There is a publicly available Devkit[1] for the processor used by M-VAVE in all of their products:

https://doc.zh-jieli.com/AC79/zh-cn/release_v1.0.3/board_des...

.. and .. as all of their products are extremely good value for money .. I dare say some budding hacker saw an opportunity and went with it:

https://github.com/aroum/fm1-custom-fw

This has opened the flood gates for great new stuff to be written for it, and oh what a ride it has been these past few weeks! Simply the hottest toy in music-tech, bar none!

Actually the M-VAVE hardware platform is supported by a pretty accessible devKit hardware device, which seems to be quite available with enough tooling onboard to throw at an LLM to decompile/recompile things - and .. in addition .. the right mix of ingredients to form the perfect storm seem to have been applied, in that M-VAVE used the same basic hardware designs for a variety of different, but similarly-aligned products, making it even more attractive to the decomp/recomp style hacking approach.

Meanwhile, music-tech hackers are cracking open some serious nuts. From The Usual Suspects building a perfectly working Motorola 56K DSP emulator, capable of booting many German firmwares and more besides, to the one guy I saw recently who decided to just go ahead and build himself a working (minus effects) emulation of Yamaha's FS1R FM/Formant synthesizer, things are getting positively NUTS in the music-tech world ..

I honestly think there is more bleeding-edge stuff going on in music-tech than in the retro-computing scene (which I also pay a lot of attention to) .. and that is really saying something because the retro-computing guys have been positively loopy for decades now, as well ..

Yes for sure, things are looking up for music hackers. Whether manufacturers like it or not!! :)

Yes, musical instruments represent the refinement of technology towards a very specific purpose: the creation of music.

The nature and form of the instrument directs the talents of the musician towards their desired aesthetic. In many ways, the interface informs and sculpts the final product - so instruments which are malleable (software-upgradeable) while providing a canonical haptic experience (hardware control surface) are very appealing to the modern artist.

There is a lot of innovation in the music technology world, vis a vis turning technology into an instrument of sound - but there is also a lot of stagnation, too. Whether its the ancient art of menu-diving as a performance method, or indeed if its the sudden appearance of cocktail devices with whimsy and creativity encoded in the interface, music technology offers a big, wide and often very woolly world in which to apply creative juices.

The M-VAVE is fantastics because it's cheap, it has a somewhat decent user interface layout, haptically, and now .. it is getting serious hacker attention as a boutique/unique thing to play with. Musicians - especially of the technology-aligned variety - absolutely love to one-up each other and excel in distinguishing themselves from standards - of course, musicians also love standards too - the field offers a very broad spectrum of tastes.

Vibe-coding something for the STM32 is indeed a fun thing to do from a music technology perspective - but having it in a fancy case with a battery management PMU, a decent screen with whimsy (and as little menu-diving as possible), and .. interesting sound .. is very, very appealing.

The issue is, music-technology manufacturers often take the shortest possible route to getting their interfaces implemented. Menu-diving is the scourge of music technology - at least until, that is, someone finds a way to incorporate the washing-machine method into a really kickass performance. Think Kraftwerks' reference to the Operator With Their Pocket Calculator, the mundane yet fashionable laptop-on-stage DaDa faction, and compare it to the real rock and roll of guitar and 'tradititional' instruments. The M-VAVE is an expression of the desire of music technology to not only be great (cheap!) but also full of unexplored potential. It is that unexplored potential which motivates the musician, after all ..

(EDIT: there are plenty of examples of music-hacker toys which fulfill your STM32 postulate: the monome, the Zynthian, the insanely great and fertile field of Eurorack modules, many of which did indeed first start off as some hacky STM32 project .. but there are plenty of STM32's which have found their way into a fancy, somewhat expensive case, too .. so seeing M-VAVE pitch into that world is exciting. I literally cannot wait to see what the M-VAVE will have to offer next week ..)

Hehe, yeah, in spite of the cross-pollination between Yamaha and Korg, the Korg engineers seem to have maintained their vitality and whimsy for decades, now.

Just the fact that they were the first, of all manufacturers, to release a professional-grade keyboard which used a raspberry Pi as its engine, is enough to indicate they are, actually, really funny hackers.

They made a freakin' acoustic synthesizer, for FNORDS sake!!! A synthesizer, using physical hardware components, omfg its the coolest thing ever .. (https://www.korg.com/de/products/dj/phase8/)

One of my prized possessions is a Korg okurumi (linen swaddling cloth) which they were giving out as 'dust covers' during a Superbooth show some years back .. it is categorically the best towel in the house, and is my HHGTTG towel, indeed, always there, always ready, always KORG ..

Thanks for the positive feedback! I've had my ups and downs with blogs and so on over the years .. my writing on this subject goes back to the RECORDING magazine days .. I have had the idea of 'resurrecting my blogging' in the TODO list for some time, I just haven't really found the motivation to truly commit to doing it.

But I appreciate the feedback, and I do enjoy the banter that my blathering attracts, sometimes, right here on HN .. so, see you at the next music-technology article! :)