I was poking through my audio plugins and discovered that somehow I had installed Cardinal Synth. It’s a “free and open-source virtual modular synthesizer plugin”. It acts like a virtual synth rack and has hundreds of built-in modules to arrange however you want. In this one plugin there’s a whole world to explore!
So I started exploring. I know only the basics of building synths but was able to come up with this:
It looks complex but that’s the magic of it, you build one thing at a time and just patch ins and outs. Before long you have created a monster. This whole thing uses about 5% of my processor. I ran it all night just for fun, no memory leaks or performance hiccups.
What does it do, you might ask? It’s an ambient music and ocean sound generator. Here’s some sample audio of what it does forever:
Not perfect, but for a first effort I’m proud of it. I’ve learned a bit about VCOs, VCAs, and oscillators – far more than I would have if I had to buy all this stuff! The only thing that isn’t actually generated is the seagulls (you did hear the seagulls, right?).
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