A polyphonic wavetable synthesizer, multi-sample player and modeled piano in one instrument — with makam and maqam tuning built in. Written in Rust, from the oscillators to the GUI.
Every track in this Ableton Live 12 session is an Aurora instance: sampled strings, harpsichord and synth layers, all playing at once.
No DAW needed: open a MIDI file, pick the parts to play, set the tempo and play along on the keyboard.
Every preset is built on the same voice architecture and effects rack, so a sampled kanun can go through the same ladder filter, mod matrix and OTT as a supersaw lead.
PolyBLEP analog shapes, mipmapped wavetables with six built-in tables and Serum-compatible WAV import, warp modes, phase-modulation FM, hard sync and up to 7-voice unison.
Zero-delay SVF, ladder, comb and formant filters — nine modes — in serial or parallel, with drive and automatic 2× oversampling on the nonlinear paths.
Three envelopes, two LFOs with a drawable shape, four macros, aftertouch and an 8-slot matrix with via-sources. Modulation shows live as rings around every knob.
An SFZ multi-sample engine (round robin, release triggers, crossfaded loops, FLAC) and a physically modeled piano: waveguide strings with stiffness dispersion, struck by a velocity-sensitive hammer.
Drive, chorus, phaser, flanger, bitcrusher, tempo-synced ping-pong delay, an 8-line FDN reverb, 3-band EQ, compressor and OTT — drag the chips to reorder the chain.
A tempo-synced arpeggiator with six modes, plus a built-in MIDI file player in the standalone app: pick parts, change the tempo and jam along.
Pick a makam and a root and every engine — synth, sampler and piano — retunes to its intervals. The on-screen keyboard shows each key's deviation in cents.
94 presets in a browsable grid. The synth presets need nothing extra; sampled instruments come from free sample packs you install alongside.
Start with the core package: plugins, standalone app, wavetables and tunings. Add any sample packs you want — they work on both macOS and Windows.
Universal binary for Apple Silicon and Intel. VST3, CLAP and Aurora.app, with an install script.
Download for macOS| Pack | Instruments | Size | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Piano | Salamander Grand (6 velocity layers + release samples), Upright Piano KW | — | Download |
| Orchestral | Solo violin (arco, pizzicato, spiccato, tremolo), violin/viola/cello/contrabass sections, clarinet, oboe, flute, trumpet, trombone, tuba, Italian harpsichord | — | Download |
| World | Ud, kanun, bağlama, ney, button accordion, bagpipe, darbuka & frame drum | — | Download |
| Voices | Elven choir (aah, ooh) and solo soprano | — | Download |
Install Aurora.command. It copies the plugins to ~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins and the app to ~/Applications.Install Pack.command.Install Aurora.bat. It installs the VST3 to Common Files\VST3, the CLAP and the app, and puts the data in %APPDATA%\Aurora.Install Pack.bat.Salamander Grand Piano V3 by Alexander Holm — CC-BY 3.0.
Upright Piano KW, Button Accordion HN, Bagpipe — FreePats, CC0.
VSCO 2 Community Edition by Versilian Studios — CC0: violin, string sections, woodwinds, brass, harpsichord.
VCSL by Versilian Studios — CC0: darbuka, frame drum and percussion.
Kanun — Barış Bozkurt (Freesound #211133), CC0. Bağlama — fcerim (Freesound pack 40093), CC0.
Ud — hammondman and Freesound #160461, CC0. Ney — aliaref (Freesound #580759) and #440817, CC0.
Elven voices — synthesised for Aurora with additive formant synthesis, no recordings.
Plugin framework: nih-plug. GUI: egui. Written in Rust.