SLOOP 2.7.1

SLOOP 2.7.1 is a fix for 2.7. If your FM-1 sometimes glitched and then showed a red FELUCCA CRASH screen and restarted, this is for you. Everything else is exactly 2.7.

Fixed

• The red FELUCCA CRASH screen after a glitch. SLOOP 2.7 shares the sound between the FM-1's two processor cores. When the second core does not finish its share in time, SLOOP stops it and carries on with one core. Stopping it made the chip raise a false alarm, and with SLOOP's safety checks on, the FM-1 showed the crash screen and restarted. The second core is now stopped the safe way (after Felucca 1.6.1): you may hear a short glitch, and the music goes on, on one core until the next power-on (HOME held, ABOUT then says 1 CORE). Updating the firmware with the second core on now uses the same safe stop.
• A crash screen with more to read. If a crash screen ever appears, it now also shows the stack and the second core's state (C1 3 = running, LATE = how many times it was late), and it stays 10 seconds, long enough to take a photo. Please send us that photo.

Install

Install from Chrome or Edge: https://isod89.github.io/sloop-fm1/ (make a backup with the web editor first). Your projects, presets, samples and settings stay. Coming from 2.7: nothing else changes.

If the crash still happens on your FM-1, the workaround is HOME held, SYSTEM, 2ND CORE OFF, then switch the FM-1 off and on: SLOOP then runs on one core, as 2.6 did. And please tell us, with the photo.

Thank you to the people who reported it, and to Leo Kuroshita for Felucca, where this safe stop comes from.

SLOOP 2.7

SLOOP 2.7

SLOOP now runs on both of the FM-1's processor cores: about twice the room, so the crackles some of you heard with many voices and INSERT effects are gone. With it come fifteen arp modes, KBD HOLD, the tune and decay of every drum sound, favourite sounds, samples that loop, recording with your own timing, a new MIDI page, your own screen colours and a LIVE page in the editor to play a whole show from a computer, a tablet or a phone. Once again, most of it comes from your comments, issues and tests: thank you.

Install: open the installer page in Chrome or Edge, connect the FM-1, press INSTALL. Make a backup with the web editor before updating.

New

• Two cores: room for more. The sound is computed on both of the FM-1's cores, the same sound with about twice the room before the processor runs out. On by default; HOME menu → SYSTEM → 2ND CORE turns it off (at the next power-on). ABOUT says 2 CORES. If the second core does not answer at power-on, SLOOP runs on one, as before.
• Fifteen arp modes (from Felucca 1.5.1): REPEAT, DNUP, UP+8, CONV, DIVG, PINKY, THUMB, WALK and CHORD join OFF, UP, DN, UPDN, RND and ORD; ORD now plays the notes in the order you pressed them. The arp keeps going when you load another sound.
• KBD HOLD (#103): ARP 2 → HOLD ON with the arp OFF holds the notes you play (a pad, a drone, a chord to play over). The next note played with no key down replaces them.
• ARP SWG with the sequencer stopped (#52).
• Samples that loop while the key is held: LOOP or LOOP+TAIL on the editor's Samples page, loop points on sliders snapped to zero crossings, a WAV's own loop read.
• Tune and decay every drum sound: the DRUMS screen's new SOUND page (EDIT / SEQ tapped, or SELECT): play a key to pick a sound, KNOB 2 TUNE (−8 … +7 semitones), KNOB 3 DECAY (−4 … +3), on every kit. Kept with the project and each section. The web editor's Sound page has it too: with the drum track, a DRUMS card (kit, level, pan, filter, sends, INSERT, and each pad's tune and decay; tap a pad to hear it).
• Favourite sounds: on the PRESETS page, KNOB 4 right adds the sound to your favourites (up to 16), at the top of the PRESETS list; left removes it.
• QUANT off (REC screen, KNOB 4): what you play keeps your timing, stored as each step's nudge.
• Overdub over held notes on a POLY track: held notes of the pattern go on under what you record.
• GLO → MIDI 3: FX CH plays the 27 punch-in effects from a controller or a DAW (notes F3 … G5); DR MAP 1-16 plays the drums from any 16 notes in a row; REMOTE presses the 14 buttons with CC 102 … 115; CLOCK OUT (#106) makes the FM-1 the clock master on USB.
• MIDI CC 74 sweeps each engine's own cutoff or brightness.
• Faster knobs: turn fast and the value sweeps wider (HOME menu → SCREEN → KNOB ACCEL, on by default); LEVEL and PAN glide.
• The editor's LIVE page: the whole FM-1 under your hands for a show, with the mouse, a finger on a tablet or phone, or the computer's keys: PLAY / STOP, REC, undo / redo, BPM and TAP, swing; sections A–D that play from the next bar, loop / song, SONG REC, FILL while held and FILL BAR; a mixer strip per track (sound or kit, level with its meter, filter, pan, reverb, delay, chorus, drive, mute, solo); the master filter, dust and duck; the 27 punch-in effects as pads (hold or LATCH); two octaves of keys or the 16 drum pads; full screen and keyboard shortcuts. It runs the FM-1's own code, so both always agree. The mixer and keys also work with an FM-1 on 2.6. For a real show: 8 scenes (how it sounds — the mix, filters, sends, each sound's knobs, the arp, the master — recalled at once or morphed over 1 to 16 bars, and an A/B crossfader), a PERFORM card (every knob of the track you play, its arp and key, its INSERT and the shared effects, its steps as a grid), chains of sections, roll and erase from the page's keys and pads, the pattern's shift / ×2 / ½ / transpose, each pad's tune and decay, rev / echo throw and the master volume, favourite sounds and your USER presets in the lists, MIDI learn (any control on any USB controller), a lock against stray taps, the clock and the set's time, the set recorded as a WAV from the FM-1's USB audio, a tempo and a cue for each song of the setlist. Every card says what it is for, its ? explains it, and first live in 5 steps shows the way.
• Songs as files and a playlist: Song & sections → Export this song saves the loop, the sections A–D and their order as one .sloopsong file; Load a song file puts it back. The LIVE page's playlist plays your songs one after the other (each loads in a few seconds with the FM-1 stopped, then starts); save the list for a gig.
• Steadier on two cores: at power-on SLOOP raises SYSVDD to 1.38 V and VDC14 to 1.60 V, as M-VAVE's own firmware does (the boot loader leaves 1.26 V and 1.40 V, too low on some units with both cores busy). ABOUT shows both.
• Your own screen colours: the editor's new Theme page (five colours, background, white too, an accent, the tracks' colours, a name), MENU → COLOR. Share a theme as one line of text.
• USB RATE (HOME menu → AUDIO): AUTO, 44.1 or 48 kHz, for phones that record the USB audio distorted.
• The drum MUTE mode stays when you let go of EDIT (#126).
• SAVE → SECTION A–D (was PROJECT 1–4): the four slots are the song's sections and are named so. The FM-1 holds one song; to keep several, save one editor backup per song (the Song & sections tab).

