Melatonin Sine Machine vs Surge XT
Specs, price and the Dubspot Score, side by side — with our verdict on which synth to buy.
Which should you buy?
On the Dubspot Score, Surge XT comes out ahead (8.7). That said, the right pick depends on your workflow and budget — read both reviews before deciding.
Specs compared
| Melatonin Sine Machine | Surge XT | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Pay-what-you-want, suggested $75 | Free |
| Dubspot Score | 8.4 | 8.7 |
| Formats | Standalone, VST3, AU, CLAP | VST3, AU, CLAP, LV2, Standalone |
| Type | Additive (time-domain) software synthesizer | Open-source hybrid synthesizer |
| Engine | 20 voices x 511 oscillators (10,000+ total), 20,000+ LFOs | — |
| Editing | Bulk per-harmonic ADSR, volume, and pitch LFO; zero-knob interface | — |
| Effects | Additive reverb (1,000 sine waves), additive brickwall and Gaussian band-pass filters | — |
| Expression | MPE, per-harmonic Gaussian pitch noise, absolute pitch glide | — |
| Tuning | MTS-ESP microtuning, mappable partials to arbitrary frequencies | — |
| Presets | 140+ factory presets, hackable plaintext JSON | — |
| Plugin formats | macOS VST3/AU/CLAP/standalone, Windows VST3/CLAP/standalone, Linux VST3/CLAP/standalone (no AAX) | — |
| Licensing | Pay-what-you-want, up to 3 installs per licence, online activation, 14-day demo | — |
| Version | — | 1.3.4 (stable) |
| Oscillators | — | 3 per scene; 12 algorithms (Classic, Modern, Wavetable, FM2/FM3, String, Twist, and more) |
| Factory content | — | 2800+ patches; 700+ wavetables |
| Scenes | — | Two full synthesis scenes for layer/split patches |
| Formats | — | VST3, AU, CLAP, LV2, Standalone |
| Platforms | — | Windows, macOS (Intel/Apple Silicon), Linux |
See the full plugin database for more comparisons.