Synth1

New notes

Tue 06/30/2026 - I decided to ditch Synth1, at least on macOS. I like the sounds, but even when it’s working at its best, it’s still a little glitchy. Most recently though, a project that heavily used Synth1 simply stopped loading consistently (it would crash the entire DAW), so I am going to try Surge XT, which is free and open-source.

Note: you can download old versions of FLStudio here, but they typically can’t open projects from newer versions, so you would need to export all of the data and import it into the old version.

Old notes

I use Synth1 (official site here; it even has a Wikipedia page!) for some chiptune sorts of sounds.

• To add glide, enable portamento at the bottom right and set an amount.
  • With “Auto” on, it will only apply portamento when two notes overlap. With it off, it will always act like it’s gliding.
  • You can automate the amount under “portament time” (it is a typo in the synth itself), but the synth doesn’t seem to like it changing this value often; it seems to reinitialize it or something and causes an abrupt stop.

8/29/2017 - 2:41 Popcultur: are you looking for 8-bit sounds because the best i’ve found is one called tb_peach

5/21/2018 - tons of extra presets for Synth1 here (how to install: go to synth1, click “opt”, browse to a “zipbank” folder with all the zips/rars, then wait for it to scan them all, then click “00:soundbank00” and choose “External”). Best presets I found:

• Alfmeister’s Magic Cracker
  • 74: Above the Clouds
  • 77: Space Keys MW
• Art Institute Vol 2 (lots of other random good ones too)
  • 6: Voyabass
  • 7: Bass soft
  • 31: clavia
  • 32: brass
  • 37: Trumpet toy
  • 41: piano rhodes
• Azur Studio 2
  • 1: Barrel bass
  • 22: Aquamarine
  • 24: Water piano
  • 39: Unknown Machine - cool for just ambient sound
  • 78: Talk Robots - probably great for Bot Land
• Azur Studio 3
  • 46: CB4 (cool when holding lots of notes)
• BIGTONE
  • 5: BT old stage pno
• do_androids_dream Bladerunner
  • 61 - 63: kicks
• Bryan Lake
  • 2: Bottleneck
• Rydsound
  • 12: hi hat
• VitaminD The Definitive Bank
  • Decent drums in the green section
• Vivolator
  • 3: BS Nymphette (mw,at)
• Wavephonic
  • 69: child in time
• Teksonik 1 - lots of good stuff here: 54, 93