Melatonin has released Sine Machine, an additive synthesizer powered by up to 10,000 time-domain oscillators. After more than six years of R&D, Sine Machine is out of early access and now available for macOS, Windows and Linux, with a free 14-day demo.
Sine Machine is designed to be a friendly starting point for additive synthesis, with colorful real-time visualizers that show what's happening as you go. It also offers deep control for advanced sound designers, with access to individual partial ratios, per-harmonic ADSRs, and per-harmonic pitch, glide, and tremolo.
Additive synthesis has a reputation for being technical and hard to use. With Sine Machine, I went back to first principles. I wanted to make something tactile and inspiring. Something that feels more like an instrument and less like a lab tool.
Sudara Williams, founder of Melatonin
Melatonin says Sine Machine excels at evolving pads, shimmering textures and detailed leads and effects. Its per-harmonic controls let musicians create timbres that aren't possible with subtractive or wavetable synths, from lush, shifting drones to glitchy, animated patterns.
Sine Machine takes an unusually direct approach to additive synthesis. Rather than building around resynthesis, FFT analysis or wavetables, its engine plays up to 10,000 time-domain oscillators playable in real-time, shaped by 20,000 LFOs.
Creative Features
- Harmonic arpeggiation, for animated, cascading patterns.
- Per-harmonic control over envelopes, volumes and pitch (including creative glide modes).
- Additive Reverb, built from 1000 additional sine waves.
- Additive "filters" including brick wall and Gaussian bandpass shapes.
- Per-harmonic Gaussian pitch noise for organic and lofi textures.
- 140+ factory presets.
Technical Specs
- Standalone, VST3, CLAP and AU plugin formats.
- macOS, Windows, and Linux support.
- Hackable plaintext JSON presets for deep engine experimentation.
- 20 voices of polyphony, each with 511 time-domain oscillators.
- MTS-ESP microtonal support.
- Keyboard and screen reader accessibility.
- Online and offline licensing with 3 activations per license.
YouTube Walkthroughs & Interactive Comic
To help musicians explore additive synthesis, Sudara recorded a series of 5 walkthrough videos covering the core mental models behind Sine Machine and practical approaches to sound design.
Sudara also collaborated with cartoonist Alec Longstreth to build an interactive comic series on additive synthesis. The first two parts are now available.
Pricing & Availability
Sine Machine is available today, starting at $60.
The free trial and shop are available at melatonin.dev. Note that Melatonin keeps pricing straightforward and doesn't do sales, Black Friday, or distribute via third-parties.
