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

windell 19 points 8 comments August 31, 2026
floe.audio · View on Hacker News

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.

Discussion Highlights (5 comments)

nasso_dev

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?

rglover

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

gamegod

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.

atmanactive

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?

nylonstrung

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

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