What's new
Everything new in SynthMaker, newest first, on the web at synthmaker.com/app and in the Mac app.
The web and the Mac, one version number
One number everywhere
One number everywhere: the web app and the Mac app now share one version number, shown at the top of the app. The same number means the same features, so if yours is lower than the newest one here, an update is on its way.
Note and Track lists
A note or a track for every pad: wire a grid of pads into a Note and each pad gets its own note; into a Track and each pad starts or stops a track of the song by name, its light following the track. Fill does them all at once.
Red and amber checks
Lists that check themselves: rows that can never play turn red, with one button to delete them; pads that play nothing yet show in amber. A wire carrying pads that can't play turns red too.
Shader patterns
Patterns that move with the music: build pictures from modules (Noise, Octaves, Add, Multiply, Mix, Warp) and wire the music into them, so clouds, marble and smoke swirl harder as the song gets louder. A module of your own with an input named p becomes a pattern of your own.
Circuits 1 on the Mac
Circuits 1 on the Mac: the lesson that builds a pedal from its parts now runs on the Mac too. In Both, the parts list wraps and the whole schematic shows, and a mistake you fix clears its red line straight away.
Circuit and Code boxes
Boxes you can recognise: a circuit's box is copper, with its schematic drawn small inside; a Code module's box is teal, with its first lines of code.
The manual
The manual: grids and buses, faces in SwiftUI, circuits, code and shader patterns, in plain words and real pictures. Press Play it here under a picture and the real patch runs right on the page.
Only where a platform can't
Only where a platform can't: a few things work on one platform only, and they're listed here. AUv3 plugins are Mac only.
Your account on the Mac
Your sounds and songs everywhere: sign in on the Mac with Apple or Google and your sounds and songs sync with the web. Your library stays on your Mac; if the same sound changed in two places, you keep both.
Open a file, reset a sound
Open and reset on the Mac: File › Open… opens a sound or song file, or double-click one in the Finder; Reset Sound puts the whole sound back as it was when you opened it, in one undo step.
A new version is ready
A new version is ready: if a newer web version comes out while the app is open, the number at the top tells you. Reload when it suits you. On the Mac, the update downloads by itself and the number turns into Restart when it's ready.
Your version in bug reports
Your version in bug reports: when you report a bug, your version is filled in for you.
Shared links fixed
Shared links that always open: a sound whose list still has rows from a deleted grid, or that holds a pattern of your own, now opens from its link like any other.
Grids of pads, circuits you can see, and SynthMaker's own folder on your Mac.
Pad grids
A grid of pads in one go: add a grid of pads to a face, say 4 × 4, and all sixteen are drawn at once, numbered. In the Patch the whole grid is one module, and its presses travel together on one thicker green wire, each named after its pad.
One Chord, many chords
One Chord module for many chords: give each pad its own chord in a list, in the song's key. Unplug the wire and the list waits for you; plug it back and it plays again.
Circuits on the Mac
Circuits on the Mac: the circuit sounds play here too: diode pedals, op-amp filters, transistor fuzzes. Open one to edit its parts list, or see it drawn as a schematic; click a part to find its line. Start from circuit is in the module browser, and a knob that a wire turns shows where the wire has it now.
Its own folder
Your sounds have their own home: SynthMaker keeps your sounds and songs in its own folder, so it no longer asks to see your Documents. Videos you export go to Movies › SynthMaker.
Small things
Small things: Escape leaves Play full screen. Note, Chord, Track and Transport are explained in the module browser.
Grids of pads, and one Chord for many chords
Pad grids
A grid of pads in one go: add a grid of pads to a face, say 4 × 4, and all sixteen are drawn at once, numbered. In the Patch the whole grid is one module, and its presses travel together on one thicker green wire, each named after its pad.
One Chord, many chords
One Chord module for many chords: give each pad its own chord in a list, in the song's key.
Start from circuit
Start from circuit is now in the module browser: hear an example, then add it and change its parts.
On the Mac from 1.0 (189)
Play a groovebox full screen, with green message wires
Big patches stay readable
Big patches stay readable: the modules a face plays are laid out in rows, like the face itself.
