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Decided to do a much more in depth rant about custom m-vave fm-1 firmwares as a appendix to my rant on vibecoding The idea of custom firmwares for the fm-1 is exciting but the fact most if not all the firmwares are vibecoded makes it much less exciting so im gonna blabber about it 🧵

What is the fm-1? It is a 40-80 dollar mini fm that does 12 voice polyphony, multi effects, 6 operator FM synth that sounds almost as good as the DX7 and it even has wireless and wired MIDI support, a speaker, and batteries. It is a MASSIVE value for 80 bucks. Other similar synths cost way more!

There's a big drawback if you don't want the default firmware: all of them used AI in their development. The big one is Felucca, which has many many features, including 15 sound engines and is one a lot of firmwares are built on. It's vibecoded though.

The biggest issue is that the whole reverse engineering effort could also have been using AI as well, similar to most modern game decomps. Worst part is: a lot of people are fine with this. This is a bad look for both the fm-1 itself and the community behind it.

I'd still recommend the fm-1 though, with the stock firmware, because its still a good instrument besides that But what if you want to use an fm-1 but don't want to use fm sounds? You either wait for a firmware that isn't ai generated (which may take a while) or use my only recommended firmware

Baud Girl The only reason I recommend this one is that it is such a massive enhancement to the fm-1 ui wise The creator has said that ai was used in its development, but it is the only one out of all the custom firmwares where there's actually some human thought and care put into it

Updates are released infrequently enough that it feels like baud girl is taking her time with the firmware and not pumping out new releases daily There's also a virtual analog and a chiptune engine! I still detest ai in any form but if you absolutely don't want just the default the above firmware

is the only firmware i would confidently put on my synth It's really sad that vibecoding fm-1 firmwares is a major trend. I hope more custom firmwares release that don't use AI assistance or vibecoding in their development. The moment a non-ai firmware releases i am totally using that