Changed

• Kicks you hear on any speaker. The kicks of the synthesised kits (808, 909, 606, 80S, TRAP and the others) were mostly a 50 Hz sine: felt on a big system, but the FM-1's speaker, a phone or earbuds play nothing that low, so only a quiet click was left. They now have drive and a deeper pitch sweep that carry them up where any speaker plays, a softer click, and more level (as loud as the sampled kits). The same note underneath. Your projects on these kits get the new kicks.
• USB SERIAL left the menu: the developer console no longer fits the FM-1's flash. The USB audio input shows on every Mac without it.
• The page counter counts the pages SELECT walks (SEQ: STEP 1/2, PATTERN 2/2).

Compatibility

Projects, autosaves, presets and backups from 2.6 load as they are, and the second core turns on by itself. The kicks of the synthesised kits sound punchier (above). Going back to 2.6: projects saved in 2.7 open there without what 2.6 does not have (the new arp modes, KBD HOLD, the drum TUNE and DECAY, your theme, your favourites, MIDI 3), and a looping sample may play differently. Keep a backup made before updating.

Thanks

• andrerezemini (sloop-lab): the sound on the second core and 38 KB of RAM back (pull request #111), on the dual-core start of Charles Vestal (X0X) and keremimo (Melodee).
• Leo Kuroshita (@kurogedelic) / Hügelton Instruments: Felucca, and in this release the new arp modes (Felucca 1.5.1).
• Charles Vestal (X0X 1.0.9): the supply levels for a steady second core.
• juanjiant-bit (JIANT FM): the knob acceleration and the LEVEL / PAN glide.
• @renebohne: MIDI CC 74 on each engine's cutoff (pull request #71).
• Everyone who commented, opened an issue or tested the beta: the second core, the arp modes, KBD HOLD, the drum tune and decay, the favourites, the swing, the clock out, the sample loops and the section names all come from you.

SLOOP 2.6

SLOOP 2.6

The biggest SLOOP update so far: 11 more punch-in effects, an effect on every track, a texture bed under the mix, a full MIDI setup (a channel per track, sustain, pitch bend, Program Change, MIDI LEARN, step entry from a keyboard), a cleaner output and many fixes. Most of it comes from your comments and reports: thank you.

Install: open the installer page in Chrome or Edge, connect the FM-1, press INSTALL. Keep a backup made with the web editor before updating.

