Ghostsyn is an audio synthesizer written primarily for creating soundtracks for 4k intros. Its audio generating parts are written in ia32 assembly, optimizing for small code size and compressibility. A tracker-like UI for composing songs is included, written in C++17. It's designed to be used together with Dnload, and should currently work on FreeBSD and Linux.
This is not the most featureful, polished or easy to use tool for this purpose. Several rough edges and missing features remain, and creating a finished song may require tweaking the assembly sources. Keep volume at moderate level, as there are few safeguards and sanity checks for synth parameters, making it possible to inadvertently create very loud and unpleasant sounds. Knowledge of subtractive synthesis fundamentals is mandatory.
Song data format is not stable, and the features of the synth constantly evolve, so playing older songs with the current version will most likely not work.
The graphical UI is not very good.
If you're looking for more polished tools, there are several available, and some even provide a VST plugin for composing songs in a full-fledged DAW environment. Some that are known to produce great results in capable hands:
Starting with Radiant in 1999, I've been occasionally writing software synthesizers for small demoscene intros, usually in x86 assembly or C, or in some cases, OpenGL Shading Language (GSLS). They have usually been custom-built for each production, and very much 'coder synths' with very rudimentary tooling and requiring constant tweaking of program code to operate.
This particular iteration got started as the synth for Ghosts of Mars and was originally written in C. An expanded version was used on My Mistress the Leviathan the following year, after which an x86 assembly rewrite was started to optimize size and cut some non-essential features. The result of this was then used on Primordial Soup and Adarkar Wastes, with some tweaks and tooling improvements in between. Since then, it has been used on Cassini, ,released at Assembly 2018, and Región de Magallenes, 2019.
- Small code & data footprint: an usable tune can be fit in 1000-1200 bytes (after xz compression).
- Visual graph editor for building instruments
- Tracker-like UI for building songs
- Oscillator, envelope and 2-mode filter modules, enabling sound generation that emulates a subtractive analogue synthesizer
- Reverb/delay and dynamic compressor modules
- Modulation options that among other things also make rudimentary FM synthesis possible
- Tooling for generating a single AT&T syntax 32 bit x86 assembly source file with synth code and data, which is compatible with Dnload.
Building the synth & editor requires:
- libsdl2
- libsdl2-ttf
- boost-program-options
- boost-filesystem
- jsoncpp
- make
- nasm
In addition, compiling synth & song data for Dnload requires:
- python3
- intel2gas
- libsndfile
The synth currently only supports ia32 architecture. For that reason, the whole editor and synth can at the moment only be built for ia32 target. The top-level Makefile supports doing this in a Docker container. You need to have a Docker image with 32-bit dependencies installed, and to set BUILDENV_IMAGE at the top to its name. In future, support for 64 bit builds will likely be added, making this unnecessary.
After this,
$ make
will build the synth and editor.
$ src/gui/editor <songfile>
Example song(s) can be found in examples/
Note input is done with keyboard, in the usual style of tracker programs. Space inserts note offs (which don't currently work), and del erases. Editing values in the effects column is possible, but currently they have no effect.
Keyboard:
| Arrows | Move cursor |
| TAB | Jump cursor right |
| shift-TAB | Jump cursor left |
| Kp - | Previous pattern (or dec. a value in order list) |
| Kp + | Next pattern (or inc. a value in order list) |
| Page up | Jump cursor up (or inc. a value in order list by 10) |
| Page down | Jump cursor down (or dec. a value in order list by 10) |
| Home | Jump cursor to first row |
| End | Jump cursor to last row |
| Kp 0 | Use track primary instrument for newly inserted notes |
| Kp 1 | Use track alternate instrument for newly inserted notes |
| Kp * | Octave up |
| Kp / | Octave down |
| Ctrl- kp + | Create new pattern |
| Ctrl- kp - | Delete current pattern (if not last) |
| F5 | Play song |
| F6 | Play pattern |
| F7 | Play song starting from orderlist cursor pos |
| F8 | Stop |
| Ctrl-s | Save song |
| Ctrl-q | Quit editor |
| Ctrl-c | Copy track |
| Ctrl-v | Paste track |
| Shift- Ctrl-c | Copy pattern |
| Shift- Ctrl-v | Paste pattern |
| Ctrl-o | Switch between pattern and order editing |
| Ctrl-m | Mute/unmute track (takes effect after play- back restart) |
| Shift- Ctrl-m | Toggle mute/unmute all (takes effect after play- back restart) |
| Ctrl-l | Solo/unsolo track (after playback restart) |
Mouse:
| Left button | Select module |
| Middle button | Change module parameter value, or change value of some other input box |
| Right button | Connect output of selected module to hilighted input |
Left click selects a module, and left + drag moves them. Right click creates or removes a connection from the selected module to the clicked one. Buttons at top right add or delete modules.
To get sound output, it's useful to connect some modules to the master out at the bottom. You also need to define modules for instruments to trigger: for each module, the number of the instrument triggering that particular module can be set by editing the value of the module's trigger input field. One instrument can trigger up to 4 modules.
