JSyn History

History of JSyn

JSyn was started in 1996 by Phil Burk while at 3DO. The original version had native 'C' code for the synthesis engine and the audio interface. The Java API was a fairly thin layer on top. 3DO granted the JSyn copyrights to Phil Burk.

Robert Marsanyi used JSyn for modelling the synthesis units in the MX game console DSP designed at Cagent.

JSyn was released in 1997. Nick Didkovsky used JSyn as the primary synthesizer for JMSL.

JSyn has been used to create many computer music pieces including:

• WebDrum by Phil Burk
• MandelMusic by Nick Didkovsky
• FreeHorn by Larry Polansky

More pieces are linked from http://www.softsynth.com/jsyn/examples/index.php

The native code layer required separate builds for Linux, Mac and Windows, as well as special builds for every variety of plugin including IE CAB files. This became a nightmare to maintain. But luckily Java became fast enough to perform the synthesis in pure Java. And JavaSound eliminated the need for a native audio interface. So JSyn was converted to pure Java in 2009 and 2010. Lisa Tolenti converted many of the units from 'C' to Java.

JSyn was also given a new API that was similar to the old API. It had units with ports that could be connected and set. But there were some important new differences described here:

http://www.softsynth.com/jsyn/docs/migration.php

A software bridge was built so that old JSyn programs could be run on top of the new pure Java JSyn with no native code.

In 2014, the new JSyn API was extracted from the very old CVS repository and moved to here on GitHub. JSyn was re-released under the Apache V2.0 open source license.

The release notes contain a detailed record of the software changes:

http://www.softsynth.com/jsyn/docs/releases.php