making your own software synth

[vision]

man this got me thinking. maby if some of us work together we could get somthink going. if anyone would be up for it? i only just got syithedit today (after reading this post) but i do know how this stuff works im doing a degree in sound engineering and production so it dident take me long to get some good stuff going. but if someone knows c++ who wants to make moduals you will be my new best friend lol.

well the first thing i made was a 3osc syith with 2 SV filters, 2 mod evolopes and 2 lfo. this is with full routing (like you could send just osc 1 to filter 1 or lfo 2 to osc 2 pitch..........) then i added a chours and dealy. then i added a HPF and a distrtion unit. the idear being that you could have osc 1 as a sine wave for your sub bass and send that to filter 1 then you could have osc 2 and 3 as your harmonics sent to filter 2 . then you send filter 2 to your chorus ond delay then you send the hole lot to the hpf and distrtion. then send lfo 1 to filter 2(and lfo 2 to filter 1 a bit if you wanted some wob on your sub). giving you instant fat bass. dont know why i put in 2 mod envolopes i guse you could use one on the pitch weal
it needs tweeking but i thoght it was good for my first try.

[slothrop]

Yeah, building a synth that's designed to have a sub that bypasses the filters and FX is the kind of thing that SE is handy for.

Some general advice, some of which might be obvious:

Investigate the additional packs of modules from people like Dave Haupt and Chris Kerry - I think they've got some nice additional filters and oscillators and stuff that might be worth a bash. Maybe consider using a bunch of different filter modules that can be switched in and out - not many softsynths do this but it's quite handy if you want to change the sound of the synth.

Two things that I find really detract from a lot of Synthedit synths are overdesign and fugly default GUIs. For the gui, pick up a free app called KnobMan (or something) that lets you decide how your knobs and sliders look. And learn how to tweak the gui as well. It's not rocket science but it makes for much more satisfying looking synths. And generally put as much thought into how to lay the synth out to make it usable as you do into what features it should actually have. Think carefully about what's actually a useful range for any given parameter, too.

To avoid the overdesign thing, basically resist the temptation to put in stupid amounts of options in such a way that the synth ends up impossible to understand and a total CPU hog. In a hardware synth, having more stuff in the same box automatically means you're getting better value for money, so there's a temptation to think that if you're building a SynthEdit synth, the more options you pile in the better it'll be, when actually you're just making it confusing and inefficient.

Careful design and layout can make things easier to understand, and learning good SE techniques - stuff like doing as much processing as possible with the controls and as little with the audio - can help a bit with the CPU, but it's generally better IMO to have a different, easy to use, CPU-light synth for each set of tasks than to have a massive CPU hogging megasynth that could do pretty much everything but takes ages to get any given sound out of.