Surge XT

Overview

• Surge is a free, open-source synth: https://surge-synthesizer.github.io/
• Surge XT is the universal binary for macOS

Setup

• Install from the site
  • Note: you may want to get their nightly build
• In FLStudio, re-scan for plugins (Add → More plugins → Manage plugins… → Find installed plugins)
  • Mine was located here: /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST3

Presets

• There are factory presets and third-party presets if you click “Category”:
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  • I’m only writing this note because I used the program for ~2 hours and somehow didn’t see the third-party patches. 🤦‍♂️

Debug builds

There are instructions on how to build here. It was very simple (just copy/paste the instructions and replace “Release” with “Debug”).

• Note: to build Surge XT.vst3 and not Surge XT Effects.vst3, you have to run cmake --build build --config Release --target surge-xt_VST3
• After building, I put the debug version in /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST3, but FL Studio seemed to still pick up the release version until I renamed the release version to .vst3_old (filenames don’t seem to matter for these).
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