New

• 27 punch-in effects: eleven more on the black keys (hold FX): KILL LOW / MID / HIGH, REWIND, OCT UP, FLANGER, AUTO-PAN, FREEZE, LOOP 8T, MONO, FADE OUT.
• REV THROW / ECHO THROW: hold FX + OCT− (reverb) or OCT+ (echo): every track's send goes full while held, the song's settings untouched.
• INSERT on every track (the drums too): SOFT, HARD, FOLD, FUZZ, CRUSH, PHASR, FLANG, CHOR, with dry / wet (FX → INSERT).
• LFO 2: the LFO synced to the tempo (4 bars to 1/32), TRIG NOTE / FREE, POL bipolar / unipolar.
• ENV SYNC: attack, decay and release as note values.
• ANALOG filter TYPE: low-pass, band-pass or high-pass.
• Note LEN and step velocity: how many steps a note lasts (STEP page, KNOB 3), each step's velocity (SEQ + step + KNOB 2).
• TEXTURE: a looping bed under the mix (vinyl, tape, rain, wind, radio, room tone or your own sample), breathing with the tempo, saved with the project and each song section (GLO → TEXTURE).
• Live drum mutes: EDIT + a black key, then the sounds' keys.
• MIDI, all in one place: GLO → MIDI sets each track's channel (CH1–CH4, in and out; two tracks never share one), GLO → MIDI 2 the rest: IN (notes, clock only, or one channel only), OTHER, OUT, BEND.
• Sustain pedal (CC 64) and pitch bend (1–12 semitones).
• Program Change loads a track's sound (the n-th sound of the PRESETS list; kit n on the drum channel).
• MIDI LEARN: GLO + F#3, turn a knob of SLOOP, move a knob of your controller. Kept through power-off and in backups.
• Step entry from a MIDI keyboard on the STEP page; and when you record with a keyboard that plays another track than the one recording, the screen says MIDI PLAYS TRACK n.
• Erase a saved loop: SAVE → PROJECT → ERASE (KNOB 2) empties a project slot, song section A–D; the song's steps that played it are taken out.
• The web editor offline: Download the editor (under Connect, or on the installer page) saves it as one file, sloop-editor-2.6.html (attached below too). Double-click it: it runs in Chrome or Edge without internet.
• 1/4D delay time.
• A bolder screen: Terminus Bold, all in capitals.

Fixed

• No more clicks when a sound loads over held notes, or when a filter starts to close.
• A cleaner output, in headphones too: the master limiter looks 0.7 ms ahead, so loud kicks and basses no longer crackle with MASTER turned up.
• The kicks of the synthesised kits (808, 909 and the others) no longer whistle: their level now glides without a tiny step every 0.7 ms, which made a high tone under the long kick tail (in 2.5 too).
• FREEZE holds the sound at the mix's level (it could jump +11 dB and distort).
• The latched arp follows TRN, ROOT, SCALE and KEYS (#191).
• The sustain pedal and the pitch wheel let go of the right track after a track change; no stuck note when a MIDI channel changes; OFF channels are off in and out.
• Web editor: the same value on a second track (DIV 1/8 on the drums, then on track 1) is now sent.
• Backups: a 2.6 backup restored into an older SLOOP stops before writing anything; MIDI settings are restored too.
• The installer also recognises an FM-1 running CLIPPER. Nothing changes for the official firmware, Felucca or older SLOOP versions.

Compatibility

Projects, autosaves and backups from 2.5 load as they are. A project saved in 2.6 does not open in 2.5. Going back to 2.5 after changing GLO → MIDI or learning CCs: restore your SYN drum kits from a backup.

Thanks

• Leo Kuroshita (@kurogedelic) / Hügelton Instruments: Felucca, and in this release the INSERT, LFO 2, ENV SYNC, the ANALOG filter types, note LEN and step velocity, MIDI LEARN, the live drum mutes, the #191 fix, the 1/4D delay and the THROWs (Felucca 1.4 to 1.5.1).
• @renebohne: MIDI Program Change (Felucca pull request #179).
• The Felucca community, who asked for those features first: Wulgaren, etyrnal, benjaminguerrer, gospodindilly-ops, Armstrong1980, oMauNaProducer, lostfictions and planist79.
• Everyone who commented, tested and reported on SLOOP: the MIDI channels, sustain and pitch bend, step entry from a keyboard, TEXTURE, the crackle fixes and the web editor fix all come from you.
• Font: Terminus and Terminus Bold (SIL OFL 1.1).

SLOOP 2.5

SLOOP 2.5

Two new engines, 77 new sounds, a drum synth, DX7 cartridges in one go, MIDI CCs and 48 kHz USB audio.

PHYS: physical models. An eleventh engine, from Felucca 1.0: the models of DaisySP and Mutable Instruments Rings (Emilie Gillet), ported to the FM-1 by Leo Kuroshita. Plucked and struck strings, bars and bells, drum heads, and strings with sympathetic strings that ring along. 26 sounds: guitars (NYLON GTR, STEEL GTR, MUTED GTR), PLUCK BASS, KOTO, BANJO, SITAR and TANPURA, PHYS HARP, CHIMES, BIG BELL, VIBRA BAR, STEEL PAN, WOOD BLOCK, CELLO BOW, GLASS BOWL, TABLA, CONGA, TIMPANI and more. Three voices a track (SITAR and the other sympathetic-string sounds: two).

