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Data transmission over audio is still found in some more modern gear. The newer line of Teenage Engineering's Pocket operator synths/samplers, released in the l

Data transmission over audio is still found in some more modern gear. The newer line of Teenage Engineering's Pocket operator synths/samplers, released in the late 2010s, also uses an audio-based format for import and export of its presets and patterns. You can find various presets on youtube. I don't think anybody has reverse engineered it, though. Similarly, the korg volca FM firmware update procedure happens by playing an audio file into one of the sync input jacks. This is odd considering it has a MIDI input port, which could load firmware via digital SYSEX commands, a fairly common method. Another unconventional method I've seen recently is in the the Korg Gadget app. It implements song sharing via QR codes. The QR codes don't point to an URL, instead they directly encode the song. Several of them are required, so it's not super convenient, but it works ok. I'm not 100% sure why they have this option, but I think it might be the only way to do it in one of its platforms, the nintendo switch.

ajxs 4y ago
> Similarly, the korg volca FM firmware update procedure happens by playing an audio file into one of the sync input jacks. The Volca FM uses Quadrature Amplitude Modulation[0] to encode/decode digital data. Korg released the source code to an encoder on Github[1] for people to use with the Volca Sample. A few people have used this to write a decoder for the firmware, most notably Pajen who used it to write the custom firmware for the Volca series. > This is odd considering it has a MIDI input port, which could load firmware via digital SYSEX commands, a fairly common method. The Volca series has lots of really odd design quirks, and overall I'm pretty critical of a lot of them. In this case I think they made the right choice. SysEx has a very low transfer speed. Transmitting even a few kb takes a noticeable period of time, and the Volca firmware blobs are 256kb in size. The Cypress FM4 SoC they used doesn't have an integral USB controller either, so I guess they had to get creative! 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadrature_amplitude_modulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadrature_amplitude_modulatio... 1: https://korginc.github.io/volcasample/documentation.html https://korginc.github.io/volcasample/documentation.html

ajxs 4y ago

> Similarly, the korg volca FM firmware update procedure happens by playing an audio file into one of the sync input jacks. The Volca FM uses Quadrature Amplitude Modulation[0] to encode/decode digital data. Korg released the source code to an encoder on Github[1] for people to use with the Volca Sample. A few people have used this to write a decoder for the firmware, most notably Pajen who used it to write the custom firmware for the Volca series. > This is odd considering it has a MIDI input port, which could load firmware via digital SYSEX commands, a fairly common method. The Volca series has lots of really odd design quirks, and overall I'm pretty critical of a lot of them. In this case I think they made the right choice. SysEx has a very low transfer speed. Transmitting even a few kb takes a noticeable period of time, and the Volca firmware blobs are 256kb in size. The Cypress FM4 SoC they used doesn't have an integral USB controller either, so I guess they had to get creative! 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadrature_amplitude_modulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadrature_amplitude_modulatio... 1: https://korginc.github.io/volcasample/documentation.html https://korginc.github.io/volcasample/documentation.html