Synthesizer

Kiwisynth

A wavetable synthesizer that breathes.

Every preset has motion built in: oscillator drift, a slow bloom as a note is held, and a Breath humanizer that adds the small movements of a real player. A sound feels organic from the first note, with no setup.

Open the full editor and Kiwisynth becomes a deep instrument: three wavetable oscillators, dual filters, four LFOs, envelopes and MSEGs, and a modulation system you build by right-clicking any knob. Or stay in Simple mode and shape sound by feel.

VST3 CLAP Windows Linux

Download VST3 Download CLAP

Builds for Windows.

Also available for Linux. macOS is planned for a later release.

How to use it

Two ways to play it

The same synth, available wherever you compose. Inside Kiwisonic on every track, or as a plugin in any modern DAW.

Inside Kiwisonic

Kiwisynth comes bundled with Kiwisonic and runs on any instrument track. Pick a factory preset from the browser, or open the editor and shape the sound while you write. Presets and patches travel with the project.

VST3 and CLAP plugin

Load Kiwisynth in any Windows or Linux DAW that supports VST3 or CLAP. The same engine, the same presets, the same modulation system. macOS builds are planned for a later release.

VST3 (Windows) CLAP (Windows)

v0.5.1 · ~3 MB · Also available for Linux

Two interface modes

Approachable for new synth users, deep for sound designers

Switch between modes at any time. Both edit the same patch.

Kiwisynth S!MPLE mode with morph pad and macro rows

S!MPLE mode · for new synth users

Shape sounds without learning synthesis

Pick a timbre, then drag a dot across a 2D pad to move between bass, lead, keys, pad, and pluck character. Five rows of one-click presets cover Tone, Punch, Movement, Space, and Density. No oscillators, filters, or envelopes to learn first. You make sounds by listening, not by reading a manual.

Kiwisynth full editor with the effects rack

Pro mode · for sound designers

The full synthesis layout

Three wavetable oscillators, a sub and a noise oscillator, dual filters, four LFOs, two envelopes and two MSEGs, two macros, an eight-effect rack, and a Script tab for behaviour the knobs cannot reach. Right-click any knob to add movement. The same patch you started in S!MPLE mode, opened all the way up.

Sound source

The oscillators

Three main oscillators, a sub, and a noise source, mixed together. Each main oscillator can run as a wavetable, a SuperSaw, a plucked string, or a tuned resonator, so one engine covers a wide range of sounds.

Wavetable morphing

Move the wavetable position to sweep through a row of single-cycle waveforms. Add modulation here and the tone evolves as the note plays.

Warp

Reshape the waveform on top of the wavetable: Bend, PWM, Sync, or Wavefold, each with its own amount.

SuperSaw mode

Turn an oscillator into a thick stack of detuned saws in one step, the wide sound behind dance leads.

Karplus-Strong mode

Switch an oscillator to a plucked-string model, with controls for damping, brightness, and pick position.

Modal mode

A tuned partial-bank that rings like a bell, marimba, glockenspiel, or chime. Six partials decay together, with controls for damping, inharmonicity, and strike position.

Sub and noise

A sub oscillator an octave down morphs from sine to square for low-end weight. A filtered noise source adds air, breath, and attack.

FM

Let the second oscillator modulate the first, with adjustable depth and feedback, for metallic and bell-like tones.

Motion

Motion in every note

Kiwisynth never sounds static. Unison stacks several copies of an oscillator, Detune spreads them in pitch, and Drift lets each copy slowly wander on its own, so the stack keeps moving and never quite repeats. A width control spreads the copies across the stereo field, and a Curve control shapes the spread, from a tight cluster around the centre for a present fundamental to a pushed-out fan for hollow, swarming sounds.

Breath adds the small movements of a real player to every held note: a slow drift in pitch and tone, a gentle swell, a vibrato that fades in, and a short bend into tune at the start. One shared effort signal drives them together, so the note leans the way a voice or a wind instrument does.

