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Dev tools · alternatives · 2026

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24 alternatives to Audio plugin for circuit-bent MP3 compression sounds

I made MAIM, an open-source audio plugin that uses real MP3 encoders to distort the sound. I've also added knobs that let you "circuit bend" the encoders, changing parameters that would normally be inaccessible to the user to get strange glitchy sounds. The plugin lets you switch between two MP3 encoders, since under the MP3 standard, the specifics of what to lose in MP3 lossy compression is left up to the encoder. The encoders are LAME, the gold standard for open-source MP3 encoders, and BladeEnc, an old open-source MP3 encoder that has a really bubbly sound and was fun to work with. I'd…

MAIM is an open-source audio plugin that uses real MP3 encoders to create distorted and glitchy sounds. It features circuit-bending controls that modify normally inaccessible encoder parameters, allowing users to… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Audio plugin for circuit-bent MP3 compression sounds launched in 2023; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

  1. 1

    AudioMass is a free full-featured web-based audio & waveform editing tool

    May 2026 · audiomass.co · its alternatives →

  2. 2

    Guitar plugin made with JUCE that uses neural networks to emulate a tube amplifier. - GuitarML/SmartGuitarAmp

    2020 · github.com · its alternatives →

  3. 3

    Generative AI for audio made simple

    2023 · ai.meta.com · its alternatives →

  4. 4IF

    Hi HN, Last time I showed free-music-demixer, which people seemed to enjoy. It was a static website with a Javascript + WASM module to perform music demixing (or music source separation) using an AI model UMX-L (Open-Unmix) running client-side in the browser. Since then, I have overhauled the project and made several improvements: - The demixing/separation quality is higher now, since I implemented the missing post-processing step - Memory usage is lower now by performing a custom segmented inference with a streaming LSTM, which should allow larger tracks (or, dare I say,…

    2023 · freemusicdemixer.com · its alternatives →

  5. 5FA

    Hi all, I've spent some time working on music demixing or music source separation algorithms, which take in a mixed song and output estimates of isolated components (e.g. vocals, drums, bass, other). I took a popular PyTorch model with good performance (Open-Unmix, UMX-L weights), reimplemented the inference steps in C++, and compiled it to WebAssembly for a free client-side music demixer.

    2023 · sevag.xyz · its alternatives →

  6. 6

    A powerful realtime node-based audio synthesizer. Contribute to monadgroup/axiom development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2018 · github.com · its alternatives →

  7. 7
    Audino AI▲325

    Make content creation simpler with AI-generated audio

    2025 · its alternatives →

  8. 8

    Record, edit, and share audio in your browser. Cut and trim clips, add effects, or convert audio files with Sodaphonic’s free online tools.

    2016 · sodaphonic.com · its alternatives →

  9. 9

    Draw.Audio is a free online music maker. Draw notes on a grid and hear them play back instantly — a browser-based synthesizer, sequencer, and visual instrument.

    2024 · draw.audio · its alternatives →

  10. 10IU

    Hi Hacker News, This is definitely out of my comfort zone. I just wanted to show you guys because I'm super proud of it. It's a 100% faithful recreation based off of the schematics, patents, and ROMs that were found online. So please watch the video and tell me what you think https://youtu.be/auOlZXI1VxA The reason why I think this is relevant is because I've been a programmer for 25 years and AI scares the shit out of me. I'm not a programmer anymore. I'm something else now. I don't know what it is but it's multi-disciplinary, and it doesn't involve writing code myself--for…

    Jan 2026 · its alternatives →

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  12. 12

    Production ASR for noisy multilingual audio

    Apr 2026 · microsoft.ai · its alternatives →

  13. 13

    Open source audio annotation tool for humans. Contribute to midas-research/audino development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2020 · github.com · its alternatives →

  14. 14

    Here is a tool I built initially for myself to help with my German and Greek language studies. It started as a hack for creating Anki cards from native language audio. It extracts the words, finds their base forms (lemmas) and groups the examples by the lemma. At some point I realised that I have a transcription with word level timestamps that opens a lot of other opportunities. So I added a mode to click the first and last word in the transcript and it starts looping with the right gap and repeat count. Another feature I use a lot is selecting an audio fragment, sending a predefined prompt…

