx-user

• The public forum: https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=47

• The IRC channel: #zynaddsubfx on irc.Libera.chat

Dependencies

ZynAddSubFX depends on a number of dependencies for building. For more information on building the core along with the FLTK based interface see doc/building.txt and for building the new interface see https://github.com/zynaddsubfx/zyn-fusion-build.

Required:

• FFTW 3.x.x - necessary for Fast Fourier computations

• MXML-2.5+ - from https://www.msweet.org/mxml/

• zlib - from https://www.zlib.net/

• Liblo - networked open sound control

Optional:

• FLTK (for the oldest user interface)

• NTK (for the old user interface)

• JACK

• OSS

• ALSA

• LASH

• DSSI

Sibling projects

• rtosc - realtime open sound control https://github.com/fundamental/rtosc

• mruby-zest - the framework for the zyn-fusion GUI https://github.com/mruby-zest/mruby-zest

License

ZynAddSubFX is available under the GPL-2.0-or-later license.

Have fun! :-)

--The ZynAddSubFX team