Log — Music-Tech Wiki

Append-only history. Each entry starts with ## [YYYY-MM-DD] <op> | <title> where <op> is ingest, query, lint, or split, so grep "^## \[" log.md | tail -5 works.

[2026-07-19] ingest | Analog vs digital guitar pedals (Guitar World, hub-routed, URL-only, T3)

Spoke’s first guitar pedal / stompbox source and first treatment of the analog-vs-digital argument in effects (prior coverage was synths). Continuous circuit vs ADC→DSP→DAC; analog leans OD/fuzz (circuit nonlinearity = tone), digital leans delay/reverb/complex modulation (memory + math), hybrids blend both. Created source summary analog-vs-digital-pedals (Article, url-only, T3) + 3 Thing pages: guitar-pedal (DefinedTerm, effect-class — hardware cousin of audio-effect-plugin) and analog-vs-digital (DefinedTerm — the founding through-line promoted to its own node now that it spans instruments + effects), plus entity guitar-world (NewsMediaOrganization publisher; guitar-facing sibling of synth-anatomy/ synthtopia). Folded an “argument leaves the instrument, lands on the effect” extension into synthesis §2. No new runner-up (single clear match). Guitar World = introductory gear journalism, qualitative claims → T3.

[2026-07-09] ingest | Tasty Chips GR-MEGA — digital granular synth, Firmware 1.7 (hub-routed)

gr-mega (T2, gearnews) — hardware granular synth & sampler (€1,500+VAT): 4 layers, 20 voices/layer, 5,000 grains, 5 engines (sampling/granular/tape/granular-slice/spectral-phase-vocoder), 20→100 mod matrix. FW 1.7 reworks the granular engine (grains across all layers, pan/pitch/patch spray, pitch quantization w/ user scales, granular filter, multiband resonator). Value: the spoke’s first clearly digital/DSP instrument — anchors the digital pole of the analog-vs-digital thesis with an instrument, not a plugin, and reframes it from “which is better” to “digital enables sounds analog can’t” (new concept granular-synthesis). Also surfaced two cross-instrument motifs: “spray” randomness (also in beast-repeat) and user-scale microtuning (also in cyma-forma-alt). Maker paged tasty-chips. Updated synthesizer (analog↔digital

• synthesis-method axes) + synthesis thesis #2. +3 pages.

[2026-07-09] ingest | Arturia KeyLab mk3 “Ultra Orange” — MIDI controller (hub-routed, thin)

keylab-mk3 (T3, mixdownmag) — thin source: a colorway launch of an existing MIDI keyboard controller, no functional change. Ingested per the never-drop rule, kept mainly because it opens two new nodes: the midi-controller category (control surface, generates no sound — the input end of the chain, distinct from synth/effect) and arturia (French maker; V Collection/Analog Lab software + KeyLab hardware). Adds a fourth answer to synthesis “who moves the controls” (dedicated control surface) and a new bundle business model (hardware sold with software instruments) vs the free-plugin pattern. Thinness recorded; controller/DAW- integration flagged as a growth edge.

[2026-07-09] ingest | Beast Repeat — free Max for Live glitch/beat-repeat device (hub-routed)

beast-repeat (T2, synthanatomy) — dillon-bastan‘s free M4L rebuild/expansion of Ableton’s stock Beat Repeat: chance triggering, pitch-shift, granular/phase-vocoder stretch, per-repeat decay/width/fades, 5 built-in effects, 8-slot snapshots. The spoke’s first Max for Live source — a new format axis distinct from standalone VST3/AU (shinronin, next-oxx): host-locked to Ableton, deeply integrated, extends a stock device. Extended audio-effect-plugin (M4L format + 3rd free effect) and synthesis thesis #4. Maker paged as dillon-bastan (Person — individual M4L author, vs studio/label). New ## Person group in index.

[2026-07-09] ingest | Cyma Forma ALT — sensor-driven analog soundscape synth (hub-routed)

cyma-forma-alt (T2, gearnews) — French all-analog synth for drones/soundscapes/generative melodies. Distinctive on three fresh axes: sensor control (mic = “ears”, light sensors = “eyes”/theremin), microtuning (14 scales incl. just intonation across 5 oscillators), and a pin-matrix interface. Two MS-20-style multimode filters in series — the direct structural opposite of filtopia‘s parallel five-filter bank, which sharpened the “filter as identity” sub-thesis. Maker paged as cyma-forma. Wove into modular-routing (pin matrix = 4th instance), synthesizer (new mono/poly, filter, control, tuning axes), and synthesis (new thesis #3: the synth you don’t play by keys — sensor/generative/microtuning). First source to push the spoke past note-in/sound-out toward ambient/generative + alt-control gear (Eurorack edge).

[2026-07-09] split | Spun out from hub _inbox cluster electronic-instruments (broadened → music-tech)

Founded from a same-session burst of five hub-routed sources. Two (polyUAnalog, Filtopia) had been parked in _inbox as cluster electronic-instruments; three more arrived together (ShinRonin, MusicRadar test-equipment, Next OXX), tripping the ≥3 spin-out trigger. The cluster was broadened from “electronic-instruments” (too narrow — excludes software effects) to music-tech: sound creation & processing across hardware synths, DIY/open-hardware, effect plugins, and technique.

