On Elektron’s policy on third party firmware (critiqued above), think about this. When Elektron release new firmware, they’ve been through a QA process to confirm nothings been broken. And still bugs and crashes happen.
How much QA do you think is being done on these hacked firmwares by comparison ?
I don’t know, but it’s something you have to take into account.
I honestly don’t have a problem with Elektron saying they don’t want to this forum to actively encourage independent firmware (because they anticipate backlash when there are crashes or bricked devices). Those firmwares will be created anyway, whatever Elektron do, but its reasonable to protect themselves against a backlash.
the 'discussion above'
One part of the ‘discussion above’:
NOTE: this is an amended version of a flagged comment. I missed the window for editing that to address the flagging, so this may look like a re-post to some. It has however been edited.
Thank you for trying to open the discussion again. Maybe here opinions on the topic can flow more freely.
I think the the problem is overstated. The tools are evolving. People have created emulations of the machines to run and test the new features before installing them on the devices. Nobody has bricked a unit yet and crazy things are already been tried.
I think they will get more backlash by keeping to lock features in the different devices. One thing that has been demonstrated over and over again is that the hardware is more than capable to handle features that have been requested over and over again for the different machines.
A few examples: Model Samples and Model Cycles are interchangeable, Model Cycles even has a 1GB memory for samples. You can easily flash one firmware into the other. M:C can use samples, M:S can have M:C machines.
Digitakt can run synthesizers, Digitone can probably run samples too. Digitone can run Syntakt machines. It is plausible that Syntakt can run the Tone machine too. DN and DT can have MIDI arps. Octatrack can transmit audio over USB, the 8 stereo track plus master and cue separated. Octatrack can have MIDI scenes, crossfader can send MIDI data. And on and on.
I think, as a user who bought all of these machines some questions arise about how much have we been induced into buying more instruments to fill artificial gaps created in the different machines.
Mods are a way to fill those gaps and give us the experience we deserve.
How can you distinguish devices that are bricked with a custom mod, from a regular flash issue? What is if the CPU gets overclocked, and overheats ?
I am too a fan of recycling stuff, and the repair argument - keeping old stuff valid - is good for the enviroment.
But the question is still: what happens if these mods alter current behaviour - maybe a certain QA check is out of reach for these home modders - like a temperature check on the chips.
Its a valid discussion - but i dont think a hacked MPC did break over night - many run since 20 years. The argument needs to see both sides of the coin.
I dont want elektron to stop repairing stuff, or not suporting their devices. Having a organization behind our beloved Instruments is valuable for us.
I would really like to see a cooperation between the modders, and a QA authority behind this from Elektron. Better collaborate.
I find it an interesting topic for many reasons. The good and the bad that ai is presenting us with. Lots of reasons to be for or against it.
One thing I find I’ve been thinking about is how companies in the tech world limit their equipment and in the case of household technology purposely make items that have a short life cycle and unable to repair or maintain them. Things like hoovers, washing machines etc. they are made to break eventually and more expensive to repair than buy a new one.
With these firmwares it has me thinking how much companies deliberately hold off adding features to then push a new product to meet that customer demand. I know it’s an obvious business model but wondering to what extent do companies do this. Probably lots of excellent bits of kit that could do so much more than companies developed them to do.
all I ask and not to be reductive, is it gets a dedicated topic on here, I don’t want to engage, see another vibe-coded app or AI’d alt formware again.
will the enthusiasm for slopping this stuff out be matched by on-going support, troubleshooting, future updates? I think only a fraction of it.
