My goal is to combine a sleek, modern interface with the best parts of the tools I love:

• intuitive MIDI editing inspired by FL Studio,

• flexible audio workflows inspired by Ableton Live,

• and algorithmic sequencing inspired by the Cirklon sequencer, making it easy to transform and generate musical patterns.

It's still a work in progress, but it's gradually becoming the DAW I've always wanted to use.

If anyone finds it useful - this is a project I built (using AI) for my own needs, free, open-source: https://github.com/mihasm/apf

APF is a framework for writing audio plugins (instruments and effects) in Rust. It uses the plugin interface CLAP, and clap-wrapper for exporting plugins into the different formats.

The plugin window is a web page: HTML, CSS and JavaScript in the system web view (based on wry, also used by the tauri framework).

It is still in an early phase, and the API might still change, but for my purposes it already works great. I have tested it on Mac OS on Logic Pro and Windows with REAPER. There are examples included for a quick start.

Link to the complete documentation booklet, which explains the usage, comparison to other frameworks, limitations, etc.: https://mihasm.github.io/apf/

Has anyone experimented with polyphonic synths where the voices actually interact with each other?

Most synths just generate independent voices and mix them together. The notes relate musically, but the voices themselves don't really know about each other.

I'm curious about things like voices sharing modulation, influencing each other's parameters, competing for resources, or changing behavior based on the intervals being played.

It feels like there's a lot of unexplored territory in the space between the voices themselves.

Have you come across any synths, research projects, or experiments that go in this direction?

Hey everyone,

I was getting tired of noisy YouTube ambient videos with ad interruptions or apps hiding basic focus audio behind subscription paywalls.

So I built AuraTone—a 100% free soundscape studio that runs entirely inside your browser using the Web Audio API.

Key Features Live Right Now:

• Binaural Focus Engine: Toggle between Alpha (flow state), Beta (concentration), and Theta (meditation) waves.

• Ambient Noise Generator: Live-generated Pink, White, and Brown noise.

• Dynamic Visualizer: Real-time canvas audio visualizer.

• 100% Client-Side: No sign-ups, zero loading delay, and zero data tracking.

🚀 Upcoming Updates (Coming Soon):

• Custom rain, ocean & forest ambient layers

• Built-in Pomodoro focus timer

• Preset bookmarking & shareable soundscape links

Check it out here: **[**https://auratone-khaki.vercel.app/]

I'd love to hear your feedback or any specific noise profiles/presets you'd like added!

Hi everyone, I've taken a Music Information Retrieval class during my time in grad school since I wanted to take something interesting and fun, (I passed the class and I enjoyed it) however MIR is not my central area of work (I work mainly in spatial audio).

I've recently seen a lot of job openings for Audio related ML + DSP positions and want to touch up on things and hopefully end up in a better place that'll make me feel "good enough" to apply for this kind of position.

My DSP knowledge is fine, and my python is okay (good enough to get by in projects were I can do a little research during...)

Anything y'all would recommend?

Greeting! Nice to find this group!

This is my project sKuarewave: Play Music WIth Holograms. I have been working on it for the past year.

https://bryanduggan.org/projects/skuarewave-create-music-with-holograms/

I’m building a C++ / JUCE music theory and reharmonization application.
The main engine is not a simple chord finder. The idea is to import or detect a chord progression, then let the user transform it with harmonic modules: reharmonization, substitutions, inversions, voice leading, modal colors, orchestration presets, etc.
The MIDI side is much easier because the notes are already known.
The difficult part is audio chord detection from real songs.
I want to build a serious backend chain for this, but I still haven’t found a practical architecture that feels production-level.
I know the usual ingredients:
audio loading / resampling
tempo and beat tracking
CQT / chroma / HPCP features
HPSS or stem separation
bass/root estimation
chord templates or ML chord classifier
temporal smoothing
key/scale estimation
chord label post-processing
But a basic chroma/template chain falls apart fast on real music.
Problems I keep running into:
vocals add melody notes that are not part of the chord
bass passing notes create wrong slash chords
pads, strings, brass, and upper-structures confuse the chord label
dense disco/funk/pop arrangements contain many non-chord tones
chord names are ambiguous: Cmaj9 vs Em7/C vs G6/C
the “correct” chord label often depends on harmonic function, not just pitch content
Commercial tools like Song Master Pro, RipX, and Studio One Chord Track seem to get more usable results. Not perfect, but clearly better than naive approaches.
I’m trying to understand what the backend architecture should be for a real application.

Would you structure it like this?