NOISE. A twelfth engine, from Felucca 1.0: noise from analogue to digital, coloured from white to brown, crackle, shift registers and metallic tones, through a resonant filter. WIND, RAIN, OCEAN, VINYL, HISS, RISER, NZ SNARE, BITCRUSH, RADIO, NZ ARCADE, NZ METAL.

153 factory sounds (76 in 2.4), every one level-matched. Besides PHYS and NOISE: bass guitar, mono and saw basses, harp, steel drum, glockenspiel, celesta, xylophone, tubular bell, pan flute, harmonica, accordion, a 70s string machine (ENSEMBLE), an 80s poly synth, rock and chapel organs, granular clouds (STR CLOUD, SHIMMER, DRONE, PNO FREEZE, HORN CLOUD), chip sounds (NES BASS, CHIP CHORD, WAVE LEAD…), CZ lead, pad and reso, ROBOT and VOX PAD. PRESETS browses them by kind, as before.

No memory more. GRAIN, FM6 and PHYS now keep their big per-track state in one shared area (a track plays one engine at a time, and a switch fades the old one out first), so the two new engines cost no memory at all. The pitch table takes 768 bytes instead of 8 KB. Every sound of 2.4 renders bit for bit as before.

The web editor: piano roll, MIDI files, song. On the Sequencer page: a length control (1–64 steps, the steps redraw at once); a piano roll to draw, delete and stretch notes and chords with the mouse; Export MIDI and Import MIDI for the selected track (the drum track too, as GM drum notes), with a preview that says what moves or does not fit before anything is written. A new Song page edits the order of the sections A–D, as the FM-1's SONG screen does (send it while the song is stopped). Thanks to the viewer who suggested them!

Drum synth: make your own drum kits. A new page in the web editor opens up the synthesised drum sounds: for each of the 16 sounds the tone (sine, triangle, square, FM or bell, its pitch and pitch drop, hold and decay, a second partial), the click, the noise (white, the 808's metal, chip, the clap's bursts), a resonant filter with its envelope, drive and level, and the kit's crush. The FM-1 plays every change at once. Four kits of your own, SYN1–SYN4, start as copies of 808, 909, TRAP and TECHNO, or of any of the 32 kits; they come last in the drum track's KIT, with the name you gave them. Store on the FM-1 keeps them; backups hold them; Save file / Open file to share a kit.

DX7 cartridges in one go. Drop a .syx file on the editor's FM6 panel (or import it as before), tick up to 27 of its voices (the first 27 are ticked) and Store cartridge in bank puts them in B1, B2… in order, in one flash write. It asks before replacing what is already there, and the rest of the bank stays. Before storing, choose to add them to the user presets too: each voice gets a user preset with its name, so the FM-1's PRESETS and SELECT find it by name like any sound (or pick them with PTCH, B1–B27). Thanks to the viewer who asked!

A delay send for the drums. GLO → DRUMS → DLY, next to REV, sends the drum track into the tempo delay (FX → DLY sets its time and feedback): echoing hats, dub snares. CC 94 on the drum channel sets it too, and projects keep it. At 0, the default, the drums sound exactly as before. Thanks to the viewer who asked!

USB audio at 48 kHz too. The FM-1's USB audio input now also runs at 48 kHz when the host asks for it: many phones, tablets and apps only take 48 kHz. Plug the FM-1 into your phone and record it into a sampler app. The FM-1 resamples its 44.1 kHz output itself (after Felucca 1.1.5, with a smaller filter); at 44.1 kHz nothing changed.

MIDI CCs: a controller's knobs set the sound. The standard CC map of Felucca 1.1.5, on the track the channel plays (as the notes): 7 level, 10 pan, 74 the track's filter (64 off, lower a low-pass, higher a high-pass), 71 resonance, 73 / 75 / 72 attack / decay / release, 5 glide, 91 / 93 / 94 the reverb, chorus and delay sends. On the drum channel, 7, 91 and 94 are GLO → DRUMS → LVL, REV and DLY. Until now SLOOP ignored every CC. IN = CLOCK ignores them too.

Room for what comes next. The sampled ACOUSTIC kit's crash and ride now fade out smoothly after 0.6 s (they used to stop abruptly at 1 s): 12.8 KB of flash back, the rest of every sound as before.

Swing reads 0 to 100. 0 is straight, 100 the strongest (a step pair played 75 / 25, MPC's 75 %); it used to read 50–75 %. The swing itself and your projects did not change.

