It’s great to see some synth chip hacking at CCC this year .. in fact, the synth DSP hacking scene has been great lately .. since the Motorola 56K is EOL’ed, The Usual Suspects folks built an emulator, and its capable now of running the firmware for many popular synths which used that chip:
This means you can emulate with full accuracy the Access Virus A, B, C, TI / Clavia Nord Lead 2X, 3, Modular / Waldorf Q, Microwave II / Novation Supernova, Nova .. and they’re starting to target others ..
There are plenty of other 56K DSP apps out there - not just synthesizers - so if this proves effective it could mean a lot to certain folks who still have big deployments of these chips, in terms of product life-cycle.
Two simply AMAZING synth platforms of the 21st century which push things even further than the mainstream hardware vendors are willing to allow. Note that the third-party clone market for these machines is simply exploding. You can do your own Zynthian easily enough, or Monome too .. or you can find a maker who will build you one for a very nice price very easily too. Both offer 100% open and extremely powerful architectures for synth hacking and the offerings for both platforms are simply astonishing. Worth doing some homework if you’re into it.
DIY more your thing? The FundamentalFrequency LMN-3 might be up your alley:
Runs JUCE plugins, is kind of a cyberpunks’ Teenage Engineering OP1, without the fuss and nonsense ..
Just off the top of my head. ;) Of course, the impulse to recommend VCVRack is pretty high (https://vcvrack.com/) as is the endlessly amazing vista and extraordinary capabilities of the Eurorack scene, if that’s your thing ..
PS - don’t discount Monome, it has a very different flavor than Zynthian and is in many ways more of a musical instrument. It’s definitely worth investigation if you’re a synth nerd.
Is it possible (practical) to reverse engineer a synth that uses a custom and undocumented DSP? The Alesis Micron is probably my favorite synth and I have always wanted it in a little laptop groovebox type of package, considered just repackaging mine but the main PCB is not very suited to what I would want. I also tried to just redesign it from the ground up but it has some tricks for avoiding aliasing and are a major part of its overall sound which I can not figure out.
Assuming this is possible, any resources for learning how to go about it? What little I have found has relied heavily on the DSP being well documented.
Apologies if OP video goes into this, internet is not cooperating right now and steaming is not going to happen. Looking forward to watching it, never pass on anything that might offer even a tiny glimpse into reverse engineering the Micron.
> Is it possible (practical) to reverse engineer a synth that uses a custom and undocumented DSP?
Yes, that's what the talk is about. It's probably an interesting watch to you since they actually went through a couple of different approaches to end up with a working emulation.
The video covers their DSP56300 work briefly in the introduction, but the main topic is that of reverse engineering the undocumented Toshiba DSP used in Roland JP-8000.
It's interesting that the Roland DSP does eloquently map to solutions in the z-domain, and allow easy implementation of FIR/IIR filters.
It's not surprising they doubled the clock rate to 88.2kHz to simplify anti-aliasing, but it is curious the choice of the CD audio frequency of 44.1kHz and not the DAT tape frequency of 48kHz.
It's hard not to get nostalgic about the 90s when watching this video.
It's amazing to see the incredible effort it takes to reverse engineer a synth. While much of the process described in the video went over my head I still found it very interesting to watch. Kudos to the Usual Suspects for not only putting in all that effort but also releasing their findings completely for free.
Side note: does anyone know what the song played at 4:30 is called? It sounds very familiar but I can't remember its name at all.
Edit: I found it, it's "Barthezz - On The Move" but played at a slower BPM.
It’s great to see some synth chip hacking at CCC this year .. in fact, the synth DSP hacking scene has been great lately .. since the Motorola 56K is EOL’ed, The Usual Suspects folks built an emulator, and its capable now of running the firmware for many popular synths which used that chip:
https://dsp56300.wordpress.com/
This means you can emulate with full accuracy the Access Virus A, B, C, TI / Clavia Nord Lead 2X, 3, Modular / Waldorf Q, Microwave II / Novation Supernova, Nova .. and they’re starting to target others ..
