Nov 9, 2025
The Art of Virtual Synth Design II : Surge XT : Open
Source Powerhouse !
“It's fun working on stuff that works!”
Hosted by Vin Curigliano of AAVIM Technology, I am joined by guest
co-host Pete Brown of Microsoft and special guest Paul Walker, aka
BaconPaul , who is a maintainer and one of the largest contributors
on the Surge Synthesizer Team, and also a contributor to several
other open source audio projects, including the CLAP plugin
standard.
We discuss Paul's early history with music and technology , and how
he found his way to joining and forming the Surge team, and his
ongoing role there.
We cover the history of Surge XT, and its initial development by
Claes Johanson which he sold as a commercial product via his
original company Vember Audio ( Released in 2005). We discuss
how it eventuated that the development went down the open source
route , and how that makes it unique regards allowing access to the
source code to all developers, over more traditional closed loop
development of other major synths.
We discuss how the Surge Synth Team formed, the importance of the
team dynamic and tools, (both technological and sociological) ,
other projects in the Surge Synth Team beyond Surge XT, and the
constantly expanding catalogue.
We take a deeper dive into the features and direction of Surge XT,
its unique architecture and feature set, and discuss area’s like
MPE, CLAP, MT-ESP (Microtuning ), accessibility, etc.
We also discuss the current state of Music Technology and the
incoming Zeitgeist being driven by AI, and much much
more.
Host & Guest Links :
AAVIM Technology : www.aavimt.com.au
DAWbench : www.dawbench.com
Microsoft : www.microsoft.com
Pete Brown : https://twitter.com/Pete_Brown
Surge Synth Team : https://surge-synth-team.org/
VO :
Andrew Peters : www.andrewpetersvo.com
Music Themes :
Original DAWbench VI Theme Music composed by Rob John : Independent
Music Productions : http://www.indmusicprods.com
DAWbench Radio Show ReMix by Erin McKimm : www.erinmckimm.com
All Rights Reserved : © AAVIMT 2025