Vital is a spectral warping wavetable synthesizer with drag'n'drop modulation workflow and animated preview of the synth's inner workings where needed. Comes with many modulation sources (including audio-rate), MPE support and FX chain.



ZynAddSubFX is described as 'Fully featured open source software synthesizer capable of making a countless number of instruments, from some common heard from expensive hardware to interesting sounds that you'll boost to an amazing universe of sounds' and is an app in the audio & music category. There are more than 25 alternatives to ZynAddSubFX for a variety of platforms, including Windows, Mac, Linux, BSD and iPad apps. The best ZynAddSubFX alternative is Vital, which is both free and Open Source. Other great apps like ZynAddSubFX are Helm, Odin 2, yoshimi and Dexed.
Vital is a spectral warping wavetable synthesizer with drag'n'drop modulation workflow and animated preview of the synth's inner workings where needed. Comes with many modulation sources (including audio-rate), MPE support and FX chain.



Helm is a free, cross-platform, polyphonic synthesizer with a powerful modulation system. Helm runs on GNU/Linux, Mac, and Windows as a standalone program or LV2/VST/VST3/AU plugin.

Odin 2 is a versatile 24-voice polyphonic synthesizer that covers about every type of synthesis out there. Odin 2 is released as open-source software.




Yoshimi is a software synthesizer for Linux based on the 2.4.0 release of ZynAddSubFX, written by Nasca Octavian Paul. Yoshimi delivers the same synth capabilities, along with very good Jack and Alsa midi/audio functionality.




Dexed is an FM-type softsynth developed by Pascal Gauthier of Digital Suburban. It is an ideal application for importing, playing and editing/managing sysex patches from both the classic Yamaha DX7 synthesizer and the TX7.

Surge is an open source digital synthesizer originally written and sold as a commercial product by @kurasu (Claes Johanson) at Vember Audio. The synth uses subtractive hybrid synthesis and each patch contains two 'scenes' which are separate instances of the entire...




Movement in nature has inspired us for centuries. And now, the sounds of movement in nature have inspired a new instrument that will put you into a creative state of flow.

The NES VST is designed to emulate the 8-bit sounds of the Nintendo, remaining faithful to the specifications of the 2A03 chip.

WhySynth is a versatile softsynth which operates as a plugin for the DSSI Soft Synth Interface. A brief list of features:
4 oscillators, 2 filters, 3 LFOs, and 5 envelope generators per voice.
10 oscillator modes: minBLEP, wavecycle, asynchronous granular, three FM.

AudioMulch is an interactive musician's environment for PC and Mac. It is used for live electronic music performance, composition and sound design.

Qsynth is a simple Qt4 application wrapper for the FluidSynth software MIDI sequencer for Linux. Qsynth is a fluidsynth GUI front-end application written in C++ around the Qt4 toolkit using Qt Designer.



Tyrell is the name of a project by the German online magazine Amazona.de. A reader survey and follow-on forum posts provided a pool of ideas for a low cost HARDWARE analogue synth, which Mic 'Moogulator' Irmer used to develop quite a powerful concept.
