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. ...read more read less