[HN Gopher] From silicon to Darude - Sandstorm: breaking famous ...
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From silicon to Darude - Sandstorm: breaking famous synthesizer
DSPs [video]
Author : anigbrowl
Score : 106 points
Date : 2025-12-30 21:31 UTC (5 days ago)
(HTM) web link (media.ccc.de)
(TXT) w3m dump (media.ccc.de)
| iwontberude wrote:
| One of the most incredible talks and demonstrations. Excellent
| technical work, great team!
| MomsAVoxell wrote:
| It's great to see some synth chip hacking at CCC this year .. in
| fact, the synth DSP hacking scene has been great lately .. since
| the Motorola 56K is EOL'ed, The Usual Suspects folks built an
| emulator, and its capable now of running the firmware for many
| popular synths which used that chip:
|
| https://dsp56300.wordpress.com/
|
| This means you can emulate with full accuracy the Access Virus A,
| B, C, TI / Clavia Nord Lead 2X, 3, Modular / Waldorf Q, Microwave
| II / Novation Supernova, Nova .. and they're starting to target
| others ..
|
| There are plenty of other 56K DSP apps out there - not just
| synthesizers - so if this proves effective it could mean a lot to
| certain folks who still have big deployments of these chips, in
| terms of product life-cycle.
| ubercow13 wrote:
| This talk is by The Usual Suspects, and it's about one of those
| 'others' that they targeted.
| djmips wrote:
| Their talk from 6 months ago
|
| https://youtu.be/reGeRiCkkNE?t=1521
| tecleandor wrote:
| Oooooh nice. I've been out of the synth hacker/tinkerer thing
| for some years... Any other interesting projects to check?
| MomsAVoxell wrote:
| Zynthian:
|
| https://zynthian.org/
|
| Monome:
|
| https://monome.org/
|
| Two simply AMAZING synth platforms of the 21st century which
| push things even further than the mainstream hardware vendors
| are willing to allow. Note that the third-party clone market
| for these machines is simply exploding. You can do your own
| Zynthian easily enough, or Monome too .. or you can find a
| maker who will build you one for a very nice price very
| easily too. Both offer 100% open and extremely powerful
| architectures for synth hacking and the offerings for both
| platforms are simply astonishing. Worth doing some homework
| if you're into it.
|
| DIY more your thing? The FundamentalFrequency LMN-3 might be
| up your alley:
|
| https://github.com/fundamentalfrequency
|
| Runs JUCE plugins, is kind of a cyberpunks' Teenage
| Engineering OP1, without the fuss and nonsense ..
|
| Just off the top of my head. ;) Of course, the impulse to
| recommend VCVRack is pretty high (https://vcvrack.com/) as is
| the endlessly amazing vista and extraordinary capabilities of
| the Eurorack scene, if that's your thing ..
| klaussilveira wrote:
| Thank you for Zynthian, this is awesome. Any blogs or RSS
| feeds you track to get in the loop of similar projects?
| MomsAVoxell wrote:
| There are plenty, but CDM is my favourite:
|
| https://cdm.link/
|
| See also, matrixsynth:
|
| https://www.matrixsynth.com/
|
| They both often have the same content, but CDM has a
| nicer vibe that I feel more comfortable suggesting ..
| ofalkaed wrote:
| Is it possible (practical) to reverse engineer a synth that uses
| a custom and undocumented DSP? The Alesis Micron is probably my
| favorite synth and I have always wanted it in a little laptop
| groovebox type of package, considered just repackaging mine but
| the main PCB is not very suited to what I would want. I also
| tried to just redesign it from the ground up but it has some
| tricks for avoiding aliasing and are a major part of its overall
| sound which I can not figure out.
|
| Assuming this is possible, any resources for learning how to go
| about it? What little I have found has relied heavily on the DSP
| being well documented.
|
| Apologies if OP video goes into this, internet is not cooperating
| right now and steaming is not going to happen. Looking forward to
| watching it, never pass on anything that might offer even a tiny
| glimpse into reverse engineering the Micron.
| MrScruff wrote:
| The video covers their approach for reverse engineering the
| Motorola DSP56300, but it's probably fair to say it was
| decidedly non-trivial!
| boomlinde wrote:
| The video covers their DSP56300 work briefly in the
| introduction, but the main topic is that of reverse
| engineering the undocumented Toshiba DSP used in Roland
| JP-8000.
| boomlinde wrote:
| _> Is it possible (practical) to reverse engineer a synth that
| uses a custom and undocumented DSP?_
|
| Yes, that's what the talk is about. It's probably an
| interesting watch to you since they actually went through a
| couple of different approaches to end up with a working
| emulation.
| bjt12345 wrote:
| It's interesting that the Roland DSP does eloquently map to
| solutions in the z-domain, and allow easy implementation of
| FIR/IIR filters.
|
| It's not surprising they doubled the clock rate to 88.2kHz to
| simplify anti-aliasing, but it is curious the choice of the CD
| audio frequency of 44.1kHz and not the DAT tape frequency of
| 48kHz.
|
| It's hard not to get nostalgic about the 90s when watching this
| video.
| throwaway2046 wrote:
| It's amazing to see the incredible effort it takes to reverse
| engineer a synth. While much of the process described in the
| video went over my head I still found it very interesting to
| watch. Kudos to the Usual Suspects for not only putting in all
| that effort but also releasing their findings completely for
| free.
|
| Side note: does anyone know what the song played at 4:30 is
| called? It sounds very familiar but I can't remember its name at
| all.
|
| Edit: I found it, it's "Barthezz - On The Move" but played at a
| slower BPM.
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