Synth Edit is a wonderful and expandable platform for realtime audio processing, circuit design, experimentation and ultimately audio plugin development.
Unfortunately, stock modules equipment has always been quite basic, limiting dramatically the results which can be achieved by non-coders: this is perhaps one of the reasons behind the bad reputation gained by Synth Edit overall ("it is only good for average analog synths"), despite its huge potential.

Actually, there have been abundant and great module packs in the past, but they are now obsolete 32-bits relics, mostly abandoned or non-portable projects written in assembly, no longer compatible with the most recent hardware and Synth Edit versions.


We started this project in 2019, with the main goal of providing ourselves with a comprehensive set of modern, powerful and portable 64-bits modules for Synth Edit for our internal audio works and development.
In a short time, the project grew exponentially, and was judged mature enough and of potentially wide audience to be worth a public release "as a bonus".

Elena Design Module Pack for Synth Edit was born as and will always be free software, representing the "byproduct" of our internal works. As such, you are free to use it for any either personal, free or commercial projects, without any burden or limitation.

New modules are constantly added, and the existing ones are constantly improved and bug-fixed and - where necessary - also re-written better.

However, maintaining a public project also means providing constantly up-to-date documentation, accepting bug reports and sometimes (where feasable) also seconding feature requests and providing some degree of user support. For this reason, the project at present is kept alive by donations. The day we receive no more donations, any public development and maintenance will be stopped !

In particular, the Mac version must be commissioned to third party developers (we are not providing any Mac support) and is not updated at every new release of the main ED Pack binaries.
A new Mac porting of the currently available ED Pack release is done everytime a new donation of € 50, even cumulative, is received.

Elena Design Pack is composed of several hundreds modules, written in clean and highly optimized C++ and compiled with GCC. No intrinsics or assembler directives are used, we rather prefer to invest time and efforts in well written, compact and efficient DSP code: our phylosophy is that there is no need to use 1,000 lines of code if a same operation can be accomplished with just 10 !
Also, on nowaday's faster and faster multicore 64 bits processors, using assembly for digital audio is possibly a pointless complication.
All modules making use of heavy maths rely on an internal fast and accurate Math Library, especially developed by Elena Design, the same ESD is also based on, providing comparable accuracy as the standard C++ math lib but 5 to 20 times faster.



At present, the available modules are split in four distinct thematic libraries (".sem's").
Given the huge amount of modules and the fact new ones are constantly added, we can neither maintain a list here nor cover them individually.

The DSP collection contains several modules for Audio processing, as well as for Float, Int, Bool, BLOB, String control lines, and some MIDI tools: from actual DSP to automation purposes. The most noteworthy are perhaps: the Digital Waveguide, which employs the same technology as in our Synlay synth; the Chebyshev harmonic multiplier; the time-domain Pitch Shifter, a very light-weight module with a quality approaching that of its frequency-domain counterpart; a 100% band-limited Dirac-Pulse oscillator. A couple of very nice, vintage-looking Oscilloscopes are also provided, which can be used to draw Lissajous figures or even as correlation meters.
Several convenient delay-based modules never found elsewhere are also included, from both integer and fractional Sample Delays to Haas Panners, from Integrators, Differentiators and Accumulators to Timers and Counters.



A comprehensive set of math modules, for both Audio, Float and Int is also inluded, something Synth Edit users always missed in standard distributions.
They provide support for all both basic and advanced math functions.

The GUI library includes several modules intended for display and interface circuit automation, plus some replacements of stock "sub-controls" with new features and improved functionality.
Hovering support is also provided thru the special Hover Box, where not natively supported by our sub controls replacements already.
Several value Triggers are also included, together with Splitters and Fixed-Value modules.
There is also a folder dedicated to File I/O operations, including a fully featured File Browser and accessory modules.
Several Randomizers and a never found elsewhere GUI Timer are also included.

Also worth mentioning is a special set of "Non-autoconfiguring Patch Memories": they allow to disconnect and re-connect their DSP output value pins without losing existing preset-parameter associations. Please replace all standard Patch Memories thru your existing projects and you won't fear losing all your presets anymore !