Ingested (all URL-only, no raw docs):

• filtopia (T2) — Analogue Solutions all-analog mono synth, 5-filter parallel filterbank. Two write-ups (synthanatomy + gearnews) folded into one page.
• polyuanalog (T1) — University of Angers open-source (MIT) analog poly synth, conductor–voice, DCO.
• shinronin (T2) — Audio Damage free modular delay/filter/saturation plugin (VST3/AU/CLAP/AUv3).
• next-oxx (T2) — Nextlight free OTT-style multiband compressor, Windows-only VST3.
• music-from-test-equipment (T2) — MusicRadar feature on lab/test-gear music (“better sine waves”).

Concept nodes: synthesizer, modular-routing, audio-effect-plugin. Maker/origin orgs: analogue-solutions, audio-damage, physics-dept-angers. Synthesis seeded with three theses (routing-over-components; the analog-vs-digital sound argument; free-plugins-as-audience-building) and two open tensions. Boundaries drawn vs loudspeaker-design-wiki (reproduction) and speech-audio-wiki (audio AI models). _inbox/polyuanalog-synth.md and _inbox/filtopia-synth.md removed (now owned here). Eurorack flagged as the next growth edge. Registered in hub wikis.md; hub log.md split entry added.

[2026-07-09] ingest | KVR Developer Challenge 2026 free synths (BPB roundup) (hub-routed, Telegram)

Ingested the BPB roundup (James Nugent, bedroomproducersblog.com) of five free software synths from the KVR Developer Challenge 2026 (50+ freebies; winners 4 Aug 2026). New pages: source summary kvr-dev-challenge-2026-free-synths (BlogPosting, T2); Event kvr-developer-challenge; five synth SoftwareApplication pages — tetraop (Tilr, 4-op FM/wavetable hybrid), ouranos7 (John Crosby Acoustics, 6-op FM/DX7 homage), identity-synth (SocaLabs, formula-oscillator poly), double-freak (Bjango, audio-following pitch-tracker), the-hydra (bdEnergy, additive); two new synthesis-method DefinedTerms fm-synthesis + additive-synthesis (siblings of granular-synthesis); five maker Organizations (tilr/john-crosby-acoustics/socalabs/bjango/bdenergy); publisher bedroom-producers-blog (NewsMediaOrganization, also covers the earlier next-oxx). Synthesis: new thesis #5 (free-software synth pole; synthesis-method as the axis of difference; counter-pole to boutique hardware) + sources updated. All T2 — press roundup, feature lists from devs, subjective sound remarks, standings unresolved. avoid-ai-writing applied (clean; house-style em-dashes kept). +14 pages.

[2026-07-10] ingest | OXI Instruments E16 performance MIDI controller (FW 1.0) (hub-routed, Telegram)

Ingested the synthanatomy launch write-up of the OXI E16: a 16-endless-encoder performance MIDI controller (192 mappable CCs across 16 scenes × 12 pages, encoder grouping, snapshot morphing, knob recording; dual USB-C, TRS MIDI, Bluetooth MIDI; €449). Firmware 1.0 adds an 8-min/16-track MIDI parameter looper (3 sync modes) + Lua scripting API. New oxi-e16 (Product, T2) + maker oxi-instruments (Organization; OXI One sequencer house). Updated midi-controller concept to a keys-vs-knobs split (keyboard/bundled-software keylab-mk3 vs standalone-premium knob-box E16 that records and replays control gestures → sequencer-adjacent). Synthesis thesis #3 (“who moves the controls”) extended. T2 vendor specs, no hands-on. avoid-ai-writing applied (clean). +2 pages, 2 updated.

[2026-07-12] ingest | Akai MPC One G2 standalone sampler (RA news, hub-routed, Telegram)

Ingested the RA (ra.co) announcement of the Akai MPC One G2, the 2nd-gen standalone MPC sampler/groovebox (8-core “4× perf”, 4GB RAM / 64GB storage, MPC 3.9 OS with a DAW-like linear arranger, 32 plugin instruments + 16 stereo audio tracks, 24-in/24-out over USB-C, built-in synth engine, Ableton Live Control, 20GB+ bundled sounds incl. NI Analog Dreams MPC Edition; blue MPC1000/4000-nod finish). $799 / MPC Key 37 G2 $999; released 12 Jul 2026. New pages: Product/source summary akai-mpc-one-g2 (T2); maker Organization akai (first workstation vendor here); new instrument-class DefinedTerm sampler (sampler↔groovebox, the sampler↔synth boundary via granular-synthesis). Synthesis: new thesis #6 — the workstation: integration/workflow as the value, not a single sound-shaping trick (host not just sound source; standalone hardware migrating toward the computer-DAW arranger workflow); resolved the “sampling/DAW cluster” open question — union scope holds, MPC is the widest single instrument yet. T2 vendor-announcement specs, no independent measurement. avoid-ai-writing applied. +3 pages, 3 spine files updated.