SEL, as printed on the button. The key / scale button (between FX and ENV) is now called SEL everywhere: on the screen (its pages SEL and SEL 2, the calibration) and in the guides. It was written SCL, which was confusing. Not to be mixed up with the SELECT knob.

The DRUMS page's level dial goes from ghost on the left to hard on the right. Its needle followed the wrong order; the levels themselves were right. Thanks for the report!

Fixed (2.4.1, folded into 2.5)

• Imported DX7 patches no longer play noise. An FM6 operator with amplitude modulation sensitivity (AMS above 0, about one DX7 patch in four) played noise and static, worse with every key held. Those patches now sound as on a DX7.
• The click is back with your own drum kits (KIT USR1–USR4, USR3+4), and with the drum track muted or another track soloed: it has its own sound now, a short tick, higher on the first beat. Its level follows GLO → DRUMS → LVL.
• Chords on the STEP page. In chord mode, a key on the SEQ → STEP page writes the whole chord it plays (with the CHORD+ black keys too), not only its root.

Install

Connect the FM-1 by USB, open the web installer in Chrome or Edge and press INSTALL. Your projects, user presets, samples, kits, FM6 bank and settings are kept. Projects, autosaves and backups from 2.4 load as they are.

Going back to 2.4 is possible at any time. A track that plays PHYS or NOISE opens with another engine there, and 2.4 does not keep your SYN drum kits (a drum track on SYN1–4 plays USR3+4 there): save a backup first (editor → Projects → Backup), it holds them for when you come back.

Thanks

Leo Kuroshita / Hügelton Instruments for Felucca, the PHYS and NOISE engines, the MIDI CC map and the 48 kHz USB audio; Emilie Gillet and Electrosmith for the models of Rings and DaisySP (MIT); and everyone who commented, reported a bug or asked for a sound.

Files

• sloop-2.5.fwsc: the firmware package
• Source: this tag (GPL-3.0)

SLOOP 2.4.1

SLOOP 2.4.1 (hotfix)

Imported DX7 patches no longer play noise. In 2.4, an FM6 operator with amplitude modulation sensitivity (AMS above 0) turned into noise and static, and it got worse with every key held. A wrong calculation gave that operator a random level. About one DX7 patch in four uses AMS, so many imported SysEx patches were hit. They now sound as they should, like on a DX7: checked against a bit-exact copy of Dexed's engine with the 32 voices of the original DX7 cartridge. A new test keeps it that way.

The 8 factory FM6 sounds were not affected, and nothing else changes: same features, same projects, same backups as 2.4.

Thanks to the people who reported it!

Install

Connect the FM-1 by USB, open the web installer in Chrome or Edge and press INSTALL. Your projects, user presets, samples, kits, FM6 bank and settings are kept.

Patches you already stored in the FM6 bank (B1–B27) are fine as they are: they play correctly after the update, no need to import them again.

Files

• sloop-2.4.1.fwsc: the firmware package

SLOOP 2.4

SLOOP 2.4

Six-operator FM with DX7 patches, parameter locks, micro timing, fills, a quick chain of sections, the sequencer to MIDI out, longer steps and dotted delays, a redesigned web editor, your own drum kits and a 4th sample slot, a full-screen visualiser, CHORD+ chord modifiers with strum, a filter on each track, bigger values, SELECT to turn the pages, and drums programmed with the keys. Most of it comes from your comments: thank you.

New: the complete guide. GUIDE.md covers every button, key combination, layer, page, engine and editor page, with a one-page cheat sheet at the end.

New

FM6: six-operator FM, DX7 patches. A tenth engine: the classic six-operator FM of Dexed (msfa, by Google Inc. and Pascal Gauthier), as Leo Kuroshita ported it to whole-number arithmetic for Felucca 1.0. 32 algorithms, a full patch per track, six voices per track.

• Eight factory patches in the sound bank: TINE EP, GLASS BELL, ROUND BASS, BRASS SECT, SOFT PAD, WOOD BARS, DRAWBARS, NYLON PICK.
• On the FM-1, the eight EDIT values are macros on top of the patch: ALG, FB, MLVL (brightness), MRAT, MEG, VMOD, DTUN, and PTCH, which loads a patch (F1–F8 factory, B1–B27 your bank).
• In the web editor (Sound tab, on an FM6 track): edit every operator, send it to the track, store it in the bank. Import SysEx reads a DX7 file, one voice or a 32-voice bank, so DX7 and Dexed patches play on the FM-1. Export SysEx writes them back.
• DIGITAL, the 4-operator FM, is still there, unchanged.

Parameter locks. In the SEQ layer, hold a step: PRESETS gives one sound parameter another value for that step only, and ALGORITHM picks which parameter (it starts with the last one you turned). You get 24 locks per track, and a step can hold several. At the next step without a lock the parameter comes back.

Micro timing. Hold a step: KNOB 4 nudges it off the grid, from half a step early to half a step late, in 1/64 of a step. On the drum track the whole step moves.