Modulation

Modulation is movement, and you add it right where you want it. Right-click any knob and pick an intent: Wobble for a looping LFO, Fade in or Fade out for an envelope, Follow mod wheel or Follow velocity, or Humanize for a fresh random offset on every note. Each intent reads the knob and picks musical defaults.

Drag to assign. Drag an LFO, envelope, or MSEG handle straight onto a knob to choose the source yourself.
Movement that shapes movement. Drop a source onto an LFO's rate or an envelope's time, and one movement drives another.
A read-only overview. The Matrix tab shows every source and each destination it drives, with a live trace of what each one is doing right now.

Modulation sources

Category	Sources
LFOs	4 LFOs with shapes from sine to sample-and-hold, plus a hand-drawn custom shape
Envelopes	2 modulation envelopes, plus 2 MSEGs: multi-segment shapes you draw yourself
Macros	4 assignable macro knobs, handy as the DAW automation surface
Performance	Velocity, mod wheel, and aftertouch
MPE	Per-note pressure, slide, and glide
Random	Sample & Hold, with per-voice independence
Bloom	Chord, Bloom, and Repetition, which respond to how you play (see below)

Responds to your playing

Bloom: sources that listen

Three modulation sources that respond to how you play, not just what you play. They come set up inside presets.

Chord

A reading of the chord you are holding. A plain interval like a fifth reads low; a dense or dissonant chord reads high. Point it at a knob and the sound answers the harmony you play.

Bloom

A rise from nothing to full over the first seconds of a held note, at the speed set by Note Bloom Rate. Each note carries its own. Use it to open a filter or lift an effect as a note sustains.

Repetition

A value that climbs each time you return to the same note, so a note you keep playing gradually shifts in tone and nudges a part toward variety.

Filter

Dual filters

Every voice has two filters, the second off until you switch it on. Cutoff sets where the filter acts, Resonance adds a sharp peak that can ring into self-oscillation, and Drive adds saturation inside the filter for warmth. A response curve above the controls draws the shape as you set it.

LP12 / LP24. Low-pass at 12 or 24 dB per octave, the steeper setting darkening the sound more sharply
MGLow24. A second 24 dB low-pass with a ladder-style character: bass thins as resonance rises, and at the top the filter rings into a clean sine you can play as a tone
HP12 / HP24. High-pass at 12 or 24 dB per octave
Band-pass and Notch. Keep a band in the middle, or cut a narrow band out
Comb. Short-delay feedback for a metallic, resonant color
Formant. Morphs the sound through vowels, from a dark "oo" to a bright "ee"
Routing. With both filters on, run them in series, parallel, or split

Effects

Built-in effects

Per-voice distortion plus a nine-effect rack on the finished mix. Drag the cards to reorder them, and every effect has a bypass, so nothing you switch off costs CPU.

Distortion (per voice)

Drives each voice until it clips, for grit and harmonic richness. Runs before or after the filter, two clearly different characters.

Auto-Filter

A filter that sweeps on its own for a moving, rhythmic tone. Set its center, rate, depth, and resonance.

Chorus

Thickens and widens the sound. Classic is a standard chorus; Ensemble drifts in a way that never quite repeats, like an old string machine.

Stereo delay

A ping-pong delay with independent left and right times. Sync it to the project tempo for musical echoes.

Reverb with shimmer

A sense of space around the sound, from a small room to a vast hall, with size, damping, and pre-delay. A shimmer control lifts the tail by an octave and feeds it back, for the cinematic-pad sound; pitch and damping let you tune it from a wide-eyed swell to a warm halo.

3-band EQ

Lift or trim the low, mid, and high ranges of the sound.

Multiband saturator

Splits the sound into three bands and drives each one separately, for energy and warmth with control over where it lands.

Volume Shaper

A tempo-locked amplitude pump with a drawable curve, for the sidechain ducking of modern house and the bar-length gate patterns of trance, hardstyle, and EDM. Built into the synth, so no external kick or plugin needed.