[2026-07-13] ingest | Xnullx: five free sound-design plugins (Synth Anatomy, hub-routed, Telegram)

Ingested Synth Anatomy’s coverage of Xnullx, a brand-new dev that shipped five free sound-design plugins at once (VST3+AU, Mac+Win): Grainbrain (multiband granular), O2 (three-band saturation+width), Bunka (beat-slicer sampler, MPC-style), Foldspace (phase-mod + wavefolding), Halide (granular freeze/spectral-smear). The load-bearing angle isn’t a single plugin — it’s that the reviewer suspects the plugins are AI-generated (generic site/UIs, all-at-once drop; reader reports of install bugs + CPU-pegging site). New pages: source summary xnullx-five-free-plugins (BlogPosting, T2); maker xnullx (Organization, watch node); publisher synth-anatomy (NewsMediaOrganization — was an unpaged recurring source: Filtopia/ShinRonin/OXI E16); new method DefinedTerm wavefolding (5th node on the synthesis-method axis, West-Coast waveshaping, ships paired with phase modulation). Decision: did NOT page the five plugins individually — held for evidence given the AI-shovelware doubt; techniques cross-linked to their method pages instead. Updated audio-effect-plugin (+batch-release/AI-generation wrinkle), granular-synthesis (granular-as-effect: Grainbrain per-band, Halide spectral smear). Synthesis: extended thesis #4 with the free-plugin shadow (machine-generated shovelware; the meta-irony that the hub itself is LLM-run), added wavefolding to the thesis #5 method fan-out. avoid-ai-writing applied (clean). +4 pages, 3 updated.

[2026-07-14] ingest | M-VAVE FM-1 pocket FM synthesizer (Synthtopia, hub-routed, Telegram)

Ingested Synthtopia’s announcement of the M-VAVE FM-1, a ~$75–100 pocket FM synth: six-operator, 32-algorithm engine (= the Yamaha DX7 spec), 12-voice, 27-key silicone keyboard, 7 knobs + TFT, built-in arp + step sequencer, multi-FX, presets; triple simultaneous MIDI (3.5mm TRS + USB-C + Bluetooth), built-in speaker + 3.5mm out, 2000mAh / ~12h battery, Win/mac/iOS/Android. New pages: Product/source summary m-vave-fm-1 (T2); maker m-vave (Organization, budget-gear pole); publisher synthtopia (NewsMediaOrganization — recurring but previously unpaged). Updated fm-synthesis (first hardware FM instance; the DX7 6-op/32-algo config as a commodity target hit at both free-software and budget-hardware ends). Synthesis: added a third economic point to thesis #5 — cheap hardware between boutique-expensive and free-software, splitting price from format; spoke’s first hardware FM + first pocket/portable instrument; triple-MIDI blurs it toward the controller role. avoid-ai-writing applied. +3 pages, 2 updated. T2 vendor announcement, no hands-on.

[2026-07-14] ingest | Korg NTS-4 DIY performance mixer (AudioTechnology, hub-routed, Telegram)

Ingested AudioTechnology’s announcement of the Korg NTS-4, a DIY self-assembly six-channel analog performance mixer kit (4th in the Nu:Tekt line): 4 stereo + 2 mono 3.5mm inputs (mono pair Eurorack-level with switchable attenuator), per-channel CUE/MUTE, per-channel SEND FX (7 options) + master TOTAL FX (10 options), stereo SEND/RETURN, MAIN L/R on ¼”, USB-C audio (48k/24-bit) + bus power, 3.5mm TRS MIDI OUT, steel chassis, 195×125×38mm. (Fetch: WebFetch 403-blocked → firecrawl recovered full text per HUB edge rule; not a transient error, no stub needed.) New pages: Product/source korg-nts-4 (T2); maker korg (Organization, Nu:Tekt DIY line); new instrument-class DefinedTerm mixer (routing/summing with no sound source); publisher audiotechnology (NewsMediaOrganization, thin). Updated modular-routing (+mixer as routing-as-the-whole-product limit case; Eurorack edge touched). Synthesis: extended thesis #1 (mixer = purest routing instance; performance CUE/MUTE ties to thesis #3; 2nd DIY device after polyuanalog; analog path + digital FX hybrid); updated the Eurorack open question (touched from the edge, not crossed) and added a new scope question (is a pure-infrastructure mixer in-domain, or studio-signal-chain drift?). avoid-ai-writing applied. +4 pages, 2 updated. T2, no hands-on.

[2026-07-17] ingest | Reason 14 review (MusicTech, hub-routed, Telegram)

Ingested MusicTech’s 8/10 review of Reason 14 by Hollin Jones — an experienced Cubase user reviewing Reason Studios’ 25-year-old DAW from the outside. The spoke’s first proper software DAW — the exact case the synthesis open question named (“whether Eurorack or a DAW proper lands”). Reason’s identity is the virtual rack you patch with cables (Tab to flip it) + the Combinator; ships in two forms — a standalone DAW and a rack plugin (Reason Rack) that runs inside a rival DAW, sans sequencer/mixer; 68 devices, 50k+ patches, VST host; £299 Reason+ / £199 Rack (perpetual) + monthly tiers the reviewer finds “redundant.” New pages: source summary reason-14-review (Review, T2); Product/SoftwareApplication reason; new DefinedTerm daw (software-class); maker reason-studios (Organization); publisher musictech (NewsMediaOrganization); author hollin-jones (Person); comparison node cubase (SoftwareApplication — the review’s yardstick, Cubase Artist £273). Updated modular-routing (Reason = routing at production scale, biggest instance) and index. Synthesis: added thesis #7 (the DAW: integration in software + routing thesis at production scale + the dual-form feature-pressure valve); answered the DAW half of the scope open question (Eurorack remains the open edge). avoid-ai-writing applied. +7 pages, 2 updated. T2 — single named practitioner’s hands-on review; counts/prices are the vendor’s.

