From impulse purchase to pocket studio: The M-Vave FM-1

Dang, I’ve been wanting to write my own blog post about this but Ars scooped me. Even if you’re not a musician, this is a fascinating collision of synths, free software, reverse engineering and vibe-coding. (The article didn’t mention it, but pretty much all these alt firmwares are 100% vibe-coded.)

I’ve had mine for a week (US$60 off AliExpress) and tried four or five. All have been solid, professional-looking and a lot of fun. My favorite is DUB-1, a generative dub techno box that plays slowly evolving grooves you can customize and play along with. There are others that generate various flavors of ambient, too. Felucca is a pretty deep multitrack synth with a sequencer, which equals synths I’ve paid hundreds of dollars for. It has lots of forks that are exploring the entire design space of patch editing and sequencing on a 1.4” screen.

I’m not a fan of copyleft in general, but I have to say this is a perfect manifestation of the GNU manifesto that users should be able to modify their own devices. I’ve tended to poo-pooh that by saying “yeah, if the users are programmers who want to devote weeks to developing their own mods”, but now…

It’s also the best validation of vibecoding that I’ve yet seen. People with limited or no programming skills are producing their dream musical instruments at a mind boggling rate, and the results are emphatically not slop! As I said above, these sound great and have professional level UX, which is refreshing after dealing with gear from e.g. Roland that’s super awkward to use.

(The one thing that is slop about these is the documentation, which is also all AI generated and which I find super hard to follow. For some reason it’s very terse and awkwardly phrased, worse than most other AI prose I’ve read.)

Shoutout to the Baud Girl firmware, which kinda feels like a strict upgrade in terms of usability to the stock firmware (more compatible with original DX7 patches, much better sequencer, two extra synth engines!). I've been playing around with it over the last week and it hits a really nice balance around menu diving. All of this firmware development makes me want to get a SK37 (kinda like an upgraded FM-1, with an actual keybed and more control planes) and turn it into a KeyStep Pro clone...

I have a first-gen Korg Volca FM that has been a lot of fun, and there was even a hacked firmware I put on it to unlock some useful features a few years ago. I like that FM sound, and now I'm interested in getting one of these for a fuller open-source community firmware experience that's at least somewhat supported by the manufacturer.

I had seen some M-VAVE effects pedals when diving into that world recently, but I either didn't see this synth or didn't think to look into aftermarket firmware mods. I've been seeing more and more of these affordable audio toys with color screens, and I have to remind myself they're little computers that are probably capable of quite a bit.

EDIT: I didn't want to editorialize the title, but now I'm thinking maybe I should have. This article isn't just an ad or a product review, but an exploration of open-source community firmware for an affordable pocket synth.

Hope mine get delivered. I am looking to give it to my 9month old to Jam after I vibecoded my own firmware disabling / blanking screen.