A free emulator of Roland JP-8000 and the love of supersaws and trance

Digital preservation is the new challenge for synths, just as it is in areas like games. And the Roland JP-8000 got a big leg up with a free and open source release from The Usual Suspects available this month, the JE8086. It’s one of several recent emulations, so let’s talk about why the 1998 synth […]

Airwindows VerbThic, VerbTiny let you go even more rabid for reverb, for free

Chris Johnson, aka Airwindows, continues to share his love for DSP with free tools, open source code, and elaborate discussions of the joy of crafting reverbs. So just in case you don’t feel blessed enough with free effects after SuperMassive’s new Sirius reverb/delay, here’s the tiny and the thick in all-new Airwindows editions. And they’ll even run in VCV Rack or on a Raspberry Pi.

Peter Kirn - December 3, 2025

A free Winamp clone, for macOS, with FLAC and Milkdrop visualizations

It might be a funny intersection of interests. But developer Matt Greenwood built a macOS-native clone of the legendary Winamp in Swift, MIT-licensed, with MP3 and FLAC playback and Milkdrop visualization support (including fullscreen).

Peter Kirn - November 14, 2025

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