KSynth aims to be (someday) a small software (using Qt) for composing songs using e.g. samplers and synthesizers using MIDI-Integreation for external devices like keyboards, a Launchpad, etc. Additionally the code should work on several operating-systems such as Linux, Windows or maybe Mac OS.

The code is distributed among two parts:

• KSynth is the backend (mainly header files) which can be used on its own. The backend contains samplers, synthesizers, generators, midi specific classes, audio outputs/exporters etc.
• KSynthGUI is the corresponding GUI wrapped around the backend for a userfriendly interface for composing songs.

Besides some well known libraries as tinyxml2 (https://github.com/leethomason/tinyxml2) and RtMidi (http://www.music.mcgill.ca/~gary/rtmidi/) the project also uses KLib which provides some helper functions for e.g. accessing files, streams, etc.

the external dependencies differ by your needs and your operating system. Currently the Qt-Project file accepts some parameters as additional QMake parameters to compile optional code using external libraries, providing additional functions:

• linux:
• ALSA: alsa sound-output and midi support (needs libasound)
• PULSE_AUDIO: PulseAusio sound-output (needs pulse / pulse-simple)
• windows:
• WAVE_OUT: windows WaveOut support (needs winmm)
• other:
• ZLIB: load/save compressed workspace files (needs libz)
• FLAC: load compressed audio samples (needs flac)
• FFTW3: spectrum analysis (needs fftw3)
• LAME: mp3 audio export (needs mp3lame)

mkdir target
cd target/

# checkout main project
git clone https://github.com/k-a-z-u/KSynth.git

# now you need to checkout the dependendy "KLib".
# you have several alternatives:

 # alternative 1) checkout KLib as project
 cd KSynth/lib/
 git clone https://github.com/k-a-z-u/KLib.git
 cd ../../

 # alternative 2) checkout KLib as submodule
 cd KSynth/
 git submodule add https://github.com/k-a-z-u/KLib.git lib/KLib
 cd ..

# open project in qtcreator
qtcreator KSynthGUI/KSynthGUI.pro

you may then choos additional libraries (sound-outputs, export-formats, etc..) to adjust the compilation:
"Projects (Symbol)" -> "Build" -> "Build Steps" -> "qmake" -> "Details" -> "Additional arguments"
An example might look like this:
CONFIG+="ALSA ZLIB FLAC LAME FFTW3"

For a full list of all available flags and necessary external libraries see "External Dependencies" of this readme.

• If you simply need some way to e.g. load MIDI files and play them using synthesizers while adding some pattern-based drum loops within your code, simply go for the KSynth subfolder and add it to your project's include path.

• If you want to compose songs using the GUI, you ned booth, KSynth and KSynthGUI while the latter is just a Qt-Project and can be built using the qtcreator

Some parts of the code depend on my KLib library (https://github.com/k-a-z-u/KLib), currently providing some streaming APIs or file-access methods. While most of those methods were intended for another project, i decided to combine them within a single library to re-use them for other projects in the future.

The directory structure for compiling the GUI version should look as follows:

 |--ROOT
    |--KSynth           # backend (mainly header files, standalone)
    |--KSynthGUI        # Qt-Project, using above component
       |--lib
          |--KLib       # some helper functions. clone from https://github.com/k-a-z-u/KLib
          |--rtmidi     # accessing midi devices
          |--tinyxml2   # (de)serializing workspace, etc

Then just open the KSynthGUI/KSynthGUI.pro, hit F5 and have fun ;)

• As i just started working on this project a few weeks ago, there are still many things todo like fixing some horrible race-conditions in some areas ;)
• Most important parts are Widgets for displaying and modifing MIDI events (or, lets say: notes), adding the missing parts for loading/saving workspace, exporting your beautiful tracks to MP3 or Wave.
• Additional sound-outputs like Pulse, Core-Audio.
• More and Better Synthesizers
• Probabliy many glitches or other audio issues due to my limited knowledge
• MIDI Integeration for event-binding between MIDI-Devices and the elements within your workspace
• And many many more :)

As I just started working on audio related stuff, my knowledge is very limited. Thus I appreciate any help / hints / etc. to improve audio rendering in both speed and quality :)

Apache License Version 2.0 http://apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.txt