[2026-07-17] ingest | HiChord vs Orchid ORC-1 vs Minichord — portable chord synths (Piano & Synth Magazine, hub-routed, Telegram)

Ingested a Piano & Synth Magazine three-way comparison that opens a new instrument class, chord-synthesizer (chord buttons + strum surface, Omnichord lineage; organized by how you address harmony, not how sound is made — the sharpest “who moves the controls” answer yet: a non-pianist plays because the instrument encodes the chords). New pages: source chord-synths-compared (Review, T2, url); instrument-class chord-synthesizer; three Products — hichord ($320, 7-button + looper/drums/sampler/ sequencer, “mini groovebox” = workstation corner), orchid-orc-1 ($549, voice-leading engine, 16-voice, VA/FM/reed, Kevin Parker design input = harmonic-intelligence corner), minichord ($169, open-source via Seeed Studio, USB-MIDI out = DIY corner); publisher piano-and-synth-magazine (NewsMediaOrganization); kevin-parker (Person, Tame Impala). Updated midi-controller (nearest relative — interface-as-point but makes its own sound; Minichord straddles via MIDI-out). Synthesis: added thesis #8 — the chord synth as an interface-to-harmony class, triangulated across the spoke’s existing axes (workstation #6 / DIY / synthesis-method + artist-endorsement), evidence the category is real not a gimmick. avoid-ai-writing applied. +7 pages, 2 updated. T2 editorial comparison; specs/prices are makers’.

[2026-07-22] ingest | RackDroid — VCV Rack on Android (GitHub, hub-routed, Telegram)

Ingested rackdroid (SoftwareSourceCode, T2, GPLv3): a touch-optimized Android port of VCV Rack 2 — 66 built-in modules, finger-dragged patch cables, pinch zoom, long-press numeric knob entry, Oboe/AAudio full-duplex low-latency audio, USB + BLE MIDI, WAV recording, sideloadable .rdmod packages (Bogaudio, Valley, Befaco). Android 10+/arm64/GLES3, ~40 MB APK, 30 tutorials. Adoption caveat recorded honestly: 9★ / 1 fork, nobody in the sources has run it.

This crosses the spoke’s longest-standing open edge — Eurorack — but not from the expected direction. The corpus reached the modular thread three times without crossing it: modular-routing named Eurorack as the growth edge, korg-nts-4 touched it from outside as an integration point, reason scaled the rack metaphor to a whole DAW. VCV Rack is the thing itself (any-developer modules, CV and audio as the same cable, no fixed path, the patch as the instrument) — and it entered as free software on a phone rather than as hardware. New Thing page vcv-rack holds the platform; RackDroid is the source that reveals it.

Analytical payoff recorded in two places. modular-routing gained an “unbounded case” section: every prior form exposed routing inside something bounded (one instrument / effect / mixer / DAW catalogue), Rack removes the boundary, making it the strongest instance of the page’s thesis. Synthesis thesis #1 took the same point plus the split it forces — modularity is architectural, analog is a signal-path property; the corpus had only ever met them together, and a virtual rack keeps the first while dropping the second, so it works as a control on thesis #2 (whatever survives in software wasn’t coming from the circuits). Thesis #5’s free-software pole extended from single instruments to a whole free platform (free infrastructure hosting other people’s instruments), widening the boutique gap from “one synth vs zero” to “a Eurorack case vs a free APK”, and pairing with m-vave-fm-1 on the phone-as-instrument axis.

Two port-engineering details worth keeping: platform code isolated in native/port/ over unmodified Rack v2.6.4 so the port tracks upstream (its value depends on desktop modules continuing to work), and the graphics rebuilt under GPLv3 to make distribution possible — a modular platform’s modules are their panels, so faceplate artwork is a separately-licensed asset that can bind redistribution even when the DSP is free. First time licensing-of-visual-design shows up in this spoke.

Open question updated: Eurorack half-answered — architecture in the corpus, hardware/economics/panels still out; Eurorack hardware is now the sharper open edge because there’s finally a software control to compare it against. Entity: nowheel (thin — repo carries no biographical detail). avoid-ai-writing self-pass. +3 pages, 1 page updated, 3 spine files.

[2026-07-23] ingest | Behringer CS Mini — 3-voice CS-80-inspired analog mini synth (Synth Anatomy)

Routed from the hub (route in ../log.md). URL-only, T2 — synth-anatomy recurring editorial source, but relaying a pre-release leak (spotted in Behringer’s Synthtribe app v3.2.2; no official launch, ~$99 estimate). Specs volatile/unconfirmed. New pages: behringer-cs-mini (Product, source) and behringer (Organization). CS Mini = 3-voice paraphonic analog synth inspired by the Yamaha CS-80: 3 osc (saw/sq/sine) + sub w/PWM + noise + ring-mod, resonant LPF + resonant/modulatable HPF (the CS-80 twin-filter nod), ADSR + AR-as-LFO, touch keys, MIDI, USB-C, motion sequencer. Dedup: no Behringer/CS-80 page existed. Did not page the Yamaha CS-80 — it’s the inspiration, one passing mention; kept inline (thin-node caution), page it if a second CS-80 reference lands. Gap-relevance: adds a new pole to the analog-vs-digital thread — the budget mass-market analog clone, where every prior analog instrument was boutique (filtopia £1,799, cyma-forma-alt €1,279) or DIY (korg/polyuanalog). Synthesis: added a paragraph — analog moves to the cheap end, complicating the “better sine waves” purism’s economics; a third maker-type (mass-market reissue) beside boutique/DIY; and the paraphonic≠polyphonic asterisk on the synthesizer voice model (shared filter/amp path = cheap “3 voices,” unlike the fully-poly CS-80). Entities: behringer created (Music Tribe budget-clone maker; Synthtribe pipeline). Author “Tom” (Synth Anatomy) not paged (byline; the outlet is the paged node). Verify deferred per hub policy (content-only). avoid-ai-writing run.