Play full screen
Play full screen: only the pads, edge to edge. The face fills the screen: stacks share the space, and each pad keeps its shape.
Green message wires
Green message wires: presses, triggers and on/off travel on their own green wire into Note, Chord, Track and Transport modules. Add a long-press gesture to a Button and it plays while you hold it.
Circuit knobs you wire
Circuits: a wire can turn a circuit's knobs, as in Swept Sallen-Key and Circuit Wah.
Small things
Small things: the module browser explains Note, Chord, Track and Transport; a pad's key starts the sound at the first press; a new sound opens framed whole.
On the Mac from 1.0 (187)
Build a groovebox, then play it full screen.
Controls 3 lesson
A new lesson, Controls 3: a groovebox you render in Blender, and it plays. Ned builds one face with a Start button, launch pads, chord pads, drum pads and a melody row, and wires each pad to what it plays.
Big patches read
Big patches read: the modules a face plays are laid out in rows like the face itself, and lessons zoom to the part they are talking about.
Pads as in SwiftUI
Pads, as in SwiftUI: every Button on a face is a Pad module in the Patch. A Button sends its action when you let go. Add a long-press gesture with a minimum duration of zero and it plays while you hold it, for drums, chords and melodies.
Green message wires
Green message wires: presses, triggers and on/off travel on their own green wire, into Note, Chord, Track and Transport modules.
Play full screen
Play full screen: only the pads, edge to edge. Escape, or the little cross, brings the Patch back. Pads size themselves with frame and aspect ratio, shown in the Patch as a purple chain of modifiers.
Launch in time
Launch in time: a launch pad starts its track on the next bar, the next beat or right away, and Start can begin with the tracks silent.
Find the module you want, and op-amps and transistors in circuits
Module browser
A module browser: every module as a tile with a small drawing of what it does. Choose one to read about it, hear it and see an example, then press Add.
Op-amps and transistors
Op-amps and transistors: circuits can use them now, drawn in the schematic too. Try 1966 Fuzz, Green Overdrive, Treble Booster or Sallen-Key Bass.
Pads for your faces
Pads for your faces: Buttons that look and play like pads, wired to the new Note, Chord, Track and Transport modules to play notes, chords in key, drums and whole tracks. Open Groovebox Jam to try one.
Easier selecting
Selecting is easier: Shift-click or drag a box to choose several modules, remove them in one go, and press Escape to let go.
Faster in Chrome
Faster in Chrome: the filters and FM take less of your computer's time in Chrome and Edge.
On the Mac from 1.0 (185)
Find the module you want, and play a groovebox you built.
Module browser
A module browser: press + in the Patch for every module as a tile with a small drawing of what it does. Choose one to read about it, hear it (or see it, for visuals) and try an example patch, then press Add. Or select a wire and just start typing a name.
Easier selecting
Selecting is easier: Shift-click or drag a box to choose several, press Delete to remove them, and Escape to let go. Right-click a module for Remove, Duplicate or Open.
Pads for your faces
Buttons for your faces: pads rendered in Blender, in five colours with play and stop, that light up. Wire them to the new Note, Chord, Track and Transport modules to play notes, chords in key, drums and whole tracks. Open Groovebox Jam to try one.
Undo while typing
Typing code: ⌘Z undoes what you type, and Edit › Undo says what it will undo.
One window on a computer or iPad, and circuits you can play
One window
One window, as on the Mac: on a computer or an iPad the app is now one window, with your sounds and songs on the left, the Patch in the middle, the modules' knobs on the right, and the transport and keyboard along the bottom.
Circuits
Circuits: a new kind of module plays a small analog circuit from its parts list, one part per line. Try Diode Pedal, LED Clipper or Germanium Bass, open one to read and change its parts, or see it drawn as a schematic.
Circuits 1 lesson
A new lesson: Ned builds a distortion pedal from six parts: drive, tone, three kinds of diode, and a germanium bass. It's in Learn.
Faces you can walk into.
Faces you walk into
Inside a module of your own, its face is one box in the Patch. Double-click it to go inside, and again on any row or column to see its views in order, with the knobs' wires where they are. A path at the top takes you back up.
