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wtf is synth-galaxy?

s0hfia/synth-galaxy — explained in plain English

Analysis updated 2026-05-18

14PythonAudience · researcherComplexity · 4/5LicenseSetup · hard

TL;DR

synth-galaxy turns your own Vital synth presets into an explorable 3D map organized by sound similarity, with drag-and-drop audio to preset generation.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((repo))
    What it does
      Maps synth presets in 3D
      Groups by sound similarity
      Generates presets from audio
    Tech stack
      Python
      PyTorch
      librosa
      UMAP
    Use cases
      Browse a large preset library visually
      Find sonically similar presets
      Turn an audio clip into a new preset
    Audience
      Music producers
      Sound designers
      Researchers
    Pipeline
      Render presets to audio
      Extract audio features
      Train similarity model
    Requirements
      Vital plugin installed
      Your own preset library
      Mac or Linux with Python

Code map

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Why would anyone build with this?

REASON 1

Visually browse a large personal Vital preset collection organized by how sounds relate to each other.

REASON 2

Find presets that sound similar to a favorite one using the nearest-neighbor sidebar.

REASON 3

Drag an audio stem onto the page to generate a new playable preset inspired by that sound.

REASON 4

Study the modulation routing and standout parameters behind a particular preset.

What's in the stack?

PythonPyTorchlibrosaUMAPFlaskPlotly

How it stacks up

s0hfia/synth-galaxy0c33/agentic-aiadennng/stock_strategy_lab
Stars141414
LanguagePythonPythonPython
Setup difficultyhardhardhard
Complexity4/54/54/5
Audienceresearcherdeveloperresearcher

Figures from each repo's GitHub metadata at analysis time.

How do you spin it up?

Difficulty · hard Time to first run · 1day+

Requires the Vital synth plugin installed plus your own preset library, and the full pipeline can take hours to run.

MIT license for the code, use freely for any purpose including commercial use as long as you keep the copyright notice, preset files are not included and are not covered by this license.

Wtf does this do

synth-galaxy takes a music producer's collection of presets for the Vital synthesizer and turns them into an explorable 3D map, letting you browse your sound library visually instead of scrolling through a flat list. It renders every preset to audio, extracts features describing how each one sounds, and trains a small AI model that organizes them in space by four different measures of similarity: how the underlying synthesis settings compare, how the sounds actually sound to a listener, how the modulation routing is structured, and what the raw oscillator waveforms look like. The result is an interactive web page where each preset appears as a colored orb you can click to see its closest sonic neighbors, its most distinctive settings, and its modulation setup, along with a way to play it back. One notable feature lets you drag any audio file, like a song stem, onto the page: the app analyzes what that sound is closest to among your own presets and among a large public library of reference waveforms, then builds and saves a brand new playable preset file based on that audio, ready to open directly in Vital. This project does not include any actual presets, since most preset packs are licensed for personal use only and cannot legally be redistributed, you are expected to point it at your own preset collection. Running the full pipeline on a library of about two thousand presets takes a few hours end to end, and it requires a Mac or Linux computer with the Vital plugin installed and Python set up through the uv tool. The project's code is released under the MIT license.

Yoink these prompts

Prompt 1
Walk me through installing synth-galaxy with uv and pointing it at my Vital preset folder.
Prompt 2
Explain what the four different similarity bases in synth-galaxy represent.
Prompt 3
Help me understand the audio-drop workflow that turns a stem into a new .vital preset.
Prompt 4
How long will the full pipeline take on my preset library and what does each script do?
Prompt 5
Explain why this repository does not include any Vital presets itself.

Frequently asked questions

wtf is synth-galaxy?

synth-galaxy turns your own Vital synth presets into an explorable 3D map organized by sound similarity, with drag-and-drop audio to preset generation.

What language is synth-galaxy written in?

Mainly Python. The stack also includes Python, PyTorch, librosa.

What license does synth-galaxy use?

MIT license for the code, use freely for any purpose including commercial use as long as you keep the copyright notice, preset files are not included and are not covered by this license.

How hard is synth-galaxy to set up?

Setup difficulty is rated hard, with roughly 1day+ to a first successful run.

Who is synth-galaxy for?

Mainly researcher.

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