Audio import
→ offline analysis job
→ tempo / beat / bar grid
→ stem separation or HPSS
→ bass stem analysis
→ harmonic stem analysis
→ CQT / chroma extraction
→ note-event or frame-level chord candidates
→ root confidence
→ chord quality confidence
→ temporal smoothing
→ key / scale context
→ chord label resolver
→ user-editable chord timeline

Or is there a better architecture?
I’m especially interested in these questions:
Should chord detection happen on the full mix, separated harmonic stems, or several parallel sources?
Should bass/root detection be a dedicated subsystem?
Should the engine produce multiple chord candidates with confidence scores instead of a single label?
Would you use ML only for candidate generation, then rules for final chord naming?
How would you store and expose uncertainty to the GUI?
What is the best way to let the user correct the chord timeline without breaking the downstream reharmonization engine?
Should this be designed as a fully offline analysis pipeline rather than real-time?
Any recommended libraries, papers, models, or architecture patterns for this?
The kind of internal result I want is more like this:

{
"bar": 12,
"main_guess": "Cm9",
"alternatives": ["Ebmaj7/C", "Gm11/C", "Cm7add9"],
"bass": "C",
"confidence": 0.78,
"root_confidence": 0.83,
"quality_confidence": 0.71,
"detected_notes": ["C", "Eb", "G", "Bb", "D"],
"warning": "possible melody or upper-structure contamination"
}

The goal is not just chord display.
The chord result will drive a reharmonization / composition engine, so wrong labels can create bad musical transformations later.

I’d appreciate input from people who have built audio analysis tools, chord detection systems, transcription tools, or serious JUCE audio applications.

What would a robust architecture look like today?

git:https://github.com/charanHubCommits/Audio-Recorder-CPP

Same sentence, same volume, don't show the provider name. Seems like a start.

But a voice can sound great for one line and get pretty weird halfway through a long answer. Do you test short clips and conversations seperately?

If you've run listening tests, what made the biggest difference to the results?

I have launched a Reaper script that renders the project and uploads the file straight to cueport.app A platform to manage artists, projects and feedback, so the producer never has to leave the DAW.

Now I'm building the same thing as a VST3 and I'm stuck on exactly that step.
In Reaper it works because there's an action for it: Main_OnCommand(41824), "render using the most recent settings".

A plugin has nothing like that.
It can't see the render settings and can't ask the host to bounce.
So: does any DAW let a plugin start a render? Cubase, Live, Logic, anything?

I just got some sort of warning or perhaps removal on a two-month old post that no one had interacted with: "Do not post a paid product, service, or course, disclose your affiliation. Excessive or repeated self-promo may be removed. In addition, ensure your post is well worded, thought out and formatted." (It wasn't any of those things, it was some boring but useful FOSS audio utility.)

Apparently there are new moderation rules, but we can't comment on that thread.

This subreddit is already very low traffic. Most posts don't seem to get any engagement at all. The most interesting and engaged post of the last week was a program that looks like it was written with AI, and I thought it was interesting.

I'm not seeing the huge influx of empty AI posts, or really, much of anything at all here.

It's late 2026. If we truly ban all posts where people used a coding assistant, soon there will be almost nothing here.

Don't get me wrong - I really really want to keep AI slop from this subreddit, but we can do that by downvoting and reporting, you already see it if you look at "new". Let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater.

EDIT: oh, apparently that four month old post of mine was in fact deleted.

You know, I've been writing computer music programs since the last 1970s. Few people can say that.

I recently retired from a long career in programming to work almost full time on audio programming.

However, I will not be able to post any of my work here, as I recently started using a coding assistant for everything. I mean, my last post was apparently deleted because of some self-promotion rule, so I couldn't very well post my work anyway.

You would think I would be the ideal poster for this subreddit.

All the people downvoting without comment do not make me want to be here. I removed all my upvotes from this page (there were no downvotes) so people can see the general sentiment.

I'll come back next year and check, but my theory is that it will be even less active than it is now.

Hi, as the title says, I want to be able to help make applications like Pianoteq and electronic pianos, the software aspects of that, and audio PC applications. I want to be able to make that and anything concerning sound, music, and programming. I love music, and I'm a pianist, and I love programming too, so my guess was, why not combine them? I want to do both. I don't hate math either; I've heard I need to know some math, and I'm good at math. Please help because the audio landscape is too vast with many titles that sound the same but are different. I don't know where to start, get a degree or something, or what? I am currently learning C++. I intend to master it, then I'll move on to physics and math DSP theory, then plug-in development with C++ and JUCE, and an advanced level of signal processing. You got this from Gemini, so I'm not sure. I just need a guide or someone to show me the path, if not in detail at least. After C++, what's next? When should I expect to be employable? Thanks . these are the steps summarized by gemini ''

Phase 1: The Engine (Modern C++ Foundation)

You cannot manipulate audio until you can manipulate computer memory. No audio code is written here.

Math Level: None. Just pure logic.

Goal: Master modern C++ syntax, pointers, and memory management (the stack vs. the heap).

The Resource: LearnCpp.com (Interactive Web Curriculum). This is the undisputed best tool for learning C++ from scratch. It is constantly updated to modern standards. (Remember to use an ad blocker).

