M-VAVE Opens Its FM-1 Synth Firmware to Hobbyist Developers
FM-1 Workbench
M-VAVE has published the FM-1 Workbench, an open development kit for its FM-1 synthesizer. The app ships under GPLv3 with an SDK linking exception, while the boot, update, and recovery resources fall under Apache-2.0. A proprietary engine in libfm1_engine.a gets a royalty-free license limited to FM-1 hardware, and the kit bundles third-party code from Open303, DaisySP, MSFA/Dexed, emu2149, and JieLi's AC79 SDK, plus an original 128-voice DX7 bank.
No proprietary SDK source is supplied.
- SamBam
Our algorithms must all be feeding us the same things, I was about to buy one of these yesterday. I've been excited by the various Groovebox firmwares in particular.
I play music by sight (poorly) and can improvise a little bit on guitar, and would love to understand music theory better but so far do not.
Is this a useful device to get a feel for creating music, or is it only really useful if you already understand music theory or improvisation?
- tlahtinen
It's been a great little toy, I install a new firmware every couple of days. I especially enjoy the various generative firmwares.
Many of them work in browser too, which is essential for choosing what to try next!
Some faves:
- swiftcoder
The explosion of firmwares for this device, and the manufacturers embrace thereof, is a rare bright spot in post-LLM music tech
- consumer451
My first FM-1 is out for delivery. I once assisted in a 2" tape studio, I have played with many synths, and yet I am so excited for this little thing.
This is such a cool hardware meme/software/ai dev thing that makes me very happy for the world.
I am just about to start learning. If anyone could drop firmware knowledge aside from Baud Girl (cool af) ... I would appreciate it. I am mostly excited about Obervave, but I will have two FM-1's shortly... what is the best step sequencer firmware at the moment?
- EmX_3000
Downsides immediately jump out at me, it lacks real DIN MIDI ports, having those irritating 1/8" jacks instead which require an adapter. Built in battery, hopefully not too difficult to replace. I vastly prefer AAs for this use case like the Volcas use. It has a fan, that's not good at all. It looks cheap (look at the bottom photo here https://www.m-vave.com/product?id=fm-1) and not sturdy. Similar to my Elektron Moden Cycles and my Polyend Tracker, a bit flimsy and cheap.
I feel like the Chinese have made and sold enough music gear on behalf of other manufacturers over time that they can technically make the products, but I don't think they understand the market so they will be flawed and toy-grade for a while until they hire some consultants and carefully study the various portable MIDI gear that has succeeded over time. I'm not sure what the electronic music scene looks like in China but I would suspect most of the people involved still use non-Chinese gear and software.
- fiatpandas
FM-1 is an interesting case study. From what I understand, M-Vave saw what the community was doing with their device, and decided to go along with the flow by releasing an official SDK and a new "open" groovebox firmware, in addition to this Workbench tool.
Right now, designing and mass-producing hardware is still a bit specialized, but creating software isn't. They have decided to embrace life as a creative hardware platform.
- ktzar
I got one for my kid's obsessed with music composition. What would you use this with so they can compose multitrack tunes, something like Chrome Music Lab or Beepbox? Anything in Android so they can compose on the go, such on an aeroplane?
- anfractuosity
Was just looking at this teardown https://www.reddit.com/r/synth/comments/1vgotkd/mvave_fm1_te...
I don't know anything about synthesisers, but
would I be right in thinking the FM modulation would be done via software on the MCU?