Modules can also be connected to each other via bus inputs at the right side of the module area, and outputs at the left. This can also be used to connect modules accross module editor pages.
In future, the need for pages & buses could be reduced by just making the window larger/resizable.
Each track can trigger two different instruments, primary and alternate. Notes with 0 in instrument column trigger the primary instrument, and notes with 1 the alternate instrument for the track.
Each track runs an independent copy of the whole synth for both of its instruments, so it's not possible to e.g. feed multiple instruments into the same filter or dynamic compressor. This may change later.
Oscillator module generates two saw waves, second of which can be detuned with a fixed frequency multiplier compared to the first. Multiplier of 0 (or 1) causes it to effectively generate only one saw wave. There are also modulation inputs for frequency and amplitude. It's possible to apply a sine wave shaper or some others to the oscillator output, or output pseudo-random noise instead.
If stereo flag is set, left and right channels are detuned relative to each other with a fixed global constant, creating a nice wide stereo effect.
- gain
- Oscillator amplitude. Can be constant, but it's often also useful as a target for envelope output.
- frequency modulation
- Target for modulating oscillator frequency. Oscillator frequency == base freq * (modulation + 1).
- add (pitch)
- Oscillator pitch control, value to be added to osc value at each sample. Can be 0 if oscillator is controlled by tracker, but if you need a constant frequency oscillator such as LFO, set pitch here.
- osc 2 tuning
- Frequency of second saw wave compared to first. Value of 0 effectively disables the second saw. Use a value close to 1.0 for fatter sound, or you can also create intervals for building chords with a smaller number of oscillators.
Filter is a 2-pole resonant low-pass filter with a relatively wide resonance peak.
Filter also supports high-pass mode where original input signal is subtracted from LP output, creating a HP filter with an extra notch.
- input
- Target for filter input.
- cutoff
- Filter cutoff, range 0.0 - 1.0.
- feedback (resonance)
- Controls filter resonance. Useful range is from 0.0 to ~2.8 or so, depending on the input signal and filter cutoff. There's a small tweak on the filter feedback path to protect against instability, but wrong parameters can still produce loud and unpleasant tones. Use with care.
The envelope is a simple AD envelope with linear attack and exponential decay. Triggering envelope sets it to attack stage, where its output increases until set threshold, where it switches to decay.
- attack
- Per-sample add to envelope level during the linear attack phase.
- switch level
- When envelope reaches this level, it switches from attack to decay.
- decay
- Multiply envelope level by this value for each sample during the exponential decay phase. Values slightly belov 1.0 are usually the usable ones.
- stage
- Current envelope stage (1 for attack, 0 for decay). Usually 0 when tracker controls envelope, but can also be set to 1 to trigger envelope once at the start of song for fades, filter sweeps and such.
Stereo delay/reverb consisting of delay lines with variable number of pseudorandomly placed taps and a LP filter. For stability, <number of taps> * <feedback> shouldn't exceed 1, but depending on LP filter cutoff, output may stay stable at slightly higher values too.
Not sure if this currently works, will bring back eventually.
- input
- Target for reverb input.
- number of taps
- Number of taps in delay line; more taps means denser impulse response and thus smoother reverb tail (but don't expect too much).
- feedback
- Feedback in delay line. If taps * feedback > 1, output may become unstable.
- LP
- LP coefficient should be in [0.0, 1.0] with higher values meaning lower cutoff (more HF attenuation).
Dynamic compressor with attack/threshold/release controls. Can also be used for limiter/distortion effects by setting .
- input
- Target for input.
- threshold
- When abs signal level is this or higher, apply compressor attack. Otherwise, apply release.
- attack
- Multiply current output gain by this for each sample when in attack state. Value slightly below 1.0 are the useful ones.
- release
- Add this to current output gain when in release state, until gain reaches 1. Very fast release values (significantly above 0.01 or so) are not recommended, since they may cause gain to overshoot 1.0.
There's an experimental high boost effect just before master out, controlled by 'width' and 'gain' paraneters. Width (0.0-1.0) determines the width of the HF band to boost; for technical reasons, higher values actually mean a narrowed band. Values between 0.7 and 0.9 seem to produce reasonable results. Gain sets the amount of boost. Gain values below 0 can also be used to attenuate the high band instead.
- Make synth buildable as 64 bit to make it possible to link it to a 64 bit editor UI, removing the need for 32 bit build environment. This would not be hard; defining macros for pusha and popa would already take care of most of the incompatibilities.
- Add more oscillator shapes.
- Add UI for customizing stereo effect & end fade.
- Implement properly working note off command
- Bring back stereo delay effect that was dropped for Adarkar Wastes.
- Replace the very messy NASM -> AT&T syntax conversion with something simpler. Shortcomings of the intel2gas tool currently require several custom pre- and post-processing steps to produce a syntactically correct result.