    Jun 2026 · lingochunk.com · its alternatives →

  15. 15WA

    Hi, I'm the author of this little Web Audio toy which does physical modeling synthesis using a simple spring-mass system. My current area of research is in sparse, event-based encodings of musical audio (https://blog.cochlea.xyz/sparse-interpretable-audio-codec-pa...). I'm very interested in decomposing audio signals into a description of the "system" (e.g., room, instrument, vocal tract, etc.) and a sparse "control signal" which describes how and when energy is injected into that system. This toy was a great way to start learning about physical modeling synthesis, which seems…

    2025 · blog.cochlea.xyz · its alternatives →

  16. 16

    Hello HN, not many will know what this tool is about, but it's launch day and I always dreamed of posting on HN. Let's start! This is a tool for people using eurorack gear. For synth people. What is cool about my tool is that I show the signal flow with a graph. Here's the official press text: After a decade of stagnation in this space we are excited to present patcher.xyz: the modern way to manage everything modular. It’s a tool for professionals, enthusiasts, and casual wigglers. Novadays artists must develop their own means of taking notes, often on paper, since there is no common format…

    2022 · patcher.xyz · its alternatives →

  17. 17

    AI-generated samples and effects for producers (FREE VST)

    2024 · audialab.com · its alternatives →

  18. 18VC

    Built this over the weekend to bridge the gap between "can hum a melody" and "can code algorithmic music patterns" (Strudel/TidalCycles) for live coding and live dj'ing. What it does: Real-time pitch detection in browser using multiple algorithms: CREPE (deep learning model via TensorFlow.js) YIN (autocorrelation-based fundamental frequency estimation) FFT with harmonic product spectrum AMDF (average magnitude difference function) Outputs: visual piano roll, MIDI files, Strudel/TidalCycles code All client-side, nothing leaves your machine Why multiple algorithms: Different pitch…

    Jan 2026 · dioptre.github.io · its alternatives →

  19. 19

    Hi HN! I’m excited to share AudioNimbus, a Rust library that brings the powerful spatial audio capabilities of Steam Audio to the Rust ecosystem. Whether you’re building games, VR/AR experiences, or simulations, AudioNimbus makes it easier to integrate realistic, immersive audio into your projects. Steam Audio is a toolkit for spatial audio, developed by Valve. It simulates realistic sound propagation, including effects like directionality, distance attenuation, reflections, and reverb. It’s used in games like Half-Life: Alyx and Counter-Strike 2. Rust is increasingly being adopted in…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  20. 20

    Graph-oriented live coding language and music/audio DSP library written in Rust - chaosprint/glicol

    2022 · github.com · its alternatives →

  21. 21

    Hi HN, I’ve been working on a browser-based tool for exploring and debugging Web Audio API graphs. Web Audio Studio lets you write real Web Audio API code, run it, and see the runtime graph it produces as an interactive visual representation. Instead of mentally tracking connect() calls, you can inspect the actual structure of the graph, follow signal flow, and tweak parameters while the audio is playing. It includes built-in visualizations for common node types — waveforms, filter responses, analyser time and frequency views, compressor transfer curves, waveshaper distortion, spatial…

    Mar 2026 · webaudio.studio · its alternatives →

  22. 22

    Ever since childhood I've wanted to play around with modular synthesis, so now I'm building an application to do just that!

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

  23. 23PC

    protoplug is a VST/AU plugin that lets you load and edit Lua scripts as audio effects and instruments.

    2014 · osar.fr · its alternatives →

  24. 24

    A fun weekend project: https://www.modembin.com It's a pastebin, except text/files are encoded into .wav files using real FSK modem audio. Image sharing is supported via Slow-Scan Television (SSTV), a method of transmitting images as FM audio originally used by ham radio operators. Everything runs in the browser with zero audio libraries and the encoding is vanilla TypeScript sine wave math: phase-continuous FSK with proper 8-N-1 framing, fractional bit accumulation for non-integer sample rates, and a quadrature FM discriminator on the decode side (no FFT windowing or…

    Mar 2026 · modembin.com · its alternatives →

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