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I have an FM-1, and it's definitely a fun device for the price and worth having just to putz around while sitting on the couch. However, I don't think it's the easiest way to get started creating music. I personally have gotten much more value out of a DAW like FL Studio. I've tried to go DAWless (groove boxes, samplers, trackers, etc), but I always end up back in FL Studio.

Grooveboxes can't really do anything that you haven't been able to do for 15 years with internet resources and pirated FL Studio (other DAWs are available). The main value is having a break from the computer & physical knobs to twiddle. If you value time away from the computer, something like Korg M01[D] on the [3]DS might be worth trying since you can't spend hours tweaking synth parameters (and I imagine it's much easier to sequence on).

I'm not your demographic - committed amateur muso mostly acoustic (saxophone) with a side interest in electronic music. My seemingly sudden better understanding of the structure and uses of the diminished scale (have been looking into it on and off for a couple of years) may well coincide with the ease with which the Sloop firmware allows me to easily make interesting-to-me musical sequences. However most of my musical activities involves playing sax in medium sized or big bands. Mind you I can not understand song mode and how to save stuff yet, but that's a permanent problem I've had with every groovebox type thing I've tried.

It's all over YouTube for me too. The firmware hacking for this thing has got people hyped.

https://thefirmwarehub.com/

Just bought one last week of Aliexpress, totally worth the $70! Very hackable too!

I haven't used an FM-1, so I can't speak to the specifics of it, but you absolutely do not need to understand music theory and improvisation to make music on something like this.

Additionally, understanding theory and improvisation is certainly a great thing to know if you're trying to make music, but you can understand a ton of things in the abstract and also be pretty terrible at applying it in the moment.

So if you want to get a device you can throw some hacked firmware on and have some fun, I'd say don't let your lack of theory hold you back.

> Is this a useful device to get a feel for creating music, or is it only really useful if you already understand music theory or improvisation?

"Useful" is a really subjective word when it comes to making music in general. Some template groove on a shit keyboard could be the base for a hit song (like Gorillaz' Clint Eastwood) while others don't make stuff unless in front of a modular synth with 100% control of everything.

Any instrument can be fun without knowing music theory, as long as you're willing to trial and error for a bit, until you find what sounds good :)

hello fellow youtube addict.

> is a rare bright spot in post-LLM music tech

It was rare pre-LLMs, post-LLM seems more and more go this way actually. Just few hours I wrote this in a comment about established brands embracing the new user-firmware world:

> [...] Erica Synths (big in both desktop gear and modular synths), Polyend, Akai/MPC, Moog and more. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50482555

My personal guess (and hope I suppose) is that all of them go in this direction cough Elektron cough, which judging by the current wave, doesn't seem impossible.

I've found this to be a good resource for discovering fun custom firmwares!

https://thefirmwarehub.com/

I’ve tried a few, I liked Jiant’s workflow the best so far (I also tried sloop and skiff)

I just wish it had proper 909 & 303 emulation

I've used sloop for a groove box firmware. Pretty nifty, like it more than the other groove box firmwares.

You are out of touch. All sorts of compact gear (even very expensive sequencers like the Oxi One) use 1/8" MIDI jacks because modern consumers prefer compact. People are also used to charging with their laptop via USB, not easily done with AAs, which are also more bulky. It looks cheap because it is cheap, it costs about $60-80, which is half the price of a Volca.

There's a lot of excellent gear coming out of China. Behringer has their factories there, Donner has a range of recreations (not clones) of various classic Roland analog synths, and also make a wide variety of controllers, pedals, and other gear. Ashun Sound Machines makes the Hydrasynth and a few others, one of the most highly regarded digital synths on the market.

It looks cheap because it is cheap—something like $60 US. As for understanding the market, they appear to be doing an okay job of it; lots of people are buying three or more of these.

No comment on the general criticisms, but jacks for MIDI is unfair, I think. I probably get more annoyed at connecting DIN MIDI with the mix of equipment I’ve got since most of it uses jacks, not DINs, especially the things I’d connect to a M-Vave. I’m resisting the temptation to buy one right now.

> toy-grade

This thing is absolutely worth the $$$ once you install Sloop on it but I regret having bought one only because I'm getting way more mileage out of using a small game pad to drive the iOS port of Dirtywave M8 (and am probably going to buy a hardware unit when they restock). Personally I enjoy the tracker workflow and chopping samples infinitely more than doing the sequencer thing on a tiny screen but I can't argue that this unit is very powerful for how cheap it is.

