The Synthstrom Audible Deluge, a grid-based synth/sequencer/sampler, has its first official open-source, community-developed firmware – “and it’s huge,” the makers say. There are new views, new effects, new modulation, and more.
That feature list indeed looks huge, with Automation, Drum Keyboard, and Grid Views, new effects including compression, chorus, grain, and wavefold distortion, and tons of new options for modulation, editing, sync, probability, and quantization. They’ve even got a norns layout, inspired by the monome norns.
Here’s their list of highlights – and even this is only a partial list:
Automation View
Drum Keyboard View
Grid (Session) View
Master Compressor
Stereo Chorus Effect
Grain FX
Wavefold Distortion Effect
New LFO Shapes: Random Walk and Sample & Hold
New Sync Modes: Triplets & Dotted
Probability by Row
Quantize & Humanize
Norns Layout
Manual Slicing aka ‘Lazy Chopping’
Load Synth presets into Kits
Display Gold Encoder Values
Quick Scroll
New LPF/HPF State Variable Filters: SVF Notch and SVF Bandpass
Filter Routing is accessible via the Sound Editor menu
Quantized Stutter
Increased Modulation resolution
Sticky Shift
Adjust Metronome volume
Batch Delete Kit Rows
Send and Receive SYSEX messages
That’s in just a half year since the maker open-sourced the Deluge code. There’s a huge list of contributors on the announcement, too – congrats to all of you!
Deluge goes Open-Source [announcement]
Community Deluge firmware release [GitHub]
Community documentation [GitHub]
Ron Cavagnaro is already out with a first look at the new 1.0 features:
And The Midlife Synthesist had some glowing praise for this concept a month ago:
You can loop back on the discussion of the open-source project from earlier this year in a two-part video Q&A:
Deluge is available direct from the manufacturer:
https://synthstrom.com/product-category/deluge/
Folks out there using this (or who worked on the firmware), I’d love to hear from you!