Reverse engineering the OP-1 drum patch | Hacker News Reader

Reverse engineering the OP-1 drum patch

schollz.com

109 pointsqrv3w50 comments

Looks like a hug of death, see https://web.archive.org/web/20200519073029/https://schollz.c...

I bought an OP-1 and it is the best product I've ever used. However, I was wildly disappointed to find the MIDI control input doesn't work with ALSA sequencer consistently (I need this functionality for a programming side project). I submited a support request, but it's kind of frustrating that I don't have the capability to just fix the firmware myself. (Specifically aseqdump only works after restarting the computer and RtMidi qmidiin doesn't print anything and also prevents aseqdump from working if called..., if anyone knows why I'd love to understand)

That's too bad! I've used the MIDI and it works well albeit I've only written things in using WebMIDI not the ALSA sequencer. I'm really curious about your side project, would you mind sharing it?

For sure! I'm working on an open source gameplay framework and one of the 'upgrades' I'm planning is MIDI based manipulation of trees of gameplay values at runtime from knobs. You can read more here https://wesxdz.dev/bicycle-mango

Cool, thanks for sharing!!

I SOLVED IT~! I was trying to run one of my old games using wine and SDL debug logged that MIDI would not work because of 'Unknown SEQ default' (sorry for lack of detail, I took an image of the output instead of saving the text -_-) Installing the amd64 version of libasound2-plugins resolve the issue. Not sure why this is not the default on KDE Neon... https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/alsa-driver/+qu...

Nice article. The synth, though cool, is way overpriced. Just about doubled since release. Nice if you have one, not worth the money to buy now though

Yeah it's one of those devices that I would love for noodling about with but I can get so much more for the same money. They're ~£1000 here at the moment.

Yes it's expensive but it's super easy to sell. It's also my only electronic purchase that got more value with time.

It's so cool that I would recommend to buy it at the current price if you can afford it.

I probably would have bought it if it was still around the £800 mark but it's now up over £1000 and that's just insanely expensive considering what else is available at that price point.

I'd love to see a proper competitor to the OP-1 come out to force their price down.

Well if you don't see a proper competitor to the OP-1, there is nothing else available at any price point. Yes you can buy other instruments for 1000 pounds, but not anything like an OP-1. Me too I would love to see proper competitors.

My issue with the OP-1 is that it's fun. And that's about it, you can't find anything exactly like it because it doesn't do anything super well, it's a very fun portable synth/groovebox and with its original price it deserved all the praise but after the new parts sourcing almost doubled its price I don't see any reason to have it, it does a lot of stuff but all of them are a bit half-assed and at that price point I don't want half-assed sounds.

Yes it's expensive in some ways and in others it isn't. Can you get a better synth for the money? Sure. Can you get a better sampler for the money? Sure. Can you get a better sequencer for the money? Sure. Can you get a decent synth, sequencer, and sampler for the money? Well, not necessarily. I'm not saying the price is entirely justified. You certainly pay a lot for the "brand". But on the other hand it might not be as overpriced as one might think by intuition.

Plus, as a owner, I hope price will only go further up, or at least stay on that level :)

> Plus, as a owner, I hope price will only go further up, or at least stay on that level :)

How does a high price benefit you as you own it already? Seems a bit egoistic. Maybe you're planning to sell it? Then I would understand your sentiment, but otherwise, seems a bit strange.

If everyone uses it, it will sound too generic to listeners. That's why mainstream artists hire sound designers to get a never heard before sound for their synth.

You're overestimating the power of the hardware and underestimating the value of creative patching when it comes to synths. As long as you get control over the patching, you'll be able to create "unique" sounds as much as you want.

Spending money doesn't "hurt" as much when the goods you spent it on don't lose value, that's all ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I might regret having bought it if you can get it for 200 bucks in 5 years. I will not regret it if you can sell it used for the same price as today.

>How does a high price benefit you

Reassurance that the company is actually trying to be sustainable.

All to often niche physical products get it into their head that they can break a mass market, hire sales people to get them into retail which all starts the cycle of lowering the price, compromising the vision then they wake up a year later, their product completely devalued, it's gathering dust on store shelves at best or being sold off a fraction of the price at worst and your customer base hasn't grown.

Happened to Roli in the same space.

Yeah, that makes sense. But then Rockslide should say "I hope they keep and don't compromise on their vision" rather than "I hope the prices stay the same or gets higher".

It's nice to buy an instrument that ages well. A lot of synths do not hold their value once they leave the store shelf. The OP-1 managed to become something of a classic in a short period of time. If you're like me, you want to buy things that hold their value, so you can trade out gear without leaving a bunch of money on the table.

The price hike on TE's side doesn't really have anything to do with this, though. It's likely due to having to source old parts or finding new parts that are more expensive, and adjusting the design to accommodate.

Exactly! You worded it better than I did :)

I think when it became part of MoMA's permanent collection it really solidified a special place for itself.

Isn't this how collecting cars or investing works? I mean it is YCombinator here lol.

> Can you get a decent synth, sequencer, and sampler for the money? Well, not necessarily.

Not even close to true. Deluge, MPC Live, AKAI Force are all waaay more capable and cost about the same new as a used OP-1.

Ah, but can you power all of those from a battery pack and keep them on your lap on the train after taking them out of your small backpack? And all at the same time!

With the Live, you can. It's both much more capable and costs half as much.

However, the OP-1 is probably easier to handle because it's smaller.

MPC Live has an internal battery

Is that true though?

The Deluge currently appears to not be buyable anywhere here, and if I bought it directly from them in NZ and add import tax to that, it probably won't be that much cheaper than a OP-1, if at all. And then the Deluge is at its core a step sequencer, so you can't even record unquantized. Might not be important to you, might be the killing missing feature for someone else. But never having owned a Deluge I can't say much more about it.

