ChipWave Studio is a complete music studio for Windows, macOS and Linux: lay clips out
on a timeline, write melodies in the piano roll, program beats in the drum kit, and forge your own
sounds with WaveForge, StringWave, FM-4, Analog and Chip FX. No subscription, no account, no limits.
GPL-3.0 · no account · no telemetry · renders WAV & MP3 ·
macOS and Linux too
The Timeline, the Clip Arranger and the piano roll — a real capture of the built-in “Oceans 11” demo.
Windows · macOS · Linux · 32 tracks · piano roll · drum kit · WaveForge · StringWave · FM-4 · Chip FX · Voice · tracker · CLAP & VST3 · MIDI · WAV & MP3 · GPL-3.0Windows · macOS · Linux · 32 tracks · piano roll · drum kit · WaveForge · StringWave · FM-4 · Chip FX · Voice · tracker · CLAP & VST3 · MIDI · WAV & MP3 · GPL-3.0
New in 0.2.16.0
Your knobs, your words, your undo.
Three things that make the studio feel more like yours: controller maps you can keep, an Undo menu that says what it will undo, and a top display with a backlight glow and a glassy shine.
Midi
Save and load controller maps
Keep the knobs you have MIDI-learned as a small file for your keyboard or controller, then put them back whenever you like.
Workflow
Undo that names the step
The Edit menu reads Undo: Move clip or Redo: Add note for the most common edits, so you know before you click.
Look
A display that glows
The top LCD gets a soft backlight glow and a glassy shine in every display colour — Mint, Amber, Ice and the rest.
Glow and shine, in Mint, Amber and IceController maps: save the knobs you learned
Features
Everything a song needs, in one window.
Arrange like a DAW, write like a sequencer, program like a tracker. ChipWave gives you the timeline, the notes, the drums, the sounds and the mix — with no project files to fight.
One window: clips, piano roll, rack, mixer, tracker, drum kit and synths.
Arrange
Timeline and clip launcher
Drag clips across tracks, loop one clip with a double-click, split, copy and paste. Scenes in the Clip Arranger launch on the next bar, so you can try a whole arrangement without leaving the window.
Up to 32 tracks per song, each with its own colour and role
Loop, follow actions and Capture turn a jam into a timeline
Automation lanes for filters, levels, delay feedback and any knob
Write
Piano roll, drums and honest chords
Draw notes with velocity, pressure, chance and step conditions. The Drum Kit's step sequencer has swing, 16 to 64 steps and a groove generator, and the chord helper writes real notes to the timeline — one Ctrl+Z and it's yours.
Round Robin: clip variations that differ each pass but render the same
Chords, Melody and Bass generators with a WRITE card that says where the notes go
Scale lock for typing and MIDI, with key detection
Sound
A rack for every track
The Rack is the instrument and its effects in one row under the Timeline. Stack layers, split the keyboard into parallel paths, nest devices, save the result as your own rack and pull it back from the Browser.
Add Device from a tree, drag to reorder, Ctrl-drag to copy
Splits and layers with level, pan, transpose and key range
Save Custom Rack, then find it in Browser › My Racks
Mix
Mixer, ducking and a true-peak limiter
Per-channel fader, pan, mute, solo and peak meters, two send/return buses, and sidechain ducking with a Duck % per channel for the classic trance pump. The master limiter is a lookahead true-peak design, and the loudness meter reads LUFS the way the standards do.
Momentary, short-term and integrated LUFS plus true peak (ITU-R BS.1770)
Every export goes through the same limiter
WAV and MP3 with ID3 tags, whole song or one block
Classic
The Tracker is still there
For those who love the old way: OctaMED-style blocks, note and effect columns, the Z–M keyboard, selection, transpose and undo. Effects cover slides, decays, tempo, filter and acid lines; the cursor follows the playing row.
64-row blocks by default, any length you like, with named Undo steps
32 channels with a bar that says which ones you are looking at
303 glide and accent (3C / 3D), plus Voice and generator effects
Find
A Browser that knows everything
Instruments, CLAP and VST3 plugins, samples, songs, presets, Grid patches and wavetables in one searchable panel with tags, filters, favourites and ratings. Drag a sound onto a track header to give that track the sound, or below the last track to make a new one.
