70 DIY Synths On One Webpage

If you want to dip your toes into the deep, deep water of synth DIY but don’t know where to start, [Atarity] has just the resource for you. He’s compiled a list of 70 wonderful DIY synth and noise-making projects and put them all in one place. And as connoisseurs of the bleepy-bloopy ourselves, we can vouch for his choices here.

The collection runs the gamut from [Ray Wilson]’s “Music From Outer Space” analog oddities, through faithful recreations like Adafruit’s XOXBOX, and on to more modern synths powered by simple microcontrollers or even entire embedded Linux devices. Alongside the links to the original projects, there is also an estimate of the difficulty level, and a handy demo video for every example we tried out.

Our only self-serving complaint is that it’s a little bit light on the Logic Noise / CMOS-abuse side of synth hacking, but there are tons of other non-traditional noisemakers, sound manglers, and a good dose of musically useful devices here. Pick one, and get to work!

13 thoughts on “70 DIY Synths On One Webpage

  1. This is absolutely fantastic. Little DIY synths are a hobby of mine and this site has a LOT of designs I haven’t seen before. These kinds of project aggregations and galleries are a great source of inspiration for new projects.

    1. Who knows. In the past they’ve said thanks to people for tips, but I sent one a few weeks back that became 2 articles and never saw a thanks. Maybe they quit doing that.

      1. We try to always thank our tipsters.

        The one exception is when the original hacker sent in their own work, which was the case here. If you also sent this one in, George… well, thanks too!

        And you too, John.

        But now that I think about it, why shouldn’t we also thank the original hacker when they send in their own work? It’s long standing practice to omit the “thanks” in those cases, but that doesn’t mean we’re any less thankful.

        So, thanks to [Atarity] too!

        1. No thanks needed, I was just curious because it’s a fairly obscure website (that happens to be loaded with goodies!). I was impressed by the quality of the many projects, so I try to mention them often (but haven’t been in a while, I love the synth stuff, but can’t do anything with it)

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