Xynthi (2006)

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Written by mh.

Xynthi is a Supercollider patch made by Bhob Rainey, released as a stand-alone executable in 2006.

The patch is made to (visually at least) emulate the EMS Synthi series of synthesizers from the early 70s, but it’s not aimed to be a sonically faithful recreation of it. Which would probably be quite the fruitless task. Though the pin matrix works much the same as on the Synthi.

This patch is the entire reason I got an old 2002 Powerbook to begin with. I wrote about it in the introduction post.

I’m struggling to find the fitting words. I don’t want to over-exaggerate, but I really do love this patch. I’ve gotten so much useful material out of it and it’s pretty fun to explore. It can create grating digital textures, bleeps, bloops and lovingly soft and hellishly harsh drones. In the audio section further down I’ve added some of my work using the patch.

From the included README:

Xynthi is a universal build, so you’ll need 10.3.9 or higher to run it. you’ll know it’s working if you can open it, load an included preset, and hear something crazy coming through your speakers.

For me, it didn’t work under macOS 10.13.6 (High Sierra), but I’ve heard of another slightly different version that somehow did run on that OS. I can’t say for sure. I will update if I find out.

I wrote an email to Rainey to ask him for a link I could share for this blog (see the links section) and to ask for a Paypal address, should people want to donate to him. He sent me back a nice email explaining why it never got beyond its current state, which I am putting here with permission from Rainey himself.

I believe that the only reason it doesn’t work in the current macOS is the switch to only accept 64-bit apps. It may be possible to do a 64-bit build and have it work. What I’d really like to do is just host the code on GitHub, so that anyone who has a working version of SuperCollider could use the app. That’s a medium-sized project, since SC switched to .scd files instead of .rtf, many of the GUI elements have changed, and the fact that you can’t define classes on-the-fly in SC means that some custom classes would have to be converted to class-like structures like Events. A mildly nauseating set of tasks that I just haven’t had the time and stomach to get to. I do have PayPal at this address (lloydlyson@gmail.com). I think that, in the entire time since Xynthi was released, which is at least 12 years, one person has sent me a payment of around $10. Never make your target audience a bunch of experimental noise dudes if you want to make a buck :)

A lighthearted end. I trust there must be some experimental noise dudes reading this. I sent him some bucks after the email, since I’ve used Xynthi a whole lot more than some of my paid applications and pieces of software.

Forever evaluating?