Nested or Flat
Nested or Flat: a switch beside that path shows the whole face at once when you want the full picture.
Delete earlier songs
Earlier songs can be deleted: right-click one for Delete, or Delete All Earlier Songs. They go to the Trash.
Show in Finder
Show in Finder: right-click one of your sounds, an earlier song or a track to see its file.
Sound that follows your headphones.
Output follows you
Switching your Mac's output (headphones, speakers or Vision Pro) while SynthMaker plays now moves the sound with it. Before, it went quiet until you reopened the app.
Earlier songs once
Earlier songs keeps each song once. Opening one again no longer adds a copy, and a song to start from that you only played isn't kept.
Analyzer menu
The Analyzer chooses its view from a menu, its spectrum options sit in two rows that read in full, and dragging the knobs column's edge no longer quits the app.
Code modules' ports
Modules you write in code show their inputs and outputs in the Patch, so you can wire them by hand, and their knobs write tidy values.
See inside your filters: the Analyzer's new views.
Response view
Response: wire a filter (or a module you wrote in code) into an Analyzer and see its gain and phase across the spectrum, exact, moving as you turn its knobs.
Impulse view
Impulse: the module's answer to a single click, over 64, 512 or 4096 samples.
Poles and zeros
Poles: its poles and zeros on the unit circle.
Scope options
Scope: Note holds each note's start, 1 cycle shows one period, Freeze stops the picture, and Compare draws another Analyzer's trace on top.
Spectrum options
Spectrum options: window, size, axis, level, peaks, phase, and the harmonics of the last key you played.
Delay in samples
Delay line: its samples knob reads Off, 1 sample, or the number of samples.
See inside your filters: the Analyzer on the web
Response view
Response: wire a filter, or a code module, into an Analyzer and see its gain and phase across the spectrum, moving as you turn its knobs.
Spectrum
Spectrum: the Analyzer shows the sound's spectrum, with a choice of window, size, axis and level, its peaks, its phase, and the harmonics of the last key you played.
Impulse, poles and zeros
Impulse and Poles: a module's answer to a single click, and its poles and zeros on the unit circle, live.
Scope options
Scope: the Analyzer's scope sits on its card. Note holds each note's start, 1 cycle shows one period, Freeze stops the picture, and Compare draws another Analyzer's trace on top.
Delay in samples
Delay line: its samples knob reads Off, 1 sample, or the number of samples.
On the Mac from 1.0 (179)
Lessons that end on the song they promise.
Lessons end right
Drums 1, Generative 1 and Generative 2 end on exactly the library's song again. The lesson's practice riff had stayed on, playing over a part that writes its own notes.
Paste gets a track
Paste as New Sound gives the sound a track of its own, named after it, so the song's other parts keep theirs.
Tidy knob values
Knobs write tidy values: turned all the way, a filter reads 20 kHz in the code, and in between values keep four figures.
Fixes for modules you write.
Start from code fix
Start from code starts where its code says: the new filter's cutoff is 800 Hz, in the code and on its knob. It began at 0 Hz, and the next change to the code was refused.
Selection stays
The module you choose stays chosen while the code is open: its line stays lit beside the knobs.
Modules you write, as on synthmaker.com.
Start from code
Start from code. In the Patch, + › Module of your own › Start from code adds a filter written in five lines. It's one box in the Patch, named by its code, with its own knobs.
Code or graph inside
Go inside. Open it to see its code or its graph (multiply, add, π, and y' for one sample ago), or both side by side. Type to change it; a pause applies it as one undo step, and a line with a mistake turns red while the sound keeps the last version that worked. Click a part of the graph to find its code, and the cursor in the code lights its part of the graph.
Nest any depth
As deep as you like. Modules of your own and the modules you write nest inside each other, and the Code view writes and reads them all, exactly as the web does.
The code, in colour.
Code in colour
The Code view in colour, as on synthmaker.com. Each module's name is in its module's colour, numbers and units stand out, and wires and comments step back. A line with a mistake turns red, and the line of the module you chose lights up.
The code lesson, on the Mac.
Your synth as code
New: Your synth as code. Ned shows you a sound as text: change a value and hear it, add a module by typing, see what a mistake looks like, and share a sound as a link that opens on synthmaker.com or here.