Fills. Hold a step: OCT+ makes it fill only (plays only during a fill) or no fill (silent during one). Then GLO + key 9 plays a fill while you hold it, and key 10 plays a fill on the whole next bar.

Quick chain. Hold SAVE and tap several sections (A B B C, up to 8). When you let go, they play in turn, each for the length of its pattern, round and round.

Clock only. GLO → SYSTEM → IN = CLOCK makes SLOOP follow the MIDI clock (and START / STOP / CONTINUE) while ignoring incoming notes. This is handy when a DAW or a sequencer also sends notes to other gear. NOTES, the default, takes both, as before. This is a setting of the FM-1. Thanks to the community for asking!

The sequencer to MIDI out. GLO → SYSTEM → MIDI = SEQ sends what the sequencer, the arp and the rolls play to USB MIDI too: each track on its channel, the drums on 10. Use it to drive another synth or record the notes in a DAW. Every note is ended, STOP ends what is still on, and notes that came in from MIDI are never sent back. With KEYS (the default), only the keys go out, as before. This is a setting of the FM-1.

A filter on each track. One knob, FILT: turn it left for a low-pass, right for a high-pass, and leave it in the centre for off. Every synth track and the drums have one. It is on the new FX → FILTER page, and live under FX held + KNOB 4 for the selected track. You can lock it on a step, it stays when you change the sound, and it is saved with the project. Thanks for the idea!

Bigger values. The pages without a graph (EDIT, VOICE, ENV DEST, LFO DEST, GLOBAL, MASTER, SYSTEM, FILTER…) now use the empty middle of the screen. Their four values show in large type, placed as the knobs are, and the one you turn shows in white. Thanks for the idea!

SELECT turns the pages. On a page (ENV, LFO, FX, EDIT, ARP, SEQ, SCL, GLO, SAVE), SELECT goes to the previous or next page of that group, so you no longer press LFO again to reach LFO DEST. On HOME, and while you hold a layer, SELECT is still the tempo. Thanks for the idea!

Drums with the keys. On the drum grid page (SEQ tapped on the drum track), the white keys are the 16 steps of the sound that KNOB 1 picks: press a key to set its step, press it again to clear it. The first four black keys pick the page of steps. You hear what you pick: the sound when KNOB 1 changes it (on the grid, and in the SEQ layer), the step's sounds when KNOB 2 moves to it, and the sound when a key sets a step. SELECT switches between grid and kit. Thanks for the idea!

Longer steps, dotted delays. DIV goes to 1/2, 1BAR and 2BAR. The delay's TIME gains 1/8D and 1/16D.

Your own drum kits, and a 4th sample slot. There is a new sample slot, USR4, in flash that was never used before. The drum track's KIT now goes on to USR1–USR4 and USR3+4. USR3+4 is a big kit of about 15 s spread over two slots, so USR1 and USR2 stay free for your instruments.

Build a kit on the editor's new Drum kit page, in three steps:

1. Drop WAVs on 16 pads (KICK, SNARE, HAT, OPEN HAT…), or choose several files and they are sorted by name. Set pitch, gain and length for each pad, and hear it.
2. Choose where the kit goes: USR3+4 (the big kit) or a single slot. The page shows what each slot holds now and what a send would replace.
3. Send the kit. Use on the drum track picks it for you.

Steps, levels, ratchets, fills, the grid page and MIDI on channel 10 all work as with the other kits. Kits can be saved and shared as a ZIP. Thanks for the idea!

A new web editor. The editor is rebuilt to look and feel like the FM-1: its black screen, the four track colours, and its own pixel font.

• Each button's pages are rows of four coloured knobs, as on the screen. You can drag values like knobs.
• The four tracks sit at the top, and the steps look like the device's tiles.
• The pages are grouped in a side bar.
• The Samples page now works in three steps: choose a slot, make the sound (from files, with a picture of which keys play which file, or by chopping a recording), then send it. Play this slot on track 1, 2 or 3 sets that track up for you.

Everything it did before is still there.

The visualiser. On the TRACKS screen, tap HOME: the whole screen becomes a visualiser of what SLOOP plays. SELECT changes the style, and there are twelve: oscilloscope, spectrum, spectrogram, Lissajous, VU meters, circle, tape, LCD, bounce, orbit, wires, and the SLOOP logo itself coming alive (the sail's four bands are your tracks, the dial is the mix's level, and the boat rocks on the sound). HOME again closes it. The keys, PLAY, REC and the layers keep working, so you can play with it on screen. It shows the sound as if MASTER were all the way up, so it keeps moving even with the volume turned down to 0.

