Software Alternatives & Reviews

FluidSynth VS Csound

Compare FluidSynth VS Csound and see what are their differences

FluidSynth logo FluidSynth

FluidSynth is a real-time software synthesizer based on the SoundFont 2 specifications and has...

Csound logo Csound

The Csound Community
  • FluidSynth Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-04-29
  • Csound Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-10-21

Csound is a sound and music computing system which was originally developed by Barry Vercoe in 1985 at MIT Media Lab. Since the 90s, it has been developed by a group of core developers. A wider community of volunteers contribute examples, documentation, articles, and takes part in the Csound development with bug reports, feature requests and discussions with the core development team.

Although Csound has a strong tradition as a tool for composing electro-acoustic pieces, it is used by composers and musicians for any kind of music that can be made with the help of the computer. Csound has traditionally been used in a non-interactive score driven context, but nowadays it is mostly used in in a real-time context. Csound can run on a host of different platforms including all major operating systems as well as Android and iOS. Csound can also be called through other programming languages such as Python, Lua, C/C++, Java, etc.

One of the main principles in Csound development is to guarantee backwards compatibility. You can still render a Csound source file from 1986 on the latest Csound release, and you should be able to render a file written today with the latest Csound in 2036.

FluidSynth videos

MIDI SoundFont synthetizer with Intel Edison and Fluidsynth

More videos:

  • Review - Triggering Fluidsynth with my Alesis Nitro Mesh MIDI in Linux
  • Review - Setting up Fluidsynth MIDI channels on phone

Csound videos

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Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to FluidSynth and Csound)
Email Marketing
89 89%
11% 11
Music Generation
0 0%
100% 100
Work Management
100 100%
0% 0
3D
0 0%
100% 100

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What are some alternatives?

When comparing FluidSynth and Csound, you can also consider the following products

Qsynth - Qsynth is a simple Qt4 application wrapper for the ...

SuperCollider - A real time audio synthesis engine, and an object-oriented programming language specialised for...

VirtualMIDISynth - VirtualMIDISynth is a software MIDI synthesizer implemented as a Windows multimedia user driver...

Sonic Pi - Sonic Pi is a new kind of instrument for a new generation of musicians. It is simple to learn, powerful enough for live performances and free to download.

ZynAddSubFX - ZynAddSubFX is an open source software synthesizer for Linux, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows.

Pure Data - Pd (aka Pure Data) is a real-time graphical programming environment for audio, video, and graphical...