[2026-07-25] ingest | Miltone 4Exp — Oberheim Four Voice System recreation (DJ Mag)

Routed from the hub (route entry in ../log.md; runner-up: none — an analog hardware synth is squarely this spoke). URL-only, T3: announcement relay from a DJ/club outlet, no specs, no hands-on, delivery a year out. New pages: miltone-4exp (Product, source: true), vintage-recreation (DefinedTerm — new axis), plus entities miltone, oberheim, manfred-veber, dj-mag. Dedup: grep for oberheim|miltone|djmag|reissue|recreation|clone across wiki/ → only behringer-cs-mini / behringer. entity-index for Oberheim / Miltone / DJ Mag → NO MATCH, created new. Gap-relevance: the payoff is the pairing. behringer-cs-mini (2026-07-23) and this (2026-07-25) both recreate a five-figure 1970s analog polysynth and disagree about what recreation owes the original — Behringer keeps the idea and deletes the price (paying in paraphonic architecture), Miltone keeps the circuit and the price and sells fidelity. That’s a distinct axis from analog-vs-digital, so it got its own node, vintage-recreation, which also absorbs the DX7-spec homages (ouranos7, m-vave-fm-1) and minichord‘s Omnichord lift that had been sitting unconnected. Synthesis §2 extended with both the pairing and a third reading of “analog” — archival, where restoration expertise is the manufacturing qualification. Weakness recorded on the page in its own section: the source gives no voice count, oscillators, filters, envelopes, programmer, MIDI or CV — only “analog.” Flagged for a first-party or hands-on refresh. No contradictions. Verify deferred per hub policy (content-only, no page moves). avoid-ai-writing run.

[2026-07-26] ingest | 5 of the Best Software and Hardware Trackers (Attack Magazine)

Routed from the hub (Telegram; URL arrived with Facebook fbclid/sfnsn tracking params — canonical URL stored). T2 — Adam Douglas, 2026-07-22; a buyer’s guide, so specs and prices are the makers’ and there is no hands-on. Prices dated as a 2026-07 snapshot. New pages: attack-mag-5-trackers (Review source), tracker (DefinedTerm, interface-class), renoise + sunvox (comparison nodes), attack-magazine + adam-douglas (entities). The five, inline on the source page: SunVox (free / $5 iOS), TRX-12 ($29.99, 35 step-FX commands), Renoise ($88; Redux $56, v3.5, market leader since 2002), Dirtywave M8 Model:02 ($699, 8 mono tracks, 255 patterns), Polyend Tracker+ ($999; Mini $799 with battery + field mic). History per the source: Ultimate Soundtracker (1987, Amiga) first, OctaMED most popular, jungle/breakcore the adopting audience. Only two of the five got their own page, and for reasons outside the roundup: renoise because daw was explicitly waiting for DAW-vs-DAW comparisons, sunvox because it’s a modular-routing instrument that arrived through its sequencer. TRX-12 / M8 / Tracker+ stay in the source table — one line each, no node-level role — per the xnullx-five-free-plugins precedent for roundups. Updated daw: new section — three DAWs, three layouts (tracks-and-mixer / virtual rack / typed grid), so the category splits on layout, an axis the Cubase depth-yardstick can’t see. Updated sampler: a tracker corner of the groovebox class — M8 and Tracker+ pass the integration test with a typed grid instead of pads-and-steps, which shows the MPC layout is a choice inside the category, not its definition. Synthesis: new §9 — the tracker as a class defined by how you enter time, the second interface-defined class after chord-synthesizer; the source’s causal claim (per-line editing is cheap → jungle/IDM gestures became idiomatic) reverses the usual instrument-serves-sound direction and gives thesis #3 a fourth answer to “who moves the controls”: the person typing. Two open questions added — whether the spoke’s real taxonomy is sound-source × control-surface (testable against the next arrivals), and whether tracker hardware carries MIDI/CV (the source is silent, and modular-routing cares). Dedup: no tracker/Renoise/SunVox/Attack Magazine page existed anywhere in the hub. grep across all spokes for Attack Magazine / Adam Douglas / Alexander Zolotov → no match, created new. Weakness recorded on the page: no hands-on, no losers, nothing on MIDI/CV, file interchange, or the cost of memorizing hex effect commands. No contradictions. Verify deferred per hub policy (content-only, no page moves). avoid-ai-writing run.

