Synchrotron

Graph-based live audio manipulation engine implemented in Python

Note

For the frontend web interface to interact with Synchrotron, go to SynchrotronUI (GitHub).

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What is it?

Synchrotron is all of the following:

• DSP (Digital Signal Processing) engine
• Audio router / muxer
• Synthesiser
• Audio effects engine
• MIDI instrument
• And more!

It's still very much a baby project, but make no mistake, it can already be pretty powerful! Take a look for yourself:

Hack Club Showcase - Synchrotron

Synchrotron has been designed from the ground up with maximum flexibility and interoperability in mind, and as such, there are many ways to use Synchrotron and interact with the server.

This includes (click images to enlarge):

Blender-inspired node editor UI	Fancy TUI Console	REST API	Python API

The possibilities are endless - whether you wish to render audio to a WAV file on a remote server, or embed the Python package as a dependency for your desktop app. Use Synchrotron as a Python library, interact with its webserver's endpoints through an HTTP client, or use the elegant Synchrolang syntax to control it with just your keyboard.

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Installation

Synchrotron can be installed via pip:

pip install synchrotron

Of course, uv - the faster pip alternative - is also supported:

uv pip install synchrotron

If you have uv installed, you can also use uvx to ephemerally start the server or console:

uvx --from synchrotron synchrotron-server
uvx --from synchrotron synchrotron-console

Troubleshooting

If you get a pyaudio/portaudio error during installation that looks e.g. like this:

      src/pyaudio/device_api.c:9:10: fatal error: portaudio.h: No such file or directory
          9 | #include "portaudio.h"
            |          ^~~~~~~~~~~~~
      compilation terminated.
      error: command '/usr/bin/x86_64-linux-gnu-gcc' failed with exit code 1
      [end of output]

  note: This error originates from a subprocess, and is likely not a problem with pip.
  ERROR: Failed building wheel for pyaudio
Failed to build pyaudio
ERROR: Could not build wheels for pyaudio, which is required to install pyproject.toml-based projects

The most likely culprit is that your system is missing the portaudio development package. This is usually resolved by installing through your package manager - e.g. sudo apt install portaudio19-dev on Ubuntu.

Startup

From the Python environment you installed Synchrotron in, you can start the server:

synchrotron-server

To start the console for a TUI client to interact with the server:

synchrotron-console

Usage

Synchrotron provides a Python API, DSL, and REST API for interacting with the synchrotron server - the component of Synchrotron which handles the audio rendering and playback.

For the humans, you can find a web-based user interface for Synchrotron at ThatOtherAndrew/SynchrotronUI.

Roadmap

Core

Feature	Status	Version	Notes
Python API	✅	0.1.0
Synchrotron console	✅	0.1.0
Synchrolang	✅	0.1.0
REST API	✅	0.1.0	FastAPI server
Live reload	❌	0.2.0	In progress
WebSocket API	❌
Documentation 😭	❌

Nodes

Feature	Status	Version	Notes
Primitive waves	✅	0.1.0	No anti-aliasing
Speaker playback	✅	0.1.0	No output device selection
WAV file output	✅	0.1.0
Basic arithmetic	✅	0.1.0
Control signals	✅	0.1.0
MIDI input	✅	0.1.0
Basic MIDI manipulation	✅	0.1.0
SoundFont playback	✅	0.1.0
Arpeggiator	✅	0.1.0
Chord parsing	✅	0.1.0
Microphone input	❌

Random YouTube Video

I recorded myself at a pretty garden in Queens' College in Oxford yapping about dependency graphs: https://youtu.be/qkNqOcH2jWE