New Custom Firmware for Sequential, Arturia and Novation

Three free third-party firmware packages have been released for hardware instruments, introducing new capabilities to devices from several manufacturers.

Sequential Prophet-5 and Prophet-10

The prophet-rev4-mods project targets the Rev4 versions of the Prophet-5 and Prophet-10. Delivered via USB as a patch for Main OS 2.1.0, the developer notes that functionality has been verified on the Prophet-10 Rev4, though not on the Prophet-5.

The modification provides an arpeggiator with five modes (up, down, up/down, random, assign), an octave range from one to four octaves, hold with re-latch, 40 to 300 BPM tempo control, MIDI clock sync, 13 note divisions and Prophet-6-style swing. It also adds a polyphonic step sequencer handling up to 512 chord steps, keyboard octave transposition of plus or minus two octaves, and patch-memory storage for arp and sequence settings.

Arturia MicroFreak

Developer Freakier Firmware has released Superfreaker, a collection of three packages for the MicroFreak synthesizer:

• Essentials: Foundation package offering separate envelope release, legato glide, transpose, a metronome and sequencer shortcuts.
• Loud: Increases output levels for headphones and line outs by +7 dB.
• Sound: Integrates drive and lo-fi effects, noise, tremolo, tape echo, a wavefolder and a square wave sub-octave.

Installation runs through a patcher, which keeps the path open to restore the original operating mode.

Novation Circuit Tracks

The groovebox receives numerous features via CIRCUITS-HACKS-RC. Highlights include sample capturing, operating MIDI tracks as internal sound generators, a granular engine, morphing oscillators, a virtual analog drum engine, glitch controls and master bus Grid FX.

Source: Gearnews