[2026-07-26] ingest | remodevicocomposer.eu — Remo De Vico, composer and sound designer

Routed from the hub (Telegram; Facebook fbclid stripped). T1 — first-party site, authoritative for what he publishes and who he is. Took four fetches: the landing page reads as a portfolio, and the routable substance only appears once you follow the nav (/maxforlive/, /pure-data/, /musical-mirror/). New pages: remo-de-vico-site (WebSite source — a new @type section in the index), remo-de-vico (Person), patching-environment (DefinedTerm, software-class). Core facts: 13 M4L devices named on page 1 of 8 (Tetraligeti, Videodrums, Loop Paradox, Collapse, Vectordrone, Oblique Strategies, 4Samples, Sweetspace, Generative, Glitch Loop, Iceberg, Broken Sphere, Irrational Delay); two free Pure Data patches (Granular Philosophy + LFO for Granular) distributed to run as DAW plugins via plugdata; sample packs; a “Musical Mirror” essay series (Raymond Scott, Ligeti, Moog, Daphne Oram, Tomita, vector synthesis, generative music, rights organizations). Training: La Sapienza (thesis on Luciano Berio), Cosenza Conservatory, Santa Cecilia under Giorgio Nottoli, masterclasses with Francis Dhomont and Mario Bertoncini — an acousmatic/electroacoustic lineage, a first here. One concept node rather than two: patching-environment covers Max/MSP and Pure Data together (same lineage, same author) with M4L vs plugdata as the two DAW-wrapper routes inside it. Splitting them would have duplicated the argument, and the argument is what’s new — a Max or Pd patch wires the primitives a vcv-rack module is made of, so the routing surface and the programming surface are the same thing. Updated modular-routing (new section: routing as the programming language — the thesis below the instrument layer), audio-effect-plugin (plugdata as the host-portable counterpart to host-locked M4L). Synthesis §4 gains a third read of “free”: not a strategy at all. No branding, no pricing, no docs — the devices are byproducts of scoring, published because a patch costs nothing to copy. That completes a five-point spectrum (studio reviving IP / label seeding producers / developer courting attention / suspected machine-generated batch / composer emptying his tools folder), and it complicates the xnullx suspicion: a large undocumented all-at-once drop read as the tell for machine generation, and this is a human one with the same shape. Dedup: no Remo De Vico, Max-for-Live, Pure Data or plugdata page existed; M4L had only been described inline on beast-repeat / dillon-bastan, which is why a second M4L source earned the concept node. Weakness recorded in its own section: no device is documented — names and download links only, no descriptions, prices, or Live/Max version requirements. Everything about what an individual device does is inference from its name, and flagged as such. Whether the M4L devices are free is not stated; only the two Pd patches are explicitly free. Entities: remo-de-vico only. His teachers (Nottoli, Dhomont, Bertoncini, Berio, Rostagno) are evidenced but tangential under the ENTITIES relevance gate — biography, not spoke domain — so named in prose, not paged. No contradictions. Verify deferred per hub policy (content-only, no page moves). avoid-ai-writing run.

[2026-07-28] ingest | Hermetic Modular Alchemy Lab — open-source DSP module platform (synthanatomy.com)

Routed here by the hub (runner-up: embedded-iot-wiki — it’s an STM32H750 board, but that spoke’s own rule routes audio hardware by purpose, and a Eurorack module’s purpose is music). T2 — Synth Anatomy’s usual editorial news piece, not a hands-on; every spec is the maker’s and nothing is measured. New: hermetic-alchemy-lab (source), daisy (platform), hermetic-modular (Organization). Updated: modular-routing, analog-vs-digital, synthesis (Eurorack question closed + new thesis note), index. Reused synth-anatomy — already paged, not duplicated.

This closes the spoke’s standing Eurorack open question. VCV Rack / RackDroid had crossed the format in software on 2026-07-22, leaving hardware, panels and economics explicitly open. All three land: 12HP, skiff-friendly, $299 introductory / $389 MSRP, 6 pots + 3 buttons + 10 jacks + 102 addressable RGB LEDs on a physical panel.

Three findings. (1) It splits the routing thesis. modular-routing says character lives in how blocks are wired. The Alchemy Lab keeps the format and moves the wiring inside: the panel is fixed, the signal path is firmware, and even which CV a jack carries is an SDK decision — the same 12HP face becomes ECHOA (four delay lines per channel, 1 ms–16 s, digital/BBD/tape/vinyl degradation, Schroeder reverb via four-stage all-pass) or SPAGYROS (three-slot performance chain). Set against vcv-rack it’s the exact mirror: VCV is unbounded patchable topology with no panel, this is a real panel with a reloadable topology. The physical patch and the reconfigurable architecture come apart — Eurorack had always shipped them together, and each turns out to be available without the other. (2) One board under several brands. The article’s comparison set is the finding: Noise Engineering’s Versio/Alia/Legio and Bastl’s Kastle 2 “are also based on the Daisy.” Four product lines, one commodity Electrosmith board. That’s analog-vs-digital read at the business layer — in analog the circuit is the product (filtopia‘s filter bank can’t be dropped into someone else’s panel), in digital the compute is fungible and identity moves up into panel, jacks and DSP code. Paged daisy as its own node because it’s a hub with four evidenced product lines hanging off it, not a passing spec. (3) The open-source claim is narrower than the headline. Quoted: “Every hardware abstraction layer of the Alchemy Lab module is open-source” — that’s the HAL. The article confirms an SDK exists but states no license, no language, nothing about whether hardware design files are published, and nothing about how firmware gets loaded. Recorded as a gap, not smoothed into “open-source platform,” because this spoke’s existing open-source corner is specific (polyuanalog MIT with board files, minichord publishing hardware) and HAL-only would be materially weaker than either. Needs the project’s repo. Residual gaps noted in synthesis: the economics arrived as one price point, not a market, and a purely analog Eurorack module — the case where circuit and character can’t be separated — is still unsourced. Verify deferred per hub policy (content-only). avoid-ai-writing run.