The AKAI Force is not that much cheaper than an OP-1 here. Is it "way more capable"? I don't know. But it doesn't even have a piano-like keyboard input, so again, at least one very distinctive feature it doesn't have compared to the OP-1. And then look at it. Would you want to take your AKAI Force on your commute to jam? I wouldn't.

The only one that really is significantly cheaper is the MPC Live, which I don't know, so can't really judge. But this seems to be a sampler at its core, so not sure about its synth capabilities? And it also doesn't have a keyboard...

Edit: well, I stand corrected - the Akai MPC Live II costs the same as on OP-1.

> Can you get a decent synth, sequencer, and sampler for the money? Well, not necessarily.

If you are ok with transfering samples to the device via a web interface, the Novation Circuit is an absolute killer answer to this question.

Sure, the OP-1 is a gem, no doubt about that, and I would love to have one. But for the price the Circuit is a really really nice, unsable and accessible device.

+1 for the Novation Circuit, super portable and really powerful for the price. Compared to the OP-1, I'm sure it's nowhere near as powerful, but it's a really nice little production tool you can bring you with everywhere, just like the OP-1. I'd say the sequencing is a bit easier on the Circuit as well, compared to OP-1, but the synths and sound in general is better on the OP-1.

I own an OP-1 and a mess of other synths. The Deluge comes close. I love my OP-1 for its size and portability. Being able to hack up a song on an airplane exclusively on one device rules.

The Deluge is excellent and I like that they really try to prevent people from having to menu dive. But sometimes when I can't remember what the 3 key combo is, I really wish it has a usable screen so I can look at a menu.

I have an OP-1 and a ton of other synths - its a very handy thing to throw in the bag and take to jam sessions, but beyond that - definitely overpriced.

I get just as much fun from an Axoloti synth, with far more power... of course, I had to build my own hardware interface around it, but that's just fun too.

I would be interested to know what teenage engineering say about this. Hopefully they'll approve and provide more details. If it's "You will void your warranty", then I would avoid buying from them.

TE are known to not be fans of modifying OP-1. The OP-1 repacker project which is used to patch and load new firmware had its maintainers reach out to TE on their official forums and the thread got deleted by admins if I'm remembering things correctly (it was a while since I hacked on the OP-1). In any case, they definitely did not publicly endorse modding the OP-1s and they do not like to see it done.

Evidently, only they are allowed to do engineering. The rest of us are expected to shut up and buy the products.

Yeah, and dumping firmware on OP-Z has proven extremely difficult if not impossible. It's encrypted in AES + CBC with an unknown key size. You can upload unencrypted firmware, but if you can't decrypt the original, well... good luck.

TE wasn't very exited about the modding but I think they we're more annoyed by the OP-1 beta firmware leak. I'm the one who wrote op1repacker. There was never any pressure from them to stop modding the firmware and as far as I know no thread was deleted. Main thread is still here, it's a long but interesting read https://op-forums.com/t/custom-firmware-on-the-op-1/4283

On one hand, I think companies should make their hardware easy to hack on- all sorts of cool creativity comes out of those projects. On the other hand, I think of the customer support team we have at my small company, and understand that TE (or other companies) might not have the bandwidth or skill set in that department to help customers that are bricking their devices in novel ways. I’m curious how to balance that.

Personally I think the correct balance is this: you mess with your device = you void your warranty, but we don't issue take down requests for reverse engineered firmware, schematics, tools etc.

Just let the parallel hacker universe exist without C&Ding it into oblivion, but don't encourage it if you don't want to.

I'd be curious to hear counterpoints to this approach, the most obvious one I can think of is customers either pretending they didn't break their device by modding it when they in fact did or not even pretending and instead trying to cancel the company for having this policy because they feel entitled to support even if they venture on their own path and are warned beforehand it's a territory outside official support.

"True hackers" IMO would not try to do this, but I think there is a certain group of people who want to try these cool hacks, but don't want to suffer the consequences.

>>the most obvious one I can think of is customers either pretending they didn't break their device by modding it when they in fact did or not even pretending and instead trying to cancel the company for having this policy because they feel entitled to support even if they venture on their own path and are warned beforehand it's a territory outside official support.<<

That would be my guess. The device is $1300 now. If faced with losing that much money my guess is most people would try to return it to TE and say it just failed.

Korg have been excellent at this in recent years.

You're pretty explicitly allowed to load patches into the op-1.

This isn't really reverse engineering or modifying the hardware - rather, the file format and a software workflow to create those files.

How hard would it be to develop an open hardware platform to deliver something similar to an OP-1? Do any such projects exist?

This is close enough https://github.com/OTTO-project/OTTO and https://www.critterandguitari.com/organelle

Mmm, these might be a nice start, but I don't think they're in the same tier as the OP-1. The appeal for me is the world class integrated visual design and build quality.

Get an Axoloti synth, add your own preferred world class visual design and build quality:

http://www.axoloti.com

My favourite is the Chlorophyll box, which just kicks so much ass:

https://www.filipruisl.com/work/chlorophyll/

The Axoloti looks great! I mainly have the OP-1 to make a chiptune OST, but Axoloti Patcher seems like it would be more functional. What I really want is something that can emulate old gaming console chiptunes and be portable.

I have an Open Pandora which has pretty much every old gaming console onboard. ;). Maybe you can find one - they're amazing machines, or .. get a Pyra, which is an update of the concept by the same folks.

https://openpandora.org

Or, maybe what you want is Anaologue Pocket?

https://www.analogue.co/pocket/

Dunno if its shipping yet though..

Maybe Axoloti is the answer. Its a very nice bit of hardware, I should use mine for things more often...

Nice work automating some tedious work. But come on, that spec is only 31 pages. Read it.

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