Freesound Forums

I've seen many amazing synth sounds on this site, and have recently been wanting to make my own, any suggestions on good free software are greatly appreciated! Thanks for the suggestions!

-Sincerely

FiveBrosStopMosYT

You can make synths on various software or some online websites such as FL Studio, Ableton live, Logic X Pro etc... You can also find synth-making websites online. Some synth effects might need to be edited later in another program like Audacity.

I can't but recommend these, for a start:

Surge - https://surge-synthesizer.github.io/
ZynAddSubFX - https://zynaddsubfx.sourceforge.io/
Helm - https://tytel.org/helm/

All available for Linux, MacOs and Windows, all open source.
They're extremely flexible and powerful and may sure look complicated for a first approach, but the net is full of good tutorials.

If by "free software" you only meant "zero cost", the free ones by U-he are definitely worth a try:
https://u-he.com/products/

Honorable mention for Synth1, no Linux version, but working well via Wine
https://www.kvraudio.com/product/synth1-by-daichi-laboratory-ichiro-toda

Thanks to both of you! Will try these out!

-Sincerely

FiveBrosStopMosYT

Analog Box 2

Just be sure to go through the tutorials.

Hey there,

Plugin Boutique often gives away free synths. They have a "free" product section, as well.

Ok! Thanks! I'll be sure to check it out!

-Sincerely

FiveBrosStopMosYT

Use KVRaudio.com's search engine to find the best options.
Filter by free instruments, then sort by highest rated or most downloaded.

Ok, thanks! Will do!

-Sincerely

FiveBrosStopMosYT

Recently I've found web-based musical synth. Not sure how much it fits your needs but I think it's an interesting finding

Ok, thanks! I'll check it out.

-Sincerely

FiveBrosStopMosYT

wkalmar wrote:
Recently I've found web-based musical synth. Not sure how much it fits your needs but I think it's an interesting finding

That is awesome!

You might also like VCV Rack if you are into modular.

Ok, I'll check it out! Thanks for the tip!
-Sincerely

FiveBrosStopMosYT

This Sunvox software is extremely good.
https://www.warmplace.ru/soft/sunvox/

Thanks! I'll look into this one too.

-Sincerely

FiveBrosStopMosYT

For simple game sounds I like SFXR or BFXR since they let you randomly generate sounds until you find one you like.

Ok! That sounds interesting. Thanks for the suggestion.

-Sincerely

FiveBrosStopMosYT

I know this is an old post, but in case you're still looking, or more likely some other beginner wanders here looking for info, I wanted to shout out Vital, which is an awesome free wavetable synthesizer. I use it in all the music I make, and almost all the sounds I've posted here have gone through Vital at some point in the processing. Here's a couple of reasons why I love it:

- Wavetable synthesis: Instead of the classic sine-, square- and saw-wave oscillators you'll find in many synths, Vital lets you turn basically any (short enough) .wav-file into the wavetable that serves as the core of your sound design. This means that you can, e.g. grab a sample you like from freesound and start working with that as your oscillator. However, if you want to work with the basic waveforms, those are obviously also available as wavetables.

- Sampler: All samples don't translate that well into wavetables, but fortunately Vital also has a Sampler, which simply plays the audio file you upload into it. You can then mix that with oscillators (or not if you don't want to, and add effects just as you would to your wavetable). The only complaint I have about Vital is that currently it supports only one sample at a time.

-Text-to-wavetable: Tbh, I haven't found much practical use for this yet, but it is a fun thing to play around with nonetheless: you can simply type in a piece of text, and Vital turns that into a wavetable. Looping through your wavetable will then have Vital reading your text back to you. Note that in the free-version, the amount of text-to-wavetable conversions per day is limited.

- And the biggest reason: It's user interface is the best I've come across in software synths. Granted, I only have a few comparison points, but Vital was the first one I tried that I instantly understood as a beginner. It's very intuitive and I'd go as far to say beautiful. The signal flow is super simple to grasp, and you get visual feedback for pretty much everything you do. And the simplicity does not come at the cost of lacking functionality: you've got all the effects you need, a ton of LFOs, random-generators with various algorithms, macros etc.

Anyway, just passing through preaching the gospel of Vital for any beginners looking for something free and easy to use without having to compromise on power I love this thing and I think you will too!

I have recently been playing around with some of H.G. Fortune's synths.
His work is outstanding.. from beautiful pads and atmospheres to harsh leads and gritty basses.
The interface and designs of his vsts are easy to work with for creating your own sounds rather than using the large libraries of presets.
he sadly passed away a while back and his vst collection became freeware.

you can find most of his work on archive.org
https://archive.org/details/HGFortuneNFG

or his tribute websites
http://www.vstmuseum.com/grid_vst_HGFortune/

https://hgfortune.neocities.org/?/about

There is also a forum dedicated to his legacy with plenty of downloads here..
https://www.kvraudio.com/developer/hg-fortune