[2026-08-04] lint | re-tiered on what pages rest on, not who published them

The curator’s resolution of the standing question this spoke had carried since 2026-08-03 and the hub had re-deferred twice: 23 pages graded T2 on the strength of enthusiast/trade mastheads, where a literal reading of ../QUALITY.md put them at T4 (trade press).

Neither answer was taken. The ladder gained a rule instead — tier the page by what it rests on: someone tested, measured or compared it → T2; the maker’s specs and price relayed → T3, because a press release passed through a masthead is the vendor speaking, which is what T3 already describes; filler → T4; a project’s own repo stays T1 whoever links to it.

Result across the 23: 16 → T3, 6 stay T2, 1 → T1. Plus akai-mpc-one-g2 T4 → T3 (an announcement is first-party information, not filler).

Spoke tier mix: T1 2 / T2 23 / T3 2 / T4 2 → T1 3 / T2 6 / T3 19 / T4 1.

The spoke was already inconsistent with itself. keylab-mk3 (Mixdown) and miltone-4exp (DJ Mag) were sitting at T3 for the same kind of coverage a dozen pages had at T2. This pass is mostly the spoke applying its own two exceptions to the rest.

Kept at T2 because somebody evaluated something: reason-14-review (scored 8/10 by a named practitioner), chord-synths-compared and attack-mag-5-trackers (comparisons across three and five products), kvr-dev-challenge-2026-free-synths (five chosen from 50+), xnullx-five-free-plugins, music-from-test-equipment (reporting a practice, not a product).

rackdroid → T1: never press at all, a GPLv3 project’s own repository, the grade polyuanalog already carried.

Publisher pages now say the grade follows the page. synth-anatomy, synthtopia, audiotechnology, attack-magazine and bedroom-producers-blog each carried a sentence asserting a default tier for the outlet; all rewritten. BPB is the cleanest illustration — its roundup stays T2 (selecting five standouts from 50+ is a judgement the developers did not make) while the five per-instrument pages it seeded moved to T3 (feature descriptions relayed). The evaluative act sits in the roundup.

What this costs, stated plainly: the floor reading goes from T2-heavy to T3-heavy. No page’s content changed and no claim was withdrawn. What changed is that the tier no longer implies a press release was independently verified. Growth edge 5 closed; edge 1 (analog purism, measured) is unchanged and is now the only thing that would actually raise the floor.

One page the rule does not settle: analog-vs-digital-pedals stays the lone T4 — a Guitar World explainer resting on neither testing nor first-party information. Recorded as a genuine edge case rather than forced into a bucket.

[2026-08-05] ingest | MD-7 Pocket Synthesizer (Mach Devices store page)

Routed from the hub (Telegram, Google share link → machdevices.com). The storefront lists exactly one product, so the “Products” page and the product page are the same source. Fetched both plus the marketing sections via Firecrawl after WebFetch hit the shop’s SPA shell.

New pages: md-7-pocket-synthesizer (Product, T3, first-party store copy for an unshipped device) and mach-devices (Organization).

What’s new for the spoke: an instrument whose pitch is haptic feedback — a FOC motor disc under the encoder rendering detents, virtual walls and per-parameter textures. Every control surface the corpus held until now was one-way, so this opens a new synthesis question: does the control surface push back, and is that a second direction on the existing control axis rather than a new instrument class? No answer available — nothing here is tested.

What the source does not contain: any synthesis-engine description. Voices, oscillators, filters, polyphony — none of it is stated, so the page cannot say what kind of synth this is. The three ports are never identified either. Recorded as a hole, not smoothed over.

Also added to Contradictions: “open source” now appears at three different strengths in the corpus — polyuanalog (boards + code, MIT), hermetic-alchemy-lab (HAL only), and the MD-7 (promised, repository not published).

Price HK$3,130 and the late-September-2026 pre-sale date are volatile; re-check at release.

[2026-08-06] ingest | Csound (Wikipedia)

Routed here by the hub. It arrived inside a batch of ~14 programming-language sources heading for ../programming-languages-wiki, and it is the one that did not belong there: Csound is a language, but its substance is sound synthesis, so the dominant-substance rule puts it in this spoke.

New page: csound (T2). What it adds that nothing here had: the MUSIC-N lineage back to Max Mathews at Bell Labs, and the orchestra/score split — a patch written as text and a performance written as data. Set against vcv-rack and the Eurorack pages, it is the same build-a-signal-path idea a few decades earlier and without cables. Its ~1,700 opcodes also make fm-synthesis, additive-synthesis and granular-synthesis into components rather than product identities, which is the opposite of how every instrument page in this wiki is organized.

Held back: version 6.18.1 dates from November 2022, so the “actively maintained” claim rests on the GitHub pointer rather than on a recent release. Language-design angle noted as cross-spoke adjacency, not duplicated.

[2026-08-06] ingest | Pure Data (pure-data/pure-data)

Routed here by the hub in the same batch as csound — both are programming languages for sound, and both land in this spoke because sound is the substance.

