// the find
greatest-ape/OctaSine
Frequency modulation synthesizer plugin (VST2, CLAP). Runs on macOS, Windows and Linux.
OctaSine is a four-operator FM synthesizer plugin written in Rust, targeting VST2 and CLAP hosts on macOS, Windows, and Linux. It's aimed at musicians and audio developers who want an FM synth they can actually read and modify — the codebase is clean enough that 'ARCHITECTURE.md exists and is meaningful' is a genuine differentiator here.
SIMD acceleration is implemented properly: separate SSE2, AVX, and fallback paths in octasine/src/simd/, not a single generic path hoping autovectorization saves you. The modulation routing is genuinely flexible — operators can target each other and mix additively, which most four-op FM clones don't bother with. Patch serialization is versioned (v1/v2 serde modules with a compat layer), so presets won't silently break across releases. CLAP support is a real asset — VST2 is a dead standard and most Rust audio projects are still dragging their feet on CLAP.
Last commit was July 2024 and there's a TODO.md in the root, which is never a great sign for maintenance trajectory. Linux support is X11-only — no Wayland, which is increasingly the default on modern distributions and will bite users on PipeWire setups. The plugin caps at four operators; that's fine for classic DX-style patches but you'll hit the ceiling fast if you want complex FM stacks. No MPE support, so expressive controllers (Roli, Osmose) are effectively locked out.