Vibe coding is turning the music gear world upside down

They’re far more powerful and fun than their bargain price suggests. | Photo: Terrence O’Brien / The Verge If you spend any time on r/synthesizers or watch a lot of synth videos on YouTube, you've probably noticed the explosion of custom firmware for hardware synthesizers, samplers, and grooveboxes .

What unites almost all of them is that they were made possible by increasingly sophisticated vibe coding tools.

These sorts of custom firmware were exceedingly rare in the pre-LLM days, and required both deep expertise and an incredible investment of time.

It could take weeks or months to add a simple feature like velocity sensitivity to a Korg Volca .

Now, hobbyist hackers are able to turn Temu synths into full-fledged grooveboxes in a matter of days … Read the full story at The Verge.