Vibe a Guitar Pedal(polyend.com)
24 pointsby mulhoon4 hours ago8 comments
  • RickS3 hours ago
    I've done some of this using the daisy seed. For time based effects like reverb, the memory/hardware constraints can be spicy. Definitely maxed out the seed hardware before achieving the (very long) level of reverb I wanted.

    The hardware descriptions here seem on the light side. I'd want to be confident that it can handle intense time based effects.

    It's promising that they seem to allow arbitrary write to the device, and only charge for tokens for the people that require the prompt playground.

    Looking forward to see where this goes.

    As an aside: building an ear-pleasing FDN reverb on an obscure-ish board with intense hardware optimization needs has been one of my favorite barometers for the abilities of new LLM models.

  • kennywinker3 hours ago
    I hate it.

    A pedal you can define with code? Kinda cool, definitely already exists, but kinda cool.

    A pedal where you buy tokens to feed the ai monster to generate code to customize your pedal? Ugh. I want off this ride.

    Edit - other hackable pedals:

    https://www.electrosmash.com/pedalshield

    https://www.op-electronics.com/en/dsp-multieffect/696-diydsp...

    https://clevelandmusicco.com/hothouse-diy-digital-signal-pro...

  • 2 hours ago
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  • ricokatayama3 hours ago
    Usually, I'm not a big fan of Polyend products. They look cool, but they lack depth. Not the best tracker, not the best beatbox, etc. And also, I'm totally into Puredata and devices like Organelle, but the learning curve is steep. I get the idea of a vibe sound modeler. Not my alley, but that's interesting for a niche, I'd say.
  • cpeterso3 hours ago
    My guitar teacher has a Line 6 HX Stomp multieffects pedal. In addition to programming effects patches use Line 6’s HX Edit desktop application, he also uses ChatGPT to generate patch files (they’re just JSON) by describing the effect or referencing a specific artist or song by name.
  • gyomu3 hours ago
    Haha, that's pretty clever. They get to sell $299 pedals, $20 plates, and upmarked "tokens" for their playground. Great example of selling shovels in a gold rush.
  • monatron3 hours ago
    Very cool! Would love to know more about the audio processing backend that drives this type of thing
  • aanet3 hours ago
    This looks interesting. Would love to see if there are examples of pedals already vibe-coded.
    • vunderba3 hours ago
      I don't think that's what this is.

      From a cursory glance it appears to be a physical guitar pedal that lets you program virtual effects. The "vibe coding" aspect is likely a system directive + effects library SDK docs fed into an LLM along with the user prompt that generates the appropriate C++ which is then compiled into an effect and run on the pedal.

      Note: Which is still very cool. The previous programmable guitar pedals that I've seen were all pretty low-level.

      • moyoooo3 hours ago
        Ive been interested in doing this with a raspberry pi. Ive plugged my guitar to my pc and used FL Studio, a daw, and can add effects to it live and was curious if someone would code a os (i guess) that only ran VST (the filters) and had a screen and knobs to control things. I know its very possible, I just didnt have the time to learn how to do it.
        • vunderba3 hours ago
          Lol, you read my mind. I’ve been wanting a generic-looking, wood-grained “tablet display” covered with a dozen PHYSICAL faders, sliders, and knobs that you can leave permanently hooked up to a DAW that interfaces with virtual synths for over a decade now!

          When you switch to a different VST, the hardware’s display would dynamically update all the text around each dial and button to match the corresponding virtual control.

          Slightly related, there was a programmable guitar pedal based on the Pi Zero called the Pedal-Pi a little while back that might interest you:

          https://www.electrosmash.com/pedal-pi

          • PaulDavisThe1st3 hours ago
            > I’ve been wanting a generic-looking, wood-grained “tablet display” covered with a dozen PHYSICAL faders, sliders, and knobs that you can leave permanently hooked up to a DAW that interfaces with virtual synths for over a decade now!

            https://faderfox.de/

            Just one of several. These have existed for at least two decades, save for "dynamically update all the text around each dial", which has a variety of complications that I won't go into here.

            • vunderba43 minutes ago
              Yeah I should have clarified - I have plenty of generic MIDI controllers. The special sauce is reflecting the "VST" rendering/presentation of its own sliders/dials onto physical ones.

              This means not having to look up and down constantly between your computer monitor and the physical hardware since the knobs/dials each have small screens/displays are 1:1 matches (so Frequency Range, Sub Audio, Clamping Point, Oscillator Frequency, etc).

              VSTs are rather inscrutable and I think it would be difficult to design in an agnostic way that played nicely out-of-the box with the majority of them. Doesn't stop me from lusting over the possibility though.