CHORD+. Inspired by HiChord and minichord. With a chord mode on (SCL → KNOB 1 CHORD), the black keys now change the chord: hold one while you play a white key, or press it while the chord is held and the chord changes under your finger. F# switches major ↔ minor, G# adds the 7th, A# makes it sus4, C# adds the 9th, D# inverts it. Hold several to combine them; the 7th and 9th come from the scale (in C major, the V chord G with G# is G7, with F# + G# Gm7). What you play is recorded as it sounds. The new SCL 2 page has STRUM, which spreads a chord's notes like a strummed guitar (1–60 ms a note: right for low to high, left for high to low), on the keys and on the chord steps. It also has VLEAD, which voices each chord nearest the last one, so a progression moves smoothly instead of jumping. MIDI out sends the chord's notes together, without the strum. Thanks for the idea!

The menu in sections. Hold HOME: the settings are now grouped as SCREEN, LIGHTS, AUDIO and SYSTEM. SELECT turns the sections as it turns the pages, and KNOB 1, 2 and 3 set the section's rows directly, with the values in large type.

Lights. HOME menu → LIGHTS → KEYS has a new option, ALL KEYS, that makes every key glow. With NOTES on, the sequencer's short notes now light their keys: each note stays lit about a tenth of a second, as drum hits do. Before, a 1/16 note could end between two screen frames and never show.

Fixes

• A MIDI START from a DAW during the REC count-in now starts and records at once. It used to leave SLOOP armed and silent.
• Swing no longer shuffles the triplet divisions (8T, 16T). It used to delay a different note on every beat.
• Turning DIV or the arp's RATE in the first beat after PLAY no longer skips a step.
• In the SEQ layer, KNOB 2 (DIV) now goes on to 1/2, 1BAR and 2BAR, as the PATTERN page does.
• The editor no longer writes presets or a preset bank to flash while the song plays, which caused a short drop-out. It asks you to stop first, as the FM-1 does.
• Filter values of 10 kHz and up show their unit ("12 kHz").
• The boot screen shows the whole logo: the tail of the "p" in sloop was cut off.
• On the SEQ → STEP page, turning ALGO to the drum track no longer draws the drum pattern as a garbled piano roll. The page now says DRUM TRACK, as the other pages the drums have no use for do.
• Fixes that Felucca 1.0.2 to 1.0.3.1 found, checked in SLOOP and fixed the same way (thanks to Leo Kuroshita and spinkham):
  • A knob turned just as you let go of a layer (FX, EDIT, SCL, GLO…), or while you press PLAY in one, no longer changes the page under it.
  • The processor's divide-by-zero trap is off. A compiler quirk could otherwise crash the FM-1 into UBOOT on a divide that the code guards against.
  • Mac users: the serial console is now off by default (HOME menu → USB SERIAL), so macOS 13–15 show the USB audio input. Turn it on only if you need th...

SLOOP 2.3

SLOOP 2.3

USB audio, a MIDI keyboard on the jack, MIDI clock, a choice of how REC records (free take or the tempo you set, with a count-in), lights for playing in the dark, a full backup, and CHOP for recordings of any length.

New

USB audio: record the FM-1 on a computer. On USB the FM-1 is now also an audio input named Felucca: 44.1 kHz, 16-bit stereo, class compliant, no driver. Choose it in your DAW or in Audacity and record the master output, exactly what the headphones play. Its level (HOME menu → USB AUDIO): MASTER follows the MASTER knob, as the headphones do; FULL is a fixed level, as with MASTER all the way up and kept from clipping, so the knob only sets the headphones (for an audio interface with no level control). MIDI, the web editor and the installer keep working on the same cable. The first time, the computer sets the FM-1 up again as a MIDI + audio device; the MIDI port keeps its name. This is Felucca 1.0's USB audio input by Leo Kuroshita, brought into SLOOP. Thanks!

MIDI keyboard on the MIDI IN jack. The FM-1's 3.5 mm TRS MIDI input now works. Plug in a keyboard or a pad controller through a TRS-to-DIN MIDI adapter (if nothing plays, try the other adapter type, A or B):

• channels 1–3 play the three synth tracks
• channel 10 plays the drums
• channels 4–16 play the selected track (set your keyboard to channel 4 and it follows the track you pick)

The input reads its buffer by content, so no note is left hanging. That fix comes from Felucca [Salt] by ChanceTheMaker, found by keremimo on an FM-1 with an Akai MPC Sample. Thanks!

MIDI clock in. GLO → SYSTEM → SYNC = USB or TRS. SLOOP follows the master's tempo, START, CONTINUE and STOP, pulse by pulse, so it never drifts. SYNC is a setting of the FM-1: it stays when you load a project. (After Felucca 1.0, from contributions by ChanceTheMaker and keremimo.)

Choose how REC records. Press REC while stopped: the REC screen now has three dials.

• KNOB 1 mode (empty project): free — the free take, the tempo follows your playing — or tempo — record at the tempo you set with SELECT.
• KNOB 2 length: the loop of the selected track, 1, 2 or 4 bars.
• KNOB 3 start: note — your first note starts the loop — or count — press PLAY for one bar of clicks (4, 3, 2, 1 on the screen), then it records.

