A multi-platform software synthesiser emulating (somewhat inaccurately) pre-GM MIDI devices such as the Roland MT-32, CM-32L, CM-64 and LAPC-I.

A multi-platform software synthesiser emulating (somewhat inaccurately) pre-GM MIDI devices such as the Roland MT-32, CM-32L, CM-64 and LAPC-I.

Multi Oscillator Linear Open Source Synthesizer. The purpose of this synth is to emulate various 80’s synths in a single low CPU module. It is available as a stand-alone exe or 32/64 bits VST.

TiMidity++ is a software synthesizer. It can play MIDI files by converting them into PCM waveform data; give it a MIDI data along with digital instrument data files, then it synthesizes them in real-time, and plays. It can not only play sounds, but also can save the generated waveforms into hard disks as various audio file formats.
TiMidity++ is a free software, distributed under the terms of GNU general public license.
Features:
timidity.sourceforge.net
- Plays MIDI files without any external MIDI instruments at all
- Understands SMF, MOD, RCP/R36/G18/G36, MFI
- Converts MIDI files into various audio file formats: .wav, .au, .aiff, .ogg and so on
- Uses Gravis Ultrasound compatible patch files and/or SoundFonts as the voice data
- Displays information about the music that is now playing
- Various user interfaces: ncurses, gtk, Win32-GUI, and others
- Plays remote MIDI files over the network
- Plays MIDI files in archive files
- Displays sound spectrogram for the playing music
- Trace playing
sourceforge.net/projects/timidity
StudioFactory provides a complete virtual audio studio on your computer. It has a very powerful virtual analog modular synthesizer based on an improved version of the SynFactory synthesis engine. StudioFactory is fully compatible with SynFactory and can load all existing patch files. The synthesis engine is extended with additional modules that give access to MIDI and audio input. This makes it possible to play sounds generated by StudioFactory with an external MIDI-keyboard. With the audio input StudioFactory can be used as an standalone effect processor and provides reverb, echo and vocoder effects.

The orDrumbox is free drum machine software, designed to be as creative as possible with some unusual features: auto-composition, polyrhythms, custom arpeggiator, automatic sounds/track matching, custom soft synths, lo fi rendering and more … Ideal for experimentation and fast results.
- This software can automatically compose bass lines, melodic patterns and complete songs.
- It comes with a rhythms database and sounds database including musical items which can be fully edited.
- … and a fully customizable soft synth section adds many synthetics sounds as presets to the sounds library.

www.ordrumbox.com
sourceforge.net/projects/ordrumbox
www.facebook.com/ordrumbox
Sonic Pi is a new kind of musical instrument. Instead of strumming strings or whacking things with sticks – you write code – live.
Sonic Pi has been designed with the aim to find a harmonious balance between three core principles:
- Simple enough for the 10 year old within you
- Joyful enough for you to lose yourself through play
- Powerful enough for your own expressions
Sonic Pi is a complete open source programming environment originally designed to explore and teach programming concepts within schools through the process of creating new sounds.
In addition to being an engaging education resource it has evolved into an extremely powerful and performance-ready live coding instrument suitable for professional artists and DJs.
Cabbage is a software for prototyping and developing audio instruments with the Csound audio synthesis language. Instrument development and prototyping is carried out with the main Cabbage IDE. Users write and compile Csound code in a code editor. If one wishes one can also create a graphical frontend, although this is no longer a requirement for Cabbage. Any Csound file can be run with Cabbage, regardless of whether or not it has a graphical interface. Cabbage is designed for realtime processing in mind. It is possible to use Cabbage to run Csound in the more traditional score-driven way, but your success may vary.
Cabbage is a ‘host’ application. It treats each and every Csound instrument as a unique audio plugin, which gets added to a digital audio graph (DAG) once it is compiled. The graph can be opened and edited at any point during a performance. If one wishes to use one of their Csound instruments in another audio plugin host, such as Reaper, Live, Bitwig, Ardour, QTractor, etc, they can export the instrument through the ‘Export instrument’ option.
ChucK is a programming language for real-time sound synthesis and music creation. It is open-source and freely available on MacOS X, Windows, and Linux. ChucK presents a unique time-based, concurrent programming model that’s precise and expressive (we call this strongly-timed), dynamic control rates, and the ability to add and modify code on-the-fly. In addition, ChucK supports MIDI, OpenSoundControl, HID device, and multi-channel audio. It’s fun and easy to learn, and offers composers, researchers, and performers a powerful programming tool for building and experimenting with complex audio synthesis / analysis programs, and real-time interactive music.
chuck.cs.princeton.edu
This is the synthesizer plug-in Surge which Claes Johanson (@kurasu) previously sold as a commercial product via the company vember audio.
As he is too busy with other projects and no longer wanted to put the effort into maintaining Surge across multiple platforms, he decided to give it a new life as an open-source project.
It was originally released in 2005, and was one of Claes’ first larger projects. It is reliable and sounds great.

Soundgrain is a graphical interface where users can draw and edit trajectories to control granular sound synthesis. Soundgrain is written with Python/WxPython and uses Pyo as its audio engine.

FluidSynth is a real-time software synthesizer based on the SoundFont 2 specifications and has reached widespread distribution. FluidSynth itself does not have a graphical user interface, but due to its powerful API several applications utilize it and it has even found its way onto embedded systems and is used in some mobile apps.
Features:
- Cross platform support (Linux, macOS and Windows to name a few)
- SoundFont 2 support
- SoundFont 3 support (vorbis-compressed SF2)
- Realtime effect control using SoundFont 2.01 modulators
- Playback of MIDI files
- Shared library which can be used in other programs
- Built in command line shell

QSynth is a fluidsynth GUI front-end application written in C++ around the Qt framework using Qt Designer.

FluidPatcher is a performance-oriented interface for FluidSynth built using wxpython to create a simple GUI that allows live editing, selecting, and playing of patches. A patch is a collection of settings such as soundfont presets for each MIDI channel, control-change/sysex messages to send when the patch is selected, and midi router or effects settings. Groups of patches are stored in banks, which are saved as human-readable and -editable YAML files. This allows a musician to easily create complex combinations of synthesizer settings ahead of time and switch between them on the fly during a performance.