If you spend any time on r/synthesizers or watch a lot of synth videos on YouTube, you’ve probably noticed the explosion of custom firmware for hardware synthesizers, samplers, and grooveboxes. What unites almost all of them is that they were made possible by increasingly sophisticated vibe coding tools.
These sorts of custom firmware were exceedingly rare in the pre-LLM days, and required both deep expertise and an incredible investment of time. It could take weeks or months to add a simple feature like velocity sensitivity to a Korg Volca. Now, hobbyist hackers are able to turn Temu synths into full-fledged grooveboxes in a matter of days.
Elektron’s budget-friendly Model:Cycles, Digitone, Octatrack, and Digitakt have all gained new capabilities with Claude’s help. Roland’s SP-404 MKII, Ableton’s Push 3 and Move, Akai’s MPC Live and MPC One, as well as the vintage MPC 2000, Novation’s Circuit, Arturia’s MicroFreak, and even Zoom’s 14-year-old Multistomp pedal line have all seen new custom firmware released in the last month or so.
Leading the charge is a tiny $70 Yamaha DX-7 clone: the M-Vave FM-1. It was already on its way to being the synth of the summer. The dirt-cheap price and faithful recreation of classic FM tones made it incredibly popular with first-time synth buyers, hobbyists, and synthfluencers alike. Inevitably, someone wondered how far they could push the hardware and, with the help of AI, kickstarted an arms race.
The FM-1 now has dozens of custom firmwares available. Many of the most popular — Felucca, Sloop, and x0x — list Claude as a contributor on their GitHub page or include explicit disclosures about their use of AI. Baudgirl is also suspected to have been created with the assistance of AI, but the developer did not reply to a request for comment.
What started as a surprisingly good, but basic DX-7 clone now supports a variety of synth engines, including virtual analog, sample playback, multi-track sequencing, and a variety of UI designs.
It’s not terribly shocking that someone was willing to risk bricking a $70 Temu synth. Generally, the gear that has benefited from this surge of vibe-coded custom firmware is older or more affordable.
Roman Rusinov, who posts on Reddit as themanro and releases music under Farlow, set his sights on the Zoom MS-70CDR. It’s a budget multi-effects pedal from 2012 that has a reputation for punching above its weight, making it a staple of affordable synth setups. He started by learning about ZDL, a project that reverse-engineered the Multistomp format, allowing for the creation of custom effects. He eventually coaxed the pedal into running NAM A2 Lite captures and custom impulse responses (IRs), turning it into a full-fledged modeler capable of emulating vintage amps.
“I was already using AI for some work stuff and figured this would be a great case to try learning some vibe-coding fundamentals and get a project going,” he told The Verge. “There was a lot of trial and error of finding the limitations of the hardware and software.” He says he’s thrilled to be part of a broader movement. “Somehow it all lined up with all these other projects pushing the boundaries of older hardware and breathing new life into it. I love that,” he said. “If you own the hardware, you should be able to do whatever you want with it.”
18nelli, the developer behind Modded Cycles, was similarly motivated by a desire to revitalize some forgotten gear. “I had an Elektron Model:Cycles that left me feeling frustrated,” he told The Verge. He said that it felt designed “just to push us to buy their more expensive gear.” But recent AI advances made him believe he could add features to the groovebox, which hasn’t had an official update since May 2021.
So he opened up his Cycles, documented all the parts, and started working with Claude Code to implement his first hack — six-track audio over USB. That has since exploded into a community project with multiple mods contributed by others, several standalone custom firmwares, and even the ability to turn your Model:Cycles into a Model:Samples. “I think not using LLMs would have been counterproductive,” he said. “I probably would have spent a massive amount of time and energy on just a single feature, whereas my real goal is to actually create and make music with amazing mods.”
Modded Cycles has certainly been one of the more frantic projects out there. I recently watched as five firmware updates hit the announcements channel on its Discord in one day. 18nelli has since said he plans to pause adding new features and slow development to polish the existing code and stomp out some bugs.
New mods and firmwares hit the web almost every day now. If there’s a favorite piece of gear in your arsenal that you wish had one killer feature, there’s a chance it might end up on a GitHub page sooner than later. Heck, if you just wish your pocket synth could play NES ROMs, that’s also a distinct possibility.
Of course, there is some risk here. These firmwares are often less thoroughly tested than the manufacturer’s official one. The response to the modding scene has varied from company to company, with many choosing to remain silent. Elektron banned links to custom firmware from their forums. In a statement posted on its official forums, the company said, “We would always warn against modifications to our firmware and/or machines that could brick them … Something that looks like a simple change in isolation can lead to major problems elsewhere, particularly when a later official OS arrives, and can confuse users about which features are officially available on our machines.”
Others, like M-Vave, seem to be embracing the movement. It recently announced FM1 Open, an open-source firmware with additional features, plus a development kit and a firmware-flashing tool for the community.
The response to music gear that uses AI and vibe coding has been mixed. Devices like the Polyend Endless have sparked some ire. And music-making subreddits are awash in people complaining about vibe-coded plugin slop. But so far the community has been less hostile to vibe-coded firmware. Maybe, in part, because breathing new life into old instruments helps keep their Gear Acquisition Syndrome (GAS) in check.
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