AudioKit Synth One
Educational, entertaining and open source, Synth One is a superlative subtractive super-synth that’ll put a smile on your face
Apple’s iOS platform has been graced by countless virtual analogue synthesisers, especially since the omnipresent iPad debuted back in 2010. Many of them are free, but few of them truly are – as Linux users like to say – “free as in speech”. Yet this is exactly the case with AudioKit’s Synth One: it’s not only free of charge, but its source code is freely available to anyone who’d like to have a go at improving or expanding on what’s already there.
That largesse is in keeping with the Synth One philosophy. You see, it wasn’t designed simply to provide well-to-do musos with yet another virtual plaything, but instead created with the idea that anyone should be able to obtain a free app for making professional quality electronic music. The thing is, lots of iPads have been donated to the underprivileged via schools or charities. However, some of the recipients can’t afford even the least expensive apps. That’s where Synth One comes in. Created by a community of volunteer developers and sound designers, Synth One is the pro-level synthesiser for everyone.
And what a synthesiser it is! Loaded with all the features one would expect from a costly commercial product, Synth One offers two powerful oscillators, a multimode filter, dual envelope generators and LFOs, a built-in sequencer/arpeggiator, some wicked effects and a whole lot more.
It’s a lot to take in, really, but we’re here to help. In the following tutorials, we’ll show you how to craft a killer classic patch that you can add to the already impressive collection included with the download.