Code and Patch together
The code and the Patch choose together: click a module and its line lights up; put the cursor on a line and its module is chosen.
Share as a link
Share copies a link to your sound. Edit › Paste as New Sound opens a link, or a sound's text, as a new sound.
Undo updates the code
Undo now updates the code at once.
Your synth as code, on the Mac.
The Code view
New: the Code view. Press Code in the toolbar to see the sound as text beside the Patch: every module, its settings and its wires, as on synthmaker.com. Type to change it: the sound follows when the text is valid, and Undo takes back each change. If a line can't play, a red bar says which line and why, and the sound keeps the last version that worked. Copy puts the whole sound on the clipboard.
Updates arrive by themselves.
Quieter updates
Quieter, quicker updates. SynthMaker now looks for a new version every hour. When there is one, it downloads in the background and installs the next time you quit, with no window to click through.
The song a lesson builds is yours to keep.
Songs from lessons
Fixed: songs from lessons. When a lesson like the 808 built a song, the song you kept had no notes of its own. After quitting SynthMaker it couldn't play, and opening another song didn't keep it in Earlier songs. Now the song keeps what the lesson played: it plays after you reopen SynthMaker, and it's kept when you open another.
The same sound, however your Mac's audio is set up.
A steadier engine
A steadier engine. Oscillators, filters, FM, strings and the piano now read their knobs on the engine's own timeline. A sound plays the same whatever audio buffer size your Mac uses, and the same as on synthmaker.com. You won't hear a difference; it makes every sound repeatable to the sample.
Your songs are kept, and the keys answer faster.
Earlier songs
New: Earlier songs. Starting a lesson, opening a song to start from or starting a new song no longer replaces your song for good. The song it replaces goes to Earlier songs in the sidebar, the last 50 of them, and opens again with one click.
Lower latency
Lower latency: a key you press sounds sooner. SynthMaker now asks for an audio buffer a quarter of the size.
Newer sounds kept safe
Sounds made on synthmaker.com with features this version doesn't have yet are kept safe, untouched, until you update.
A faster engine and two new Sound lab lessons.
The 808 lesson
New: the 808, from one sine wave (Sound lab 5, video). A pitch drop and a long fade make the boom. Move the Shaper before the envelope and it survives a phone's speaker, and you can hear that for yourself with Listen As.
The supersaw lesson
New: the supersaw, locked to the bar (Sound lab 6, video). Seven saws in uneven steps, wide and free-running, then locked so the swirl repeats in time. It ends with a gated trance drop and pumping stabs.
Gen 2 engine
A new engine, Gen 2. It plays every voice side by side and runs a feedback loop one sample at a time, so a wire that loops back now plays instead of being refused. If something sounds wrong, Settings › Advanced brings back Gen 1.
Listen As
Listen As: hear your sound the way a phone's or a laptop's speakers play it.
Steps
Steps: a pattern of levels on the song's grid that moves any knob, bar by bar.
Tape Delay and Chorus
A Tape Delay, BBD Chorus modes and Variance. Delay and envelope times can be set in note values.
Bar-locked oscillator
The Oscillator can lock to the bar, and the filters can follow the note.
Ned stays clear
Ned stays clear over the music: the lesson's song dips while he speaks.
Removing keeps playing
Removing a module the sound runs through joins its neighbours, so the sound keeps playing.
The first direct download for Mac. From now on it updates itself.
Controls 2 lesson
New: Controls 2, a lesson in the app (video). You build a drive with a ladder filter before it and another after it. Then you give it a face: one Knob that turns several settings at once (more grit, less level, so it stays even), a three-way Switch for the curve, and realistic knob looks you can swap without changing the sound. Your own knob pictures go into My strips.
LFO in tempo
The LFO follows the tempo, from 1 bar down to 1/16 triplets, and can restart on every note or every bar.
Shaper focus and bias
The Shaper has Focus, Bias and Smooth.
Stage-by-stage ladder
A second ladder filter, modelled stage by stage.
Driven Pulse Bass
A new sound, Driven Pulse Bass.
No accent clicks
A mono sound no longer clicks when an accent lands.