New page: pure-data (T1, project repo). The pairing is what makes it worth having. Pd draws the instrument and plays it live; csound writes the instrument as text and the performance as a score. Between them the spoke now covers both ways a synth can be written down, and both descend from the Bell Labs / MIT computer-music line. Pd’s canvas is also modular-routing taken literally — the cable carries the program’s control flow, not just audio — which puts it next to vcv-rack in form and a long way from it in purpose.

Puckette’s authorship of Max connects this to beast-repeat (a Max for Live device) and so to mainstream production tooling. Noted as context: the repository page does not state it.

Held back: no version number and no release cadence on the page, so currency rests on the commit count (7,866) rather than on a dated release. Licence is “custom, see LICENSE.txt” — not read.

[2026-08-08] ingest | Two AES papers on digital transparency — the oldest edge, closed and contested

Research pass, hub ## Most wanted edge #9 (“analog purism, measured” — the spoke’s oldest open question). Two T1 peer-reviewed AES sources, and they disagree.

meyer-moran-adda-loop — Meyer & Moran, JAES 55(9), Sept 2007. A CD-standard 16-bit/44.1 kHz A/D/A loop switched in and out of high-resolution playback, double-blind, over a year, on professional monitors and electrostatic systems, with engineers, students and audiophiles listening. Undetectable at normal-to-loud levels by any subject on any system.

digital-filter-audibility — Stuart & Craven, AES convention paper. Isolates the anti-alias and mastering filters and finds listeners are sensitive to them; concludes some audible signals cannot be encoded transparently by a standard CD.

Both kept, written into ## Contradictions / tensions rather than resolved — and they are reconcilable: a system can be transparent in ordinary use while one component is discriminable under conditions built to expose it. Recorded position: transparent in practice, not provably transparent in principle. Interest declared on the page — Stuart & Craven’s side is the argument behind high-resolution and MQA advocacy, which is a reason to want a third party, not to lower the tier.

The substantive result for the spoke: the analog-character claim does not come from sampling. analog-vs-digital had reasoned its way there; it now has measurement. Successor edge written for the untouched half — nobody here has measured an analog circuit against its own digital emulation.

Floor: T1 4 → 6 on a spoke whose floor has been its standing weakness.

[2026-08-10] ingest | textbeat — plaintext music sequencer and MIDI shell

Routed here from the hub (Telegram). Runner-up foss-applications-wiki, declined: an MIT tool a user runs locally does touch that spoke, but the substance is sequencing and music theory, not self-hosting. Noted on the page as a cross-spoke adjacency rather than split.

textbeat written (T1, the project’s own README and repo metadata; nothing run, no audio heard).

It extends tracker in a direction the spoke had not held. Every tracker here is a program with a grid inside it — renoise, SunVox, the M8. textbeat keeps the vertical column convention and hands editing to vim, so the tracker gesture arrives inside a general text editor with macros, registers and version control applying to the score.

The finding worth keeping is the cell contents. Trackers spell notes absolutely; textbeat’s cells hold scale degrees and chord functions (1maj, 2m, b7), resolved against the current scale at playback. A phrase is stored as a relationship, so transposition is a scale change rather than a rewrite. That puts it beside chord-synthesizer — hichord and minichord make theory playable by putting it under buttons; this makes it editable by writing it as text. Same idea, opposite ergonomics.

Dormancy recorded, not smoothed over. The README calls the project “still very new” and the repo has not been pushed since 24 March 2023 — a claim that stopped being true without anyone editing it. Planned features (VST, recording) have three quiet years behind them and are not read as capabilities.

[2026-08-12] ingest | Where the warmth actually is (research pass, via hub quality cycle)

Hunted for growth edge 1’s successor — the circuit half of the analog argument, which meyer-moran-adda-loop and digital-filter-audibility leave alone because both test conversion.

moog-ladder-nonlinear-digital (T1, Antti Huovilainen, Helsinki University of Technology, Proc. DAFx-04, 4 pp, read in full). The paper opens on this spoke’s own argument — existing digital Moog filters “are linear and some people feel that they sound ‘digital’ and lack the ‘warmth’ that is charasteristic of analog filters” — and answers it by deriving the filter from Moog’s 1965 transistor ladder rather than approximating its response.

The finding, and it is a mechanism rather than a verdict. The nonlinearity is not a flavour added to a digital filter; it falls out of the circuit. Each differential pair passes a tanh of the base-emitter voltage difference over the thermal voltage, and because the four stages are buffered the ladder discretizes as a cascade of one-pole IIR sections with the nonlinearity embedded. Hence: “there are no extra coefficients that would need to be tuned by ear — the ‘warmth’ is determined by the input amplitude.”

Why it lands on both sides. It grants the purists’ premise — the character is in the circuit’s nonlinearity, the same place analog-vs-digital-pedals puts overdrive — and denies the conclusion that the nonlinearity is unmodellable. What is left of the digital shortfall is specific: oversampling is mandatory for the embedded nonlinearity, and the feedback path’s unit delay adds 4·pstage + 180·fc/Fs, so resonance drifts off cutoff and the 3 dB-per-stage attenuation no longer holds, meaning resonance needs per-frequency compensation. Engineering costs with known fixes.

Edge 1 re-specified, not closed, and the reason is on the page. There is no bench measurement, no hardware in the loop and no listening test here — the validation is analytical. What the edge wants now is narrower than before: a discrimination result, an ABX or bench comparison of a ladder circuit against a model of that same circuit. Another modelling paper will not do it.

Folded into synthesis thread 2, which had been conducted entirely in adjectives until now.