Find plugins on the first run, or any time in Settings
Double-click to load, drag to assign, audition as you go
Chop and slice a break into instruments, or straight into notes
Plugins
CLAP and VST3, hosted properly
Surge XT and other CLAP instruments play from the timeline like any other instrument. Eight macro knobs are there for automation and 43xy, every plugin parameter is searchable, and the plugin state is saved inside the song.
Crash-guarded scanner, so one bad plugin does not take the app down
Native editor on Windows, offline render for the whole song
MIDI keyboards with velocity, sustain, pitch bend and MIDI learn
The sounds
Synths with character, made from scratch.
Every instrument is written for ChipWave itself: oscillators with drift, a Moog-style ladder, formant voices, FM and a pile of retro game noise. All of them are editable knob by knob, and all of them are in the free download.
WaveForge Synth
Two band-limited oscillators morphing pulse → saw → octave saw, up to 16 unison voices each, six blend modes, four filter types and eight mod routes.
StringWave Strings
A string ensemble ported in from its author's own synth: layered string machines with slow drift and a warm stereo spread.
Analog Synth
A Moog-style synth from scratch: three drifting oscillators, PWM, noise, the vintage ladder filter, filter and amp envelopes, with Fat Moog Bass and Acid Squelch presets.
FM-4 FM synth
Four operators, the eight DX21/TX81Z algorithms, feedback and an envelope per operator. E-Piano, Metallic Bell, Psy Zap Bass and Growl are ready to play.
Drum Kit & Drum Synth Beats
32 pads, 13 kits, choke groups, a step sequencer with velocity and swing, and a macro drum synth with Dice, Mutate and Bake to sample.
Chip FX Retro
A port of sfxr: pickups, lasers, explosions, power-ups, hits, jumps and blips that play in tune with the pattern note.
Voice Vocal
No samples: a glottal pulse through formant filters, vowels you build from chips, babble, stutter, spoken words, Throat mode and a metallic/digital/sub Transform.
Noise Texture
White, pink, brown and crackle through a ladder or state-variable filter with a sweep envelope. Risers, downlifters, impacts and vinyl.
Wave & Grid Wavetable
Wavetable and Grid patch instruments for when you want a sound that is not a subtractive synth at all.
Sampler Samples
Import WAV by button or drag and drop, loop, preview, and chop a break at its transients into slices or straight into notes.
Effects Mix
Filter, chorus/flanger, phaser, frequency shifter, delay, reverb, drive, bitcrusher, compressor, metal resonator, digital distortion and sub bass.
Plugins CLAP / VST3
Host CLAP and VST3 instruments and effects alongside the built-in ones, with macros, automation and saved plugin state.
WaveForge: every section side by side on a wide panel.Drum Kit: 32 pads, step sequencer, groove generator.
Three looks
Slate, Dark Circuit, or a workbench from 1986.
Three themes, switched in View › Theme or Settings › Look. Slate is the default — the Ember skin on slate grey. Dark Circuit is the night-time studio. Amiga is the light Workbench look with blue headers and an orange cursor, for people who miss their A500.
Slate defaultDark CircuitAmiga
Every theme keeps the same layout, keys and shortcuts, so switching never moves anything. There is also a UI scale in 25 % steps (Ctrl+= / Ctrl+-) and a text size setting for tired eyes and small laptops.
Screenshots
Real captures, no mockups.
Every picture on this page is a screenshot of the current build. Click any of them for a closer look.
Watch
Thirty-one seconds, sound on.
The 0.2.16.0 promo, played here from this site rather than an advertising network: clips, drums, synths and a finished mix. The channel has longer demos of the built-in songs.
ChipWave Studio is written by one person, Del (postmanpat), in the evenings, and given away under the GPL — no ads, no account, no paid tier. If you use it and enjoy it, you can say thank you with a donation. Any amount, once or from time to time; it pays for the coffee and the late nights. It is never expected, and every feature stays free either way.
