In the last few months, custom firmware for M-VAVE’s FM-1 handheld synth has gone a little crazy, as more people have built and rebuilt releases that extend the instrument’s capabilities — well over 75 releases and counting at time of writing this article.
What we didn’t know was how M-VAVE felt about all the attention, or about people releasing unofficial firmware for their little musical gem.
Would they simply remain silent, or try to discourage discussion and development (at least on official channels) a la Elektron?
Neither. By all accounts, they’ve fully embraced the dev possibilities by launching their own FM1 Open project, allowing official access to a firmware version, plus providing workbench tools and the application source.
It seems to have taken the best bits from some of the unofficial custom firmwares and baked them into the official one — multiple synth engines, sample playback, 8-track step sequencer, independent tracks, and more.
The workbench functions in any Chrome or Edge web browser, allowing for play demo projects, switch sound sources, and edit sounds and rhythms — the FM-1 isn’t required to run this.
There’s also a Windows only workbench for updating firmware, previewing instrument, managing projects, samples and DX7 voices.
Importantly, this being official does not guarantee that your FM-1 can’t be locked up or stop working if something in a custom firmware isn’t right — although it should be possible to go back to a stock firmware if required.
It’s also highly likely that devs will continue to use their own tools and create firmware outside of M-VAVE’s ecosystem. However, at least we now know that the company behind this year’s biggest (or smallest) hardware phenomenon generally approves.
What would be interesting to know is how much of this was planned. M-VAVE must have had some knowledge of what the processor and other components within the FM-1 are capable of. Was this officialising of custom firmware always a goal?
One thing is clear: sales of the FM-1 certainly aren’t going to diminish while new and exciting developments continue to be created.
At the same time, M-VAVE announced its official forum, for exchanging product tips, music, firmware, and development talk.
They’ve also implied that third-party firmware is up for discussion, though it does not imply official certification.
Making this a lot more upfront and open also, hopefully, reduces the risk of bad actors spoiling the FM-1 dev party.