> It has a fan, that's not good at all.

I think that's actually the built-in speaker?

You are criticizing a piece of equipment that created a minor revolution in the music market. Think about that. Sure it has flaws, but it brought vibe music firmware to the masses.

There is multitrack firmware you can download for this, like Sloop.

https://thefirmwarehub.com/

currently watching this video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2puO1fV6Wi4

seems theres a few in there that make it more a DAW

Koala Sampler is great for that.

Yes, it's all software, and FM synthesis is using the same engine as dexed. It's a Blackfin chip, which has pretty good throughput for DSP (digital signal processing). A ton more detail is at [1], including the operating system, which is a FreeRTOS-derived SMP kernel.

[1]: https://github.com/AL-255/FM-1-RE

This thing runs Linux and dexed (an open source dx7 player/emulator) - or any of the myriad vibecoded alt firmwares.

I think that's what happened, but follow-up.. if one orders an "FM-1" from AliExpress, does the China-based company M-Vave make any money from the sale?

You're generally better off with just getting separate MIDI keyboard if you want to use other gear too.

I'd like to see velocity sensitive/aftertouch keys on this.

I got 3 on Amazon. So far no counterfeits!

Bought mine from AliExpress for $64

Is there Doom already ?

Judging from the "Connect Device" button in the upper right corner, probably WebMIDI.

I find it essential to have a MIDI CC knob box of some kind with FM. My MPC works in this capacity, I also bought an external one. Most FM synths support a huge number of MIDI CCs and FM really comes alive if you twiddle with the knobs during patch design, same as with other synths.

This link is a great practical guide, which has you look at waveforms in an audio editor and clone them using FM, one operator at a time. He walks you through making clones of several real life instruments, 6 operators is enough to sound quite good and 8 is even better. FM has a reputation for being computer-y sounding but it doesn't need to be. A lot of that is just baggage from default patches introduced decades ago with that fresh '80s sound, those patches from the DX-7 are still on the newest Yamaha flagship workstations. And as everybody knows the grand majority of sounds you hear in music are barely- or not-tweaked presets.

https://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~pbarfuss/FM_Synthesis_of_Real_I...

I imagine you are vaguely familiar with subtractive synthesis; oscillators, filters, envelopes, modulation. It wouldn't hurt, although the building blocks are laid out differently in an FM synth.

Anyway, I found these hands-on demos on the DX1 to be some of the most "aha" moments I've had trying to understand how FM patches are made.

TLDR, an FM "operator" is an oscillator. A carrier is the oscillator you hear, its modulator is an oscillator that wiggles the carrier and brings out different harmonics. You can stack more modulators and you can have multiple carriers going in parallel, the various combinations of operators available in a synth being the different algorithms.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YV9vQGqoO5c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0xGyR_lKoM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-boGIxRZ_s

There was also one from Venus Theory about how to get musically useful stuff out of frequency/phase modulation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqc8rZnzTVI

I recommend this video from mixed signals, it shows how a few commonly used and known fm sounds are made: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0S6NXIe_NyA

I'm not sure this webpage replaces owning the FM-1 itself though? If you're interested in this page you're most likely interested in the FM-1 and/or already have one. There are millions of online samplers you can already use, the purpose of these devices isn't to do something necessarily unique, it's making music creation more tactile and constrained, and that's not something this webpage can do IMO.

In the EU/US there are different costs of living, running a business and standards for employment. That is reflected in the price.

But as long it is cheap and you'll never visit China, then who cares that someone might be exploited there.

> yet they go crazy about it.

Well, of course. They're able to get the stuff they want to run off of the computer, and onto the device. Not everyone hates working in the box, but a lot of people do.

> This also got companies like Behringer an idea that they can just release the hardware and people will create firmware for free. Genius.

Honestly, this is great. Getting viable hardware with annoying shit like buttons and knobs is beyond the reach of a lot of developers, but writing software is not.

I'm surprised there isn't a sturdy generic VST-runner box with an interface to configure the MIDI in / out and which VSTs will run. A sort of headless generic synth. My Roland VariOS synth from ages ago which I got for like $50 works like this, you use a WIN32 or Classic Mac computer to load and configure the various synths (it has a couple emulators or workalikes for older synths, plus a crazy synth that chops up and munges incoming audio under MIDI control) and then you only need to power the 1U rack mounted module unless you're designing patches, in which case you have to attach a computer.

Something like this but for VSTs would be killer.