Does anyone know of a good open-source or free-ware sound synthesizer?

Does anyone know of a good open-source or free-ware sound synthesizer?
The kind that sounds like actual instruments? Thanks :slight_smile:

Linux MultiMedia Studio (LMMS) might be able to do what you’re looking for.

For instance:

http://www.hitsquad.com/smm/linux/SOFTWARE_SYNTHESIZERS/
http://www.musescore.org (an excellent professional-grade music-scoring program with built-in synth … I’ve never wished for Sibelius because of it.)

Technology:


A very common instrument-file format is called SoundFonts, and many of these sounds are excellent indeed. There are many very large repositories of high-quality instrument sounds which use this format … free, as well as commercial, and “the free ones are no slouch.”

Note that the technology includes both user-interface programs and underlying libraries which will allow you to, for instance, play high quality music within a game.

Although music playback, like pretty much everything else in Linux, depends on your hardware and drivers and so-forth, music is comparatively simple to manage, and most computers have high-quality built-in sound hardware these days.

Welcome to the highly addictive world of computer music.

Moved from “Misc: > Off-topic Chat” to “Support > Other Software”

Yeah, what sundialsvc4 said. If you want it to sound like real instruments, use samples of REAL INSTRUMENTS :slight_smile: No need to reinvent the wheel. If you want something to sound like a real cello, piano, etc., but don’t have access to those instruments, then just use some of the free and “open” sample libraries that people have already made. They’re surprisingly easy to find. I myself have gigs worth of .sfz and .sf2 libraries on my hard drive. I don’t know that their licenses allow me to distribute them, but I can give you the names of them if you like ( and if I can remember where I found them).

And my favorite plugins for using sample libraries were LinuxSampler with the JSampler front-end, even on Windows (the VST version of LinuxSampler plugin will run in Cakewalk, for instance, and they’re super easy to set up).

If you have an iPad or an iPhone Garage Band really is worth buying for $5.00.

Sorry I took so long to respond, I wanted to make sure I had a chance to take a good look at the programs beforehand.

For instance:

http://www.hitsquad.com/smm/linux/SO…_SYNTHESIZERS/
http://www.musescore.org (an excellent professional-grade music-scoring program with built-in synth … I’ve never wished for Sibelius because of it.)

Musescore seems to be the exact type of music program I’ve always wanted! the only real problem being that the instruments that it comes with sound rather cheap…

Yeah, what sundialsvc4 said. If you want it to sound like real instruments, use samples of REAL INSTRUMENTS :slight_smile: No need to reinvent the wheel. If you want something to sound like a real cello, piano, etc., but don’t have access to those instruments, then just use some of the free and “open” sample libraries that people have already made. They’re surprisingly easy to find. I myself have gigs worth of .sfz and .sf2 libraries on my hard drive. I don’t know that their licenses allow me to distribute them, but I can give you the names of them if you like ( and if I can remember where I found them).

And my favorite plugins for using sample libraries were LinuxSampler with the JSampler front-end, even on Windows (the VST version of LinuxSampler plugin will run in Cakewalk, for instance, and they’re super easy to set up).

I don’t know if I should ask you to list them all out, that would probably be allot of work, but I’d really appreciate it if you could name a few of them(especially a cello! :smiley: ) and at least one good site where I can get them. Also, will they work with Musescore, or will I need a different program?