I mean it’s definitely a thing if you consider all the devices that are essentially the exact same base hardware but just with different firmwares and paint jobs. They’d rather sell you the same thing twice than let you flash another product into it.
people have had bricked machines using elektron firmware though im sure elektron often sort them out privately …
the custom firmwares do have a higher risk and are probably tested less than elektron… however i would hope that the explosion of modding , using AI to prototype and develop features by amateurs might show more companies a way to develop features and use ai to support testing . theyve added features that ‘cannot happen’ in days (20 channel usb audio streaming on octatrack) … all without having zero source code or decades of knowledge of those within a company to lean on. …
i suspect the recent modding might also push companies to strengthen their boot/OS systems with more encryption … which is no bad thing if it ensures further stability on ‘bug free’ official firmware.
the idea that its ‘slop’ because it might have bugs … ?? official firmwares have bugs … for all we know theyre using AI too (and certainly i think they should be investigating it) … it would just be an NDA stopping people admitting to it …
generally i’m only trying things on old gear i barely use, i’m aware of the risk .
i’m aware of that . ive been doing software dev for 40 years …
but discussing all of that, on a forum , is a bit of a stretch.
just to add… i wont comment any further… i don’t want to discuss modding on elektron official forum , i think it’s disrespectful … (if thats the right term??)… i’d already muted the other thread…
if people want to talk firmware stuff i’d prefer it if they just took it all elsewhere.
like, the elektron post leaves room for some discussion about it, but comments which talk about how “great” the firmware options are can often be dancing the fine line of “promoting” in my view.
The slop firmwares for want of a better term also fully fail to take into account that first party proprietary firmwares are going to be benchmarked against the hardware.
Sure, you might be able to flash your Octatrack to play DOOM on for lols but it’s going to burn out your screen and potentially other components far quicker than regular normal boring use.
The amount of people willing to squirt fully unverified code into their expensive hardware utterly baffles me.
Linux is running on community effort - like 40 years now - many companys build their infrastructure around that code. Every major Firewall brand build on IP Tables, and the linux kernel. I belive that also Tonverk builds on a custom linux kernel.
They profit also from Opensource -everyone does.
Yes there are commercial distributions around it - but that does not change the fact that open source revolutionized the world.
If people want to mod their instruments, that’s their business, but this sentiment makes my skin crawl. The only things we “deserve” as buyers are for our instruments to work as advertised and be repaired (including bug fixes) when they don’t
The Models have no attack parameter. This is easily found through official documentation. Elektron didn’t trick anyone into think it had an attack parameter whe it doesn’t. If someone wants to mod it to add one, whatever, but you don’t buy the ticket and then complain it doesn’t work in a way it was never promised to
There are companies that don’t implement software features in their digital hardware because they are incompetent. ie Roland -I am sure that the ‘community’ could fix the sync problems in the TR1000 in a day if the code was opened.
There are companies that don’t implement software features in their digital hardware because they want to segment their market. Elektron obviously has always been doing this, which was apparent even before things got opened up by AI. No one ‘deserves’ or is entitled to an Elektron that doesn’t follow this strategy, but in hindsight one can question if it was a good strategy. for Elektron to follow.
Don’t most of the large electronic instrument manufacturers segment their products? I know not all of them to, but the big names like Korg, Roland, Yamaha etc do, and arguably more aggressively than Elektron.
It’s always seemed strange that Elektron gets the most flack for this (but not saying there haven’t been time where the segmentation has annoyed me, ala no time stretch on Tonverk).
And the manufacturers that do go the all-in-one route IMO have their own problems and aren’t for everyone.
Yes model cycles can run syntakt machines, whaou great news, you want to push you devices to the max ? cranck all buttons to 11. what you deserve is then a machine operating above the cpu threshold. a syntakt machine is 2x cpu intensive than a cycles one ( written in the github) so you endup with a 3 track syntakt without all the rest ( filters, lfo, attack env …) and with the stability an hacked untested firmware could grant you. Good luck playing any good music with.
as a proof of concept it’s cool. but that’s far from being a usable device IMHO.
for octatrack i have not yet weighted advantages. but still feel risky, a bit on the very technical side, command line and compiling some firmware etcc.
By the time the discussion was still on Elektronauts i red the entire thread and yes you could definitely erase/modify the rescue menue and brick your device.
So i think for tinkerers it’s cool. But a bit too early for me to try. i prefer my octatrack without midi scenes vs a bricked octatrack.
Korg Roland Yamaha -are motorcycle and electric piano manufacturing corpos that dabble in making electronic instruments. They do segment more aggressively than Elektron, but Elektron gets more flack because people feel they could do ‘better’ - no one thinks that about Roland.