Tape

The character of an analog tape machine on the whole mix: soft asymmetric saturation, a high-end roll-off, and slow wow and fast flutter from the transport. A Bias control adds the even-harmonic warmth that draws people to tape in the first place.

Phaser

Carves a row of moving notches out of the sound for swirling, underwater motion, from gentle movement on a pad to a deep, vocal-like whoosh on a lead. Stages set how many notches there are, and an Organic mode drifts the sweep so it never quite repeats.

Scripting

A Script tab for what the knobs cannot do

The Script tab adds a small BASIC-style language that reacts to events: a note arrives, a CC moves, the host crosses a beat. A script can nudge a parameter, fire a note, or hold state, in ways the mod matrix and the envelopes cannot. It is saved with the patch and travels with it.

Per-event handlers. on note, on release, on beat, on tick, on cc, on pitchbend, on aftertouch, and on transport, each with the values for that event in scope
Two views. Scoped shows one handler at a time with a dropdown; Raw shows the whole script as one buffer. Both save the same file
One Script Depth knob. Scales every modulation the script writes, automatable and saved with the patch, so a downloaded preset's script can be dialled back without editing the code
Safe and deterministic. No file or network access, bounded loops, per-block budget; random() is seeded from the patch, so two playbacks of the same notes match

Presets

48 factory presets

Hear every factory preset here: a chord progression and a melodic phrase for each. The Mode column shows whether a sound can be made in S!MPLE mode or whether it uses the full editor. In the app, an audition bar plays each preset for you, so you can tweak with both hands free.

Pick a preset below to start playing.

Preset	Mode	Character	Play

Preset system

Tools for finding and shaping sounds

A/B morphing

Load two presets into slots A and B and move a slider between them. Kiwisynth blends their parameters and their movement, so the in-between positions are real sounds of their own.

Smart browser

Filter the library by category (Bass, Keys, Lead, Pad, Percussion, Pluck, Texture), by how involved a patch is, and by character words like warm, bright, dark, and evolving.

Modulation randomiser

Reshape only the movement of a patch and leave the base sound alone. You choose how far it goes, from a gentle nudge to a complete rewire.

Section presets

Borrow just the oscillators, the filter, or the modulation from another sound, and keep the rest of your patch.

Animate This

Right-click any control for a fitting modulation, chosen for what you clicked. One click adds movement.

Save and share

Save your own sounds alongside the factory presets, and export a preset as a file to share it.

Under the hood

Specifications

Oscillators	3 main (wavetable, SuperSaw, Karplus-Strong, or Modal), plus a sub and a noise source. OSC3 silent by default for per-oscillator stacks
Unison	Stacked voices per oscillator, each drifting in pitch on its own
Filters	2 per voice: LP12, LP24, MGLow24, HP12, HP24, band-pass, notch, comb, formant, with series, parallel, or split routing
Modulation	4 LFOs, 2 envelopes, 2 MSEGs, 4 macros, Sample & Hold, performance and MPE, and Bloom sources
Modulation routing	Right-click intents and drag-to-assign, movement can shape movement, read-only Matrix overview
Effects	Per-voice distortion plus Auto-Filter, Chorus, Stereo Delay, Reverb with shimmer, 3-band EQ, Multiband Saturator, Volume Shaper (tempo-locked pump and trance gate), Tape, and Phaser
Scripting	BASIC-style Script tab with per-event handlers, a Script Depth knob, deterministic by default, sandboxed
Performance	Poly and mono voicing, glide / portamento, full MPE, mod wheel, sustain pedal
Character	Warmth, an always-present pre-filter saturation, plus Note Bloom on every preset
Presets	48 factory presets, A/B morphing, smart browser, section presets, modulation randomiser
Formats	VST3, CLAP
Platforms	Windows 10+ and Linux (macOS planned for a later release)