floe.audio

Show HN: Floe – an open-source plugin for sample libraries – CLAP/VST3/AU

18points bywindell16h

I'm Sam, I make sample libraries (as FrozenPlain). These sample libraries run inside Floe, my audio plugin for Linux, macOS and Windows. It's designed for musicians, composers and producers - typically people involved with film/TV/game scoring or ambient music. I open-sourced it primarily because I'm very fond of this philosophy and I want to open the door for serving a wider audience than just my own libraries.

It's totally free, no sign-ups. You'll need a DAW. To try it: - Download and install Floe: https://floe.audio - Download your choice of free packages: https:floe.audio/packages#community-packages or https://www.frozenplain.com/product/music-box-suite-free - Install the packages using Floe's 'Install Package' button. https://floe.audio/docs/installation/install-packages

I'm curious about HN's thoughts regarding the open-source nature, directions I could take for expanding the audience, and the Lua based sample-library it has (https://floe.audio/docs/develop/develop-libraries). Thanks.

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Ranked by HN

nylonstrung5hon HN

This looks great, I'll be excited to see this progressively become pure Zig and drop C++

Would be great to have something like Kontakt without all the cruft

atmanactive8hon HN

Is the plug in portable? In a sense: can I run it from any path, or does it require operating system's well known hard coded paths?

windell7hon HN

It can run from any path so long as your plugin host or DAW is happy to load it from there (the plugin APIs define standard folders plugins should be installed to, but lots of host allow other paths).

Once running it will try to create some directories in known locations on your OS for storing libraries, presets, preferences, etc. https://floe.audio/docs/reference/file-locations

rglover9hon HN

Is this essentially "roll your own VST plugin" or something else?

windell8hon HN

Not quite as generic as that. I suppose there's 2 types of users at the moment.

Musicians who just want load up virtual instruments (whether that's 'real' instrument, or synthesised-based), play them, but then also use Floe's GUI to morph the sound into something different using layers, granular, FX, etc.

Or alternatively, sample library developers who want to create a curated sample library package for musicians. They configure the sample library using Lua (and set a background image and icon) and create a bank of presets - and then musicians can load that packagr into their Floe instance.

nasso_dev12hon HN

i couldn't find any information about it but i still see an AGENTS.md file at the root of the source tree so: how much AI was used in the making of this? how was it used?

windell12hon HN

Since early 2026 it's mixed AI and handwritten. Before that it was mostly written by hand. Quite a lot of the code goes back to 2018 even. Typically, I do back and forth with Claude Code agents on new features and bug fixes, reading and editing code along with it.

gamegod8hon HN

This looks great. Maybe a Kontakt killer? There's definitely a niche for something like this. It's good cross-promotion for your sound libraries too.