The #Deluge had already been an outstanding piece of...

scy

The #Deluge had already been an outstanding piece of gear before, but when #SynthstromAudible open-sourced the firmware, a fan-driven development effort started that, as a Deluge owner, I can only describe as "mindblowing".

Bugs were fixed, refactorings took place, and an impressive amout of new features and quality of life improvements were added, and are still coming.

Check out https://youtu.be/J8hibZYJhoY (23 min) or https://github.com/SynthstromAudible/DelugeFirmware/blob/community/docs/community_features.md for an overview of the community firmware improvements.

Like 31 January at 11:40 | Open on chaos.social

11 comments

/dev/urandom

@scy one might say it led to a

deluge of contributions

31 January at 11:49 | Open on toot.cat

dezwo

@scy How has your experience with the community firmware been so far? I love the open source approach but at the same time are (without any actual indications) somewhat anxious about potential stability issues.

31 January at 12:30 | Open on mastodon.art

scy

@dezwo I had my Deluge crash three times. Once with the stock firmware, twice with the community. I don't think that means anything.

If I was performing live, I'd be hesitant. But I'm not, and the community firmware comes with _so_ many improvements big and small that I'd be missing out if I didn't use it. I don't regret upgrading.

That being said, I'd love an "auto-save" feature, but saving manually every few minutes doesn't really hurt either.

Let me know if you have any more questions.

31 January at 12:40 | Open on chaos.social

scy

@dezwo Also, the community firmware definitely is the future. It has made lots of refactorings, which means that merging single features back to the Synthstrom firmware is hard or even impossible.

I expect (and the community devs do, too, afaict) that the Synthstrom firmware won't see much development in the future. Instead, the community one is where features & bugfixes are going to be.

It's already so much better than stock, and the stock firmware was already pretty good.

31 January at 12:45 | Open on chaos.social

dezwo

@scy Thanks so much. Very helpful 👍

31 January at 16:28 | Open on mastodon.art

Enron Hubbard

@scy @dezwo seriously, what has gone on with the community firmware is miraculous. Deluge is a case study in how to create great hardware and let the community decide what magical things to do with it.

31 January at 23:16 | Open on tilde.zone

Tekknovator

@dezwo @scy Dude, open source firmware has become a major factor for hardware purchase decisions. My linnstrument is open source, my norms shield, my axoloti synths. The m8 was promised open source when I pulled the trigger, but the maker seems to be too lazy to release openly. Some of the major innovations in synth hardware were all open source (mutable instruments, for example). I am saving up for a deluge.

31 January at 17:40 | Open on mastodon.art

Tekknovator

@dezwo @scy what I wanted to say, stability is more likely not an issue, because people who care have access to the code.

31 January at 17:44 | Open on mastodon.art

dezwo

@tekknovator @scy I don't doubt that folks care. But forking and maintaining a proprietary code base is no small feat, so I was interested in @scy's experience (especially since he started the thread with an experience report or a crash and subsequent debugging). Anyhow, thanks for sharing your perspectives.

31 January at 20:16 | Open on mastodon.art

Tekknovator

@dezwo @scy true. But from my experience this is a matter of patience and stuff gets fixed and stable. Whereas something like, ie. a Roland Fantom, just gets discontinued and never fixed or improved.

31 January at 20:20 | Open on mastodon.art

scy

RIP my notifications I guess :)

If you're interested in the Deluge, I highly recommend it. The official website is https://synthstrom.com/product/deluge/ and https://youtu.be/aBeeDwukpTs has a detailed introduction.

#Synthstrom is a small company with a great attitude. When they introduced the OLED screen to the Deluge instead of the 7-segment display it had before, they offered retrofit upgrades to all existing customers instead of trying to sell you new devices like pretty much the rest of the industry would.

31 January at 14:49 | Open on chaos.social