Ask HN: How to get started with audio programming?

1. Sonic Pi

   1 117 11,273 9.4 C++

   Code. Music. Live.

   

2. JetBrains

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3. Rack

   2 160 4,209 9.3 C++

   The virtual Eurorack studio (by VCVRack)

   

   > juce

   I would add to that VCV Rack [1] is another great starting point.

   Very low barrier to entry, see developer manual [2], and there is hundreds open source modules to learn from. [3]

   [1] https://vcvrack.com

4. JUCE

   3 109 7,511 9.7 C++

   JUCE is an open-source cross-platform C++ application framework for desktop and mobile applications, including VST, VST3, AU, AUv3, LV2 and AAX audio plug-ins.

   

5. elk-pi

   4 7 246 0.0

   Elk Audio OS binary images for Raspberry Pi

   

6. gen-rack

   5 1 97 0.0 C

   Create VCV Rack modules from gen~ exports

   

   Nice, I hadn’t looked into building VCV Rack modules but it’s a super fun piece of software - there’s also an iOS port called MiRack, personally I love making music on the iPad so I use that more.

   I saw this the other day that lets reuse gen~ code from Max as a VCV module: https://github.com/isabelgk/gen-rack

7. ThinkDSP

   6 18 4,275 6.2 Jupyter Notebook

   Think DSP: Digital Signal Processing in Python, by Allen B. Downey.

   

8. AudioKit

   7 9 11,102 6.0 Swift

   Audio synthesis, processing, & analysis platform for iOS, macOS and tvOS

   

   If you are on macOS, AudioKit is a nice simplified layer on top of CoreAudio and CoreMidi: https://github.com/AudioKit/AudioKit

9. InfluxDB

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   InfluxDB – Built for High-Performance Time Series Workloads. InfluxDB 3 OSS is now GA. Transform, enrich, and act on time series data directly in the database. Automate critical tasks and eliminate the need to move data externally. Download now.

   

10. overtone

    8 31 6,049 9.4 Clojure

    Collaborative Programmable Music

    

    Sounds like you might be more interested in live coding. Overtone [1] can do what I think you are describing, and more--it's a frontend to SuperCollider, which has all the audio synthesis stuff you aren't interested in, but it can trigger samples fine. Of course, if Clojure isn't your thing, there are other live coding tools out there.

    [1] https://github.com/overtone/overtone

11. zynaddsubfx

    9 4 1,048 7.9 C++

    ZynAddSubFX open source synthesizer

    

12. helm

    10 64 2,409 0.0 C++

    Discontinued Helm - a free polyphonic synth with lots of modulation (by mtytel)

    

13. mb-sound

    11 5 17 9.6 Ruby

    A library of simple Ruby tools for processing sound.

    

    Edit: My goal is to make a mini-synth which takes input from the computer keyboard.

    If you are a Ruby programmer, you could use this rubygem I wrote: https://github.com/mike-bourgeous/mb-sound

    A video about using that gem to make a synthesizer: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aS43s6TWnIY&feature=youtu.be

    Part of a long-running experiment of mine to make educational videos about sound, which I hope might help you on your audio programming journey: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpRqC8LaADXnwve3e8gI2...

    There have been recent posts to HN about the difficulty of reading key-up events from the terminal. I used MIDI and a separate MIDI keyboard app for my video demo.

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