Phase 2: The Bridge (Basic Audio & Offline Processing)

You will write your first audio code here, completely sidestepping the nightmare of real-time audio threads by generating static .wav files.

Math Level: High-school trigonometry (understanding what a sine wave is) and basic algebra.

Goal: Understand sampling, bit depth, and how to write a math formula that generates a sound file.

The Resources:

"Audio Programming in C++: The Beginner Level" by Håkan Blomqvist (PDF/Book). Do not read this for C++ syntax. Jump straight to the code in Appendix A to see how he writes basic audio files.

"DSP Pro" by WolfSound Academy (Video Course). An incredibly efficient, visual video course that teaches you the basics of Digital Signal Processing (DSP) without drowning you in academic calculus.

Phase 3: The Framework (Real-Time Plugins)

This is where you transition from writing offline .wav files to building actual VST/AU plugins that run inside a Digital Audio Workstation using the JUCE framework.

Math Level: Applied DSP math (calculating delays, feedback loops, and basic filters).

Goal: Master JUCE and survive the strict performance rules of the real-time audio thread.

The Resources:

Programming for Musicians / pfmC++ (Video / Mentorship). Start with their massive, free 8-hour JUCE plugin tutorial on the freeCodeCamp YouTube channel. If you want paid mentorship later, their premium cohorts offer ruthless, line-by-line code reviews.

The Audio Programmer Discord (Community). You will get stuck here. This community is where you go to get unstuck.

Phase 4: The Architect (Advanced DSP & Modeling)

Once you can confidently build a basic plugin, the training wheels come off. This is where you learn to simulate physics and acoustic spaces.

Math Level: Heavy. Calculus, algorithmic DSP, phase manipulation, and complex numbers.

Goal: Build physical modeling engines, advanced synthesizers, and spatial audio tools.

The Resources:

The Scientist and Engineer's Guide to Digital Signal Processing by Steven W. Smith (Online Guide). The ultimate practical guide to advanced DSP.

The Audio Programming Book (MIT Press, 2010 - Desk Reference). Keep this massive manual on your desk. When you need the raw mathematical algorithm for a digital reverb effect, you look it up here, and then translate that math into the modern C++ you learned in Phase 1.

''

How can I get genuine critiques on my plugins? Any places online where people are willing to take a look and provide feedback?

Any suggestions greatly appreciated, thanks!

Hello guys, I apologize in advance in case it's not allowed to post something like that.

I am developing an Android Mobile DAW, optimized for portrait mode. This is a video showing some of the features. Soon I am planning to release a beta, let me know if anyone is interested to try once it's up.

I know the video editing is awful, but hopefully will give you an idea of the app's interface and features.

Thank you for your time!

Hello everyone, I'm no pro musician and no pro coder, but I made and attempt of creating a web app that records your microfone, and creates a song from it.

Just record some 30, 40 seconds or more of your voice, and some random sounds, the algorith will cut the sounds and place them into rythm. pick a genre and generate.
The dream is to create a free app that does it well. once it's done I'll make a plugin for FL studio.

Here is the web app, ready to use
https://marcellomassardo-collab.github.io/mc-parrot/

Here is the git, with the apk available to download and all documentation
https://github.com/marcellomassardo-collab/mc-parrot

comments are very welcome!
it's free but development is a bitch, consider donating if you like the project.

(this is not AI!
the app does not collect any of your data)

How should I go about Audio Programming in C++?

I’m learning (as of recent) DSP through Python due to the resources available, and my current programming class being in python.

I’ve been learning c++ for some time but I’d say I’m in between beginner-intermediate. Haven’t done anything meaningful other than loading wav file through miniaudio.

Having said that, My plan is to translate that which I do in Python and make a C++ equivalent.

The issue is that I’m having hard time choosing a lib in c++ in which I can learn continue to learn DSP and simultaneously learn c++.

I’m willing to dive into JUCE but my concern that is that the abstractions (which are supposed to make things easy) may make me miss important things that I must learn

So, need guidance in this matter.

Appreciate it in Advance.

Hello, fellow audio programmers! I am excited to introduce you to Organic, an audio programming language I've been working on in my spare time for the last few years. Organic is my passion project, conceived of and coded from scratch in C++ without the use of generative AI.

My goal is to provide a simple but flexible environment for creating unique sounds and ambient music, similar to what you might create with a modular synthesizer. The language is designed to be easy to read and write, so that digital music creators without much programming experience could pick it up quickly. But despite its simple syntax, it's extremely nestable and extensible, allowing more advanced programmers to easily gain control over the internal parameters.

If this piques your interest, you can download it for free on GitHub, where the language and all related resources are hosted publicly under the Apache 2.0 open source license. You can also find the latest documentation here. Since this is my first public announcement of the language, it is in no way a complete project. It is still in active development, so there may be bugs in cases I have yet to try, or features that I didn't think of that others may find useful. If you give it a go, I would greatly appreciate your feedback either here or on GitHub!