Browser based sythesizer, drum machine and squencer
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Inspired by the recent Boards Of Canada announcement, I've been in a low-fi electronica mood lately and was going back and forth with Claude on how to design similar instruments in the browser that fit the genre. One thing led to another and pretty soon I had a fully browser based polyphonic synthesizer / drum machine / sequencer.The interface and workflow was heavily inspired by the Rebirth338 application released back in the 90's, but with lo-fi synth voices rather than the original 303 & 808 emulation.I know there's a significant overlap of developers and musicians and I though some of you may enjoy playing with the app, or at least listening to the resulting album. I've also open sourced track 1 of the album via the performance script used to record it. It's in the repo.Bandcamp link to the resulting album: https://madmonk13.bandcamp.com/album/yesterdays-tomorrow-tod...
HN · launched May 15, 2026 · 22 upvotes (top 24%) · 0 views
Niche: audio and music production software · 188 launches, 25 in the last 7 days ▼ -24% · Explore this niche →
Category and tags
- Media & entertainment
- Hardware & robotics
- Prosumer
- Not AI
- Hobby / open-source project
Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗
More like this: all 188 launches in audio and music production software →
Could you build this?
Yes Web audio applications using the standard Web Audio API (oscillators, gain nodes, step sequencers) are well-documented and can be vibe-coded directly in vanilla JavaScript or React.
Discussion
4 comments analyzed.
Concerns raised: Tone.js causes audio clipping issues, AI agents struggle with optimization, AI makes mistakes on modular groovebox tasks
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one : 436 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #117 of 437 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 198 days after the earliest competitor.
- Learn to program a modular synthesizer in the browser · hn · 2026-10-05 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.58
- Beats, a web-based drum machine · hn · 2026-01-18 · 160 upvotes · similarity 0.57
- Web-REPL "skred" : my OSS sound engine w/retro C64 appearance · hn · 2026-05-10 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.57
- AwsmAudio · hn · 2026-06-15 · 7 upvotes · similarity 0.52
- I built a WebMIDI sequencer to control my hardware synths · hn · 2025-12-11 · 43 upvotes · similarity 0.52
- Procedural Music Workstation in the Browser · hn · 2026-03-06 · 9 upvotes · similarity 0.50
- What if your synthesizer was powered by APL (or a dumb K clone)? · hn · 2026-03-15 · 92 upvotes · similarity 0.48
- On Making Music with the Machine · hn · 2025-12-29 · 6 upvotes · similarity 0.48
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