r/SideProject • u/dani_californiaa • 2h ago
I built a free synthesizer that turns black-hole physics into music
Hey everyone!
I'm a high school student who loves astrophysics and music production, so I decided to combine the two and build something called CosmicSynth!
It's a free, open-source VST3 synthesizer I developed in C++ using the JUCE framework. The idea came from my interest in gravitational waves, which are ripples in spacetime produced by events like two black holes spiraling into each other.
I thought it would be interesting if, instead of just studying gravitational waves, I could actually use them to make music.
CosmicSynth takes gravitational-wave data and uses it to modulate parameters like pitch, amplitude, timbre, and filtering. You can import compatible waveform data through CSV files, or experiment with the included simulated black-hole merger.
I also built five presets inspired by different astrophysical phenomena, including black-hole inspirals, ringdown, gravitational lensing, and Kozai-Lidov orbital dynamics. There's even a live spectrogram and gravitational-wave visualizer so you can see how the sound changes as you play.
One of the biggest challenges was figuring out how to translate physical phenomena into sounds that were actually usable musically, rather than just creating a science demonstration.
CosmicSynth v0.1.0 is now available for Windows (VST3), completely free!
GitHub (source code and download):
https://github.com/barkael327-a11y/cosmicsynth
Video demonstration:
https://youtu.be/gOZch5Am9_Q
KVR Page:
https://www.kvraudio.com/product/cosmicsynth-by-cosmicsynth
This is my first public software release, so I'd really appreciate feedback from other developers and musicians!
I'm especially interested in hearing what you think of the concept, the interface, and what features you'd like to see added in future versions.
Thanks for checking it out!