Korg Volca FM

These are out of stock everywhere. Other Volcas aren’t though. I wonder what that’s about…most places have it listed as months before they’ll get more.

Interesting. Yeah, I see that Sweetwater says “More on order.”

I’ve been hoping for a mk2 FM for a long time now. I don’t think we can expect increased polyphony (alas), but would it really be that hard to have more than just one bank of 32 patches available on board?

Even nicer would be a way to directly connect the FM to a computer to transfer patches between the two. This got so much better with the Volca Sample 2 revision that added a USB connection, so I’m hopeful.

edit: Oh boy. This post was practically a duplicate of another post of mine from a few weeks ago. Obvs I’ve got FM mk2 on the brain.

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Korg already discontinued Volca FM last year. The next stock is most likely to be the last batch and I believe the used ones already fetch a high price in Japan.

I didn’t realize any of the Volcas were discontinued. Dang.

Only Volca FM, I think the rest of Volcas are still in production as far as I know.

I wonder why the Volca fm versus the others…

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Where did you find out about the FM being discontinued? I haven’t been able to find any info either way.

The article is in Japanese though. You’d still get in touch with someone at Korg and they’d tell you about the current status of the production in other countries.

Thanks, Roberto! I guess I should order one then.

Okay, I put in an order for an FM. I’m very fond of the one I have and wanted to score a second one since they may be going away.

I’ve tried a few FM synths now and always come back to the VolcaFM for the combination of size, accurate DX7 patch reproduction and ease of use. I’d love it if they made an XL version with proper size knobs and some CV connectivity though!

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I’ve been quite surprised actually. I’ve had and sold DX200, PeenFM2 and MegaFM as I just find the Volca a better package of compatibility, size and ease of use.
Oh and shout out to @OscillatorSink for his patches too, real improvement on the stock ones. And to Pajen for the unofficial firmware, same comment!

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I can confirm 1.09 is stable, I have used it extensively. There is a version online though, in which Operator Levels are behaving in a weird way. I have the correct FW files if you come across this issue, as well as a cheat-sheet for MIDI CCs and global parameters added from pajen.
I have been writing a SuperCollider program that maps the FM parameters to an Akai APC40 mk1. If anyone owns both gear and seems interested, I would be happy to send him/her the files,to get it running. It lays out all FM parameters for easy tweaking as well as live performing. Cheers.

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NoraPatches M4L editor
I found them included in this zip. At the time when I upgraded to 1.09, I only found this to include the “correct” files. That was over a year ago, so maybe it has been corrected elsewhere as well.

Is this the location of the fw files with the ‘weird’ operator behaviour?
I downloaded from here and have been using and not noticing any issues. But then I can be quite unobservant sometimes. What the of ‘weird’ behaviour did you see?

yes. Be sure to monitor the Operator Level parameter values of any operator through the volca fm while sweeping it from your computer (You can use Dexed for that). It used to sweep from 0-63 and then jumping back to 0 when sending a value of 64 and increasing again from there (64~0, 65~1, 66~2 etc). This problem was exclusive to OPLVLs, all the other parameters were behaving as expected. I am not sure about the exact values, but it had given me a major headache back then so i thought I’d mention it. If values increase normally from 0 to 99 then they must have been updated since then and they are the “correct” files.

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OK thanks @vasmarg138 I’ll check that out. I downloaded the files November last year I think.
Good tip, appreciate it!

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Good to know!

Nice ambient album made on Volca FM:

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6 posts were merged into an existing topic:

New Volca FM 6-Voice