A whole set of math modules for all GUI datatypes, replicating the same functions of their DSP counterparts, is also included.

Shapes were born at the very beginning of ED Pack history, as a convenient means to transmit shape information thru standard String lines in a human readable form, for usage by various modules (waveshapers, look-up-table oscillators or envelopes, filters, and so on). Their simple but effective format was inspired by the one originally adopted by Synth Edit for its Waveshaper.

Several spectral modules in our ESD package also are extensively based on Shapes since beginning, like all Spectral Filters and Spectrum Generators.

After having been widely tested and accepted with enthusiasm by many users for its versatility, the Shape format was finally re-designed from scratch in 2023, adopting BLOB binary format for increased transmission efficiency, and based on a new, centralized Shape Class Library, providing standard methods for transmission, parsing, editing and interpolation.
However, it is still possible to edit Shape node information using the old "legacy" ASCII format, either directly or thru the supplied format converters, depending.

The core of the Shape system from an user's perspective is possibly the Shape Editor. Now reaching version 5, it allows quick and intuitive editing of Shape nodes with few mouse clicks, and can be fully customized in every both aesthetical and functional aspect.

Several Shape editing, processing and automation modules are provided, in both DSP and GUI versions, covering every possible editing and automation need.



The DSP Shape-based ("utilizers") modules included at present are a LUT-based Oscillator, with anti-aliasing, phase modulation and phase feedback support, a freely drawable Envelope with adjustable sustain point and a couple of mono and stereo Waveshapers.

If we exclude the "closed-box" Sound Font oscillator and the Wav recorder/player pair, Synth Edit still lacks proper sampling support.
Once more, some third party modules suitable for sampling purposes were available in the old 32-bits era; but even in that case, they were "closed-box" solutions and did not pretty offer any modularity.
Synth Edit is a modular environment by definition; it is therefore in our opinion since beginning that any integration of sampling support had to obey the same phylosophy.

Elena Design offers a fully modular and expandable, BLOB-based sampling support, where slices of 32 bits digital audio in native Float format ("samples") can be acquired from regular DSP lines, transmitted thru standard BLOB lines, processed, played back, stored in plain BLOB Patch Memories (thus also conveniently stored in presets), and loaded or saved to disc using standard Wav format.

Depending on the specific needs, either GUI or DSP lines can be used for processing and file I/O.
The only price to pay for having full versatility is the infamous 5 MB limit, which is the size limit of the internal memory buffers which Synth Edit uses to communicate data between its DSP and GUI ends.
Usage with moderately sized samples does not cause any issue, mostly; however, when Elena Design sampling system is abused for long recordings, the 5 MB limit can be easily and quickly hit, leading to data corruption or other unexpected issues.
At present, we have tried to adopt some workarounds, despite we can't really do anything to fix this problem on the root.
We can only stress not to abuse Synth Edit and Elena Design sampling system for operations on long recordings, which are much more easily and efficiently done with actual audio editing software, like Audacity or even your preferred DAW.

In the included sample-based DSP modules we can mention an Audio Recorder / Audio Player pair, a fully featured Sample Oscillator and a sample-based LUT Oscillator. Recently a "Sample Snatcher-like" module has also been included, to obtain scratch-like or other modulation effects reading samples at arbitrary positions.

Worth a mention is also the advanced Sample Display, which allows display and navigation thru even long samples, and which can be used in conjunction with the included Sample Markers to adjust and display end points or loop positions.

Since the GUI route is the preferred one for sample editing, several GUI "modifiers" are also provided, to perform basic operations on samples, and which can be expanded with more advanced off-line processing capabilities in future.

In conclusion, the Sampling library offers all you need to design actual sampler plugins. Just have a look at the included examples !

Elena Design Pack is targeted at expert Synth Edit users who also have the required skills in Digital Sound Processing.
However, for every module provided an inline Help File is also available and which should always be consulted before usage. Please make sure you have installed the Help Files correctly, as indicated in the included Installation Instructions.
Keep in mind that we cannot provide any support for beginners. Please also make sure you have read all the documentation included before contacting us for help or for bug reports !