There are plenty of other 56K DSP apps out there - not just synthesizers - so if this proves effective it could mean a lot to certain folks who still have big deployments of these chips, in terms of product life-cycle.
This talk is by The Usual Suspects, and it's about one of those 'others' that they targeted.
Their talk from 6 months ago
https://youtu.be/reGeRiCkkNE?t=1521
Oooooh nice. I've been out of the synth hacker/tinkerer thing for some years... Any other interesting projects to check?
Zynthian:
https://zynthian.org/
Monome:
https://monome.org/
Two simply AMAZING synth platforms of the 21st century which push things even further than the mainstream hardware vendors are willing to allow. Note that the third-party clone market for these machines is simply exploding. You can do your own Zynthian easily enough, or Monome too .. or you can find a maker who will build you one for a very nice price very easily too. Both offer 100% open and extremely powerful architectures for synth hacking and the offerings for both platforms are simply astonishing. Worth doing some homework if you’re into it.
DIY more your thing? The FundamentalFrequency LMN-3 might be up your alley:
https://github.com/fundamentalfrequency
Runs JUCE plugins, is kind of a cyberpunks’ Teenage Engineering OP1, without the fuss and nonsense ..
Just off the top of my head. ;) Of course, the impulse to recommend VCVRack is pretty high (https://vcvrack.com/) as is the endlessly amazing vista and extraordinary capabilities of the Eurorack scene, if that’s your thing ..
Thank you for Zynthian, this is awesome. Any blogs or RSS feeds you track to get in the loop of similar projects?
There are plenty, but CDM is my favourite:
https://cdm.link/
See also, matrixsynth:
https://www.matrixsynth.com/
They both often have the same content, but CDM has a nicer vibe that I feel more comfortable suggesting ..
PS - don’t discount Monome, it has a very different flavor than Zynthian and is in many ways more of a musical instrument. It’s definitely worth investigation if you’re a synth nerd.
Is it possible (practical) to reverse engineer a synth that uses a custom and undocumented DSP? The Alesis Micron is probably my favorite synth and I have always wanted it in a little laptop groovebox type of package, considered just repackaging mine but the main PCB is not very suited to what I would want. I also tried to just redesign it from the ground up but it has some tricks for avoiding aliasing and are a major part of its overall sound which I can not figure out.
Assuming this is possible, any resources for learning how to go about it? What little I have found has relied heavily on the DSP being well documented.
Apologies if OP video goes into this, internet is not cooperating right now and steaming is not going to happen. Looking forward to watching it, never pass on anything that might offer even a tiny glimpse into reverse engineering the Micron.
> Is it possible (practical) to reverse engineer a synth that uses a custom and undocumented DSP?
Yes, that's what the talk is about. It's probably an interesting watch to you since they actually went through a couple of different approaches to end up with a working emulation.
The video covers their approach for reverse engineering the Motorola DSP56300, but it's probably fair to say it was decidedly non-trivial!
The video covers their DSP56300 work briefly in the introduction, but the main topic is that of reverse engineering the undocumented Toshiba DSP used in Roland JP-8000.
It's interesting that the Roland DSP does eloquently map to solutions in the z-domain, and allow easy implementation of FIR/IIR filters.
It's not surprising they doubled the clock rate to 88.2kHz to simplify anti-aliasing, but it is curious the choice of the CD audio frequency of 44.1kHz and not the DAT tape frequency of 48kHz.
It's hard not to get nostalgic about the 90s when watching this video.
It's amazing to see the incredible effort it takes to reverse engineer a synth. While much of the process described in the video went over my head I still found it very interesting to watch. Kudos to the Usual Suspects for not only putting in all that effort but also releasing their findings completely for free.
Side note: does anyone know what the song played at 4:30 is called? It sounds very familiar but I can't remember its name at all.
Edit: I found it, it's "Barthezz - On The Move" but played at a slower BPM.
One of the most incredible talks and demonstrations. Excellent technical work, great team!