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Work · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to I've built a tool for musicians using modular gear

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…

Patcher.xyz is a digital tool for musicians who work with eurorack modular synthesizers. It lets users document and organize their patches by visualizing signal flow as graphs, replacing the traditional method of… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. I've built a tool for musicians using modular gear launched in 2022; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

  1. 1

    Manager and database for musicians using modular gear

    2022 · patcher.xyz · its alternatives →

  2. 2IB

    Originally started as a project to restore patterns from now defunct website 808.pixll.de just for myself, but eventually i decided to share it with others. I've seen this website mentioned a couple of times on HN:) Currently it only supports Roland TR-808, but there will be more.

    2025 · drumpatterns.onether.com · its alternatives →

  3. 3

    Modular Eurorack style synthesizer made with Web Audio - spectrome/patchcab

    2021 · github.com · its alternatives →

  4. 4
    Haxophone▲526

    I built this during Covid. When I released it, some of the parts went out of stock or skyrocketed in price, no longer making this an economic DIY project. Now that things are getting back to almost normal, I thought I'd share it here and request feedback. This is a very niche project for people who like the same things I do: saxophones, Rust, mechanical keyboards and the Raspberry Pi.

    2022 · github.com · its alternatives →

  5. 5

    Hello HN, I’m a hobby music producer with a changing studio setup and got tired of losing track of what’s patched where (especially after gear swaps). I built PatchMyGear, a website to map audio setups / routing and generate a cable list + wiring checklist, save / load locally. (no signup) Let me know what you think. Happy holidays!

    Dec 2025 · patchmygear.com · its alternatives →

  6. 6

    Learn music better with our living sheet music.

    2012 · soundslice.com · its alternatives →

  7. 7IF

    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 →

  8. 8IU

    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 →

  9. 9

    I recently got Ableton Move and was disappointed by how difficult it was to convert samples into Move-compatible drum racks, so I made a simple CLI tool for that. I hope others find it useful, and at some point, Ableton sees the need and provides us with a built-in solution.

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

  10. 10FA

    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 →

  11. 11

    This started out when I vibe-coded a guitar scale fingering generator. It came out pretty good, and I started adding stuff to it: chords, then how chords and scales interact. Then I added charts for other instruments I mess around with: piano, cello, alto recorder. There's a complexity toggle to go from basic harmony to extended/experimental stuff. It's honestly still mostly a toy, but I thought other people might be interested in playing with it. Source is on github, so it's easy enough to run locally and fork. https://github.com/aleshh/gtr-scales

    May 2026 · projects.alesh.com · its alternatives →

  12. 12

    One day I was listening to a playlist and wished there could be some cool visuals to go along with it. Blotter is a proof of concept I hacked together that does a bit of audio recognition combined with a few generative AI models (both text and img) to create visuals that are relevant to the song. The video stream is generated in real time at 24fps - you can try it yourself by requesting visuals in the Twitch chat using the "!v" command! Right now it's mostly a fun hack project, but I am tinkering with new model architectures for higher fidelity video as well as an interactive tool so people…

    2023 · twitch.tv · its alternatives →

  13. 13
    Pianolyze▲149

    Hey HN, I'm a pianist who's always been obsessed with understanding how great players think through harmony. What voicings are they using? How do they voice lead through changes? What's actually happening under their hands? Back in 2022, I built Harmonic Analyzer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNgSgvUmiOs) – a Mac app that used ML to transcribe polyphonic piano recordings. It got some traction, but I never quite finished it. Requiring users to download a Mac app felt like unnecessary friction, and I didn’t want to limit distribution to Mac users. I just shipped Pianolyze…

    Nov 2025 · pianolyze.com · its alternatives →

  14. 14

    A modular instrument for music production

    2017 · studioamplify.com · its alternatives →

  15. 15

    Hey HN! I'm excited to share a tool I've been working on - a native Hacker News reader built with Rust and egui. Here's a screenshot: https://github.com/haojiang99/hacker_news_reader/blob/main/s.... As a daily HN reader, I've always struggled with keeping track of interesting posts I want to read later. Browser tabs pile up, bookmarks get forgotten, and I lose track of what I've already read. I needed a way to: 1. Browse HN efficiently (across all sections - hot, new, show, ask, jobs, best) 2. Quickly mark posts as "todo" for later reading 3. Mark posts as…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  16. 16
    Jamboree▲102

    Multiplayer synthesizer

    Jul 2026 · jamboree.space · its alternatives →

  17. 17

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

    2018 · github.com · its alternatives →

  18. 18

    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 →

  19. 19IB

    Hey HN, I’m an ex-Google engineer trying to get back into music production. I needed a way to sequence my hardware synths using AI contexts without constantly switching windows, so I built this. It runs entirely in the browser using WebMIDI. No login required. It connects to your local MIDI devices (if you're on Chrome/Edge) and lets you generate patterns. Tech stack: [React / WebMIDI API / etc]. Link: www.simplychris.ai/droplets Code is a bit messy, but it works. Feedback welcome.

    Dec 2025 · simplychris.ai · its alternatives →

  20. 20

    Create, organize, and share curated collections of links

    2024 · snack.xyz · its alternatives →

  21. 21

    A revolutionary new way of visualizing drum plugin libraries

    2019 · xlnaudio.com · its alternatives →

  22. 22

    C Pixels-based graphical audio synthesizer implemented as a WebSocket server - grz0zrg/fas

    2020 · github.com · its alternatives →

  23. 23

    Eurorack emulator in your browser

    Jul 2026 · eurorackjs.orderandchaos.xyz · its alternatives →

  24. 24

    Build your own music visualizer for MIDI & audio

    Aug 2026 · chordviz.ca · its alternatives →

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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →