JAS-I
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New · September 2026

Khorlo 0.9.03 is out

What's new in 0.9.03
  • Now signed and notarized by Apple. No need to use Terminal to get around install issues.
  • Three new filter models. Cascade, Squelch and Scream, for a total of nine. All of them with improved drive and character.
  • A cleaner, stronger sound engine. Better bowed resonators, improved reverb, mix the volume for each string, and a rebuilt limiter.
  • Improved preset library. Folders, instrument badges and characteristic tags, favourites, and arrow key navigation.
Download 0.9.03 Everything that changed

KHORLO

SYNTH

A unique instrument unlike anything you’ve played before. Eight independent pluckers striking eight physically modelled strings.

The Khorlo window: the cylinder scene above the synth panel.
See on YouTube

EFFECTS

Equipped with ten high quality effects. Chorus, compressor, delay, phaser, flanger, filter, distortion, reverb, EQ, and limiter. Each with its own display, arranged in a rack you can reorder. You can modulate almost every parameter.

Khorlo's effects view. Ten effect panels — chorus, compressor, delay, saturation, equalizer, filter, flanger, phaser, reverb and limiter — each with a display above its knobs, over a row of macro and modulation controls.

ROUTING

A synth is only as good as its modulation and Khorlo is a sound designer’s dream. Nearly everything can be modulated, string and plucker properties, effects, even other modulators. Fine tune your modulation assignments on one routing page.

Khorlo's routing page: one table of every modulation connection, with columns for source, destination, amount, polarity and velocity. The sources listed include MOD1, MOD3, three macros, velocity, the mod wheel and aftertouch.

PRESETS

Khorlo is equipped with a robust preset browser. Browse by instrument categories. Filter by tone, character, articulation or who made it.

Khorlo's preset browser. A folders and tags sidebar down the left with instrument, tone, character and articulation filters; columns of presets, each with a three-letter instrument badge, a favourite star and a delete control; name, designer and Save To fields across the top.
How it works

Khorlo / 02

How it works

Khorlo started as an idea for an instrument built around a cylinder. Up to eight strings run along its circumference. You can move them around the cylinder to change its rhythm or sound.

Up to eight pluckers circle the strings, each at their own speed, sounding the strings they cross. Change the speeds and string positions to build rhythms.

Each plucker ring can shift up or down the length of the cylinder. This changes where it strikes the string and controls its tone.

Emergent polyrhythms at one end, resonant voices at the other, and a lot to explore in between.

Sound examples

Change the background colours, the fog's behaviour, and the cylinder colour and opacity. Select a preset mood or customise your own.

Khorlo is equipped with eight modulator banks. The first six are versatile graphs you use as envelopes or LFOs. Banks seven and eight have nine slots each for the four macros, velocity, mod wheel, aftertouch and MPE. Almost every knob in the instrument is a destination.

Khorlo's appearance panel: colour swatches for the three background tones, the glass, the inner glow and the ripple, with sliders for warp, speed, fog, opacity and ripple amount.
The 80s Dream preset dressed in crimson and deep purple, with a macro named Muffle on the panel bottom left.
The same preset again, this time in green.
Sound examples

Check out what Khorlo can do.

Here's a selection of twelve factory presets, straight out of Khorlo with no additional processing. Each plays four notes with the macros set to zero, then the same sequence again with the macros swept up on the first note and back down on the last.

Ashfall

A dim sun rises over a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Light glints off something that might still be alive.

0:47
D1D2D3D4
MACROSBurried

Collapsing Star

Among distant stars, something dies or is born.

0:54
D1D2D3D4
MACROSCutoffBlurRingsVerb

Glass Shaker

A rattling rhythm of bones and squeaking gears.

0:47
D1D2D3D4
MACROSRattlesnake

Prayer Wheel

The pulsing tension of anticipation opens onto something like acceptance, or new understanding.

0:49
D1D2D3D4
MACROSMorph

Orrery

Mechanical planets orbit and circle in perfect synchronicity.

1:04
D2D3
MACROSBlurVerb

Reese Drum

An unforgiving rain pelts the denizens of the sprawl, and a hunter relentlessly pursues.

0:46
D1D2D3D4
MACROSFilter CutDetune

Smudge

A beacon can just barely be detected in the vast emptiness of the old nets. Something is lurking.

0:57
D1D2D3D4
MACROSFrench

Parasol

A tranquil woodwind respite with a light drizzle of rain.

0:50
D1D2D3D4
MACROSRain

Rim World Circuit

A pixelated strumming call across a pastoral landscape.

0:46
D1D2D3D4
MACROSHigh end

Rubber Sub

Suspense building bassline. A new take on an approaching threat.

0:46
D1D2D3D4
MACROSFilterMacro 2

Shower Scene

When the scene calls for tension-building pizzicato clusters that morph into drilling, shrieking feedback.

0:48
D1D2D3D4
MACROSPsycho

Sky Burial

A complete ambient track in a box. Just hold a note and twist the macro.

1:06
D2D3
MACROSHeady

“A new instrument is so instantly addictive that you need a reminder to put it down and write something.”

“Khorlo is a synth that shows that there are still new ideas to be found amidst the recent flood of new releases.”

Try Khorlo for free

macOS, Windows and Linux. VST3, AU and CLAP. No account and no time limit. It's still in beta, so tell me what you find.

Download the beta

The deets

FormatsVST3, Audio Unit, CLAP
macOS11 or later, universal binary
Windows 10 or later, 64-bit. Uses WebView2, which any machine with Edge already has.
Linux x86-64. Needs WebKitGTK, which most desktop distros ship.
Hosts64-bit only
GraphicsHardware acceleration for the 3D view. There is a Performance mode for slower machines.
PriceFree. No account, no activation.

About

JAS-I is the work of Aaron Jasinski. With thirty years of painting, illustration, UI/UX design and music, he builds instruments that incorporate all of it: the crossroads where image meets sound. New sounds, or fresh ways to make them.

[email protected] for questions, bug reports, and requests for features.

Press kit for writing about Khorlo.

Thanks for testing: SIL3NCE, MadMcMan, jakehawken, Marcus, NWSM, Michael H, Michael C and Olivier B.