synthclone

What is 'synthclone'?

synthclone is a Qt-based application that can "clone" your MIDI-capable instruments. It does this by sending out MIDI data that instructs an instrument to emit sounds for a series of notes, velocities, controls, and aftertouch values. It then saves this data as a sample-based instrument that can be loaded by sampler software.

Why would you want to do this? Here are a few possible reasons:

• You've created some really awesome patches in your software synthesizer, but it takes up so much CPU that you can't load any other audio software. You can use synthclone to turn your favorite patches into sample-based instruments, thus freeing up your CPU so you can add more software instruments.
• Your favorite hardware synthesizer is bulky, and you don't want to take it with you to the next gig ... or any gig, for that matter. Use synthclone to sample your hardware synthesizer, and take your laptop to the gig instead.
• You own a hardware synthesizer, and it's dying. Maybe it doesn't boot some of the time, or maybe the encoders are faulty. Use synthclone to save the sounds on your synthesizer before the synthesizer has a permanent hardware failure.

synthclone is free, open-source software, distributed under a dual-license model. The plugin API and the API implementation (libsynthclone) are distributed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License. The application, plugins, and everything else comprising synthclone are distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License.

Screenshots

Here are two screenshots of synthclone sampling a drum kit synthesized using the Drumatic VST:

... and this is the resulting Hydrogen drum kit, after using Hydrogen to rename the instruments and set mute groups for the hi-hats. It's noisy, distorted, and public domain. That's how I like my drum kits.

Features

• Supports user-configurable per-zone sample time, release time, MIDI note, MIDI velocity, MIDI aftertouch, MIDI channel pressure, MIDI control changes, etc. via a table interface.
• Audition samples and change zone parameters until you're happy with the data you're acquiring from your MIDI device.
• Save and restore sessions.
• Distributed with plugins that support the JACK Audio Connection Kit (with JACK Session support), PortAudio and PortMidi, trimming of samples, the creation of patches for Hydrogen and SFZ, and automated zone generation.
• Can create multiple targets in one session (i.e. a Hydrogen patch and an SFZ patch) from the same set of samples.
• A well-documented plugin API is available for developers to write their own plugins to extend synthclone.

Requirements

• Qt4
• libsndfile
• libsamplerate
• PortAudio and PortMidi (to use the PortMedia sampler plugin)
• JACK Audio Connection Kit (to use the JACK sampler plugin)
• libarchive (to use the Hydrogen plugin)

Downloads

Latest Release: April 7, 2012 - synthclone-0.2.0.tar.gz

This is the first beta release of synthclone. The new release features an overhauled install model that allows for packaging extensions, and comes with functionality to be built as a Debian package as a make target.

Please report bugs using the issue tracker.

Installation

synthclone currently requires a Python interpreter, doxygen, and qmake for building. To build the software, execute the commands:

  ./configure --prefix=/usr
  make

... on the command line, optionally replacing '/usr' above with your preferred installation location. To install the software, execute:

  make install

Documentation

Eventually, I'd like to have enough documentation that I wouldn't be able to list it all here. For now, here it is:

• Doxygen-generated documentation for the developer API.
• Tutorial on Writing Plugins
• There's some documentation on a couple plugins on the wiki.

If you're interested in helping by writing documentation, then join the user group, and send me a message.

Bugs

Report bugs using the issue tracker.

Support

Bug reports and feature requests can be filed using the issue tracker. The software can be discussed through the synthclone-users Google Group.

Contributing

There are many ways you can contribute to synthclone:

• If you're a developer and think that synthclone is missing a feature or two, you can help by writing plugins that extend the functionality of synthclone. synthclone has a plugin API that allows developers to write their own plugins.
• If you have a good command of one or more languages, you can help by writing much-needed documentation on synthclone and the plugins distributed with synthclone, or by translating synthclone.
• If you want to donate to synthclone and other causes, join Flattr and donate:

Acknowledgements

This page's format was ruthlessly stolen from the QjackCtl project page.

Contact

Devin Anderson <surfacepatterns (at) gmail (dot) com>