Mode and start are settings of the FM-1: they stay as you left them. In a project that already has notes, it always records at the tempo set.

Lights for playing in the dark. Hold HOME for the menu:

• LIGHTS: OFF / LOW / MID / HIGH. Every button glows at that level, so the labels can be read on a black FM-1. What is active (the page, PLAY, REC, the octave) stays at full light and still blinks as before.
• KEYS: OFF / C KEYS / WHITE KEYS. The C keys, or every white key, glow too.
• NOTES: ON / OFF. On the synth tracks, the notes sounding light their keys, live or from the sequencer, on every page, in every layer and in the windows (ERASE…). Contributed by @renebohne (#11). Thanks!

These are settings of the FM-1, not of a project: loading a project or NEW PROJECT does not change them.

Backup and restore. In the web editor's Projects tab, Save a backup puts everything on the FM-1 in one file: the music you are working on, the 4 projects, the user presets, the 3 sample slots and the settings. Restore from a file puts it all back (stop playback first).

CHOP: recordings of any length. A recording longer than a sample slot (about 7 s) is no longer a dead end. Tick the chops you keep and untick the rest, shorten any chop (its length slider, or the handle at the bottom of the wave), or press Fit to slot to shorten the longest ones just enough. Only the kept chops go to the slot or to the WAVs, on consecutive keys.

Back to the official firmware from the installer page. Open Return to the official firmware (V15), save a backup first, then select M-VAVE's FM-1 V15 file (only that exact file is accepted). To come back to SLOOP, install it again and restore your backup.

Fixes

• The knobs answer every click: no more dead moments, double clicks or jumps (SLOOP was built on Felucca 0.9's knob reading; 2.3 reads them as Felucca 1.0 does).
• No more hanging notes from a computer: when a lot of MIDI arrives at once over USB, nothing is dropped any more (the computer is asked to wait a moment); a malformed MIDI message is ignored.
• When the processor is overloaded, SLOOP fades out one voice at a time, never the bass or the lead, instead of cutting the oldest note.
• Keys play about a millisecond sooner.
• A key let go just after a change of VOICE (POLY, MONO…) no longer leaves its note stuck.
• The settings, projects and presets are checked more strictly when they are read back from flash.

Many of these fixes, the MIDI clock and the USB audio input come from Felucca 1.0 / 1.0.1 by Leo Kuroshita (@kurogedelic). Thanks!

Install

Connect the FM-1 by USB, open the web installer (Chrome or Edge) and press INSTALL, or python tools/fm1_install.py sloop-2.3.fwsc. Your projects, user presets, samples and settings are kept. You can go back to 2.2 at any time with the .fwsc of the 2.2 release; it simply ignores the new settings (LIGHTS, KEYS, NOTES, SYNC, USB AUDIO, the REC screen's mode and start) and has no USB audio.

Beta: install at your own risk. Bluetooth MIDI is still not supported (the radio stays off, as in Felucca). Back to the official firmware: the installer page, or M-VAVE's M-UPGRADE.

Files

• sloop-2.3.fwsc: the firmware package

SLOOP 2.2

Good news: this is in SLOOP 2.2. Hold a layer button (FX, SEQ…) and tap HOME — the layer stays open with both hands free, LOCK shows on the screen. Any other button closes it; PLAY and REC keep working inside.

SLOOP 2.1

v2.1

SLOOP 2.1: live song mode

SLOOP 2.0

SLOOP 2.0

A hip-hop beat machine firmware for the M-VAVE FM-1.

Install: connect the FM-1 by USB, open the installer (INSTALL-SLOOP.bat, Chrome or Edge) and press INSTALL. The package is sloop-2.0.fwsc. Manual: SLOOP.md · en français : DEMARRAGE-RAPIDE-FR.md.

What's in it

• Layers: hold FX / EDIT / ARP / SEQ / SCL / GLO and the keys and knobs change job — punch-in effects, erase as it plays, note repeat, step entry, the key of the song and one-key chords, mute / solo / tap tempo.
• 16 drum sounds on the white keys, ghost and hard hits, ratchets, 34 kits.
• 54 hip-hop and drum & bass sounds on 9 engines.
• Recording with no click: a free take sets the loop and the tempo; overdub; latency-compensated quantise.
• MPC swing, a drift-free clock, undo / redo, autosave.
• Master DUST (vinyl), DUCK (sidechain) and DJ filter.
• Web editor: 16-lane drum grid with levels and ratchets, chop and upload your own samples.
• Safer updates: the installer checks the package (SHA-256), the update loader checks it again (CRC) before starting the new firmware and only resumes its own update mode.

Beta: install at your own risk. Back to the official firmware with M-VAVE's M-UPGRADE.