Sonic Pi is actually a pretty damn good synth. I played around with it a lot. It's not just a for-the-sake-of-code synthesizer. I got some Guitar pieces from f

Sonic Pi is actually a pretty damn good synth. I played around with it a lot. It's not just a for-the-sake-of-code synthesizer. I got some Guitar pieces from freesound.org and built an electric guitar synth. I then mixed it with some Tibetan Fire Priest chants and built this: https://soundcloud.com/user-408150882-831970789/rhythm-of-kaalagni https://soundcloud.com/user-408150882-831970789/rhythm-of-ka... As some of the comments here specify, the UI isn't exactly conducive to building 'heavy' music. For instance, something that I built this morning using Kontakt (https://soundcloud.com/amal-krishnan-103125344/megatherion-perilous-sea-voyage https://soundcloud.com/amal-krishnan-103125344/megatherion-p...) is painful to develop on SonicPi. Of course, SonicPi can be extended to perform some of the functionalities you'd expect a professional synthesizer to do. {DOS->Win 3.1} There are some other issues as well centered around 'coding for developing music' and 'live coding'. Everything you build in the code --when I last checked-- goes into one stream. You really have to visualize time flow outside of the software. This makes editing chunks hard. A UI based synthesizer is a lot easier to work with: turn a few knobs and push a few keys as opposed to coding. Live Coding never really works in practice, and I'm talking about performing at the professional DJ level. It's easier to use a 'GUI' (a synth front end with its knobs etc) as opposed to code. Music tends not to flow 'rationally; inspiration tends to externalize in a kinetic fashion. All that said, Sonic Pi is a rich platform to build synthesizers and pieces to go with the other tools in your music building deck.