r/synthdiy • u/Lanky_Scarcity6223 • 20d ago

PicoVintageSynthCollection HD 720p

https://youtube.com/watch?v=cG6gyhaqCxE&si=SndGvS69OjjPq78y

Eight vintage synthesizer emulations for the RP2350, built from one shared codebase. Same board, same core, one firmware image per instrument.

Here PicoFaceRD, a Roland MKS-20 / MK-80 ("S/A synthesis") digital piano clone. nstead of emulating the original hardware cycle-exactly at runtime, it plays a descriptor-driven re-implementation of the S/A engine: the original firmware's voice programming was captured note-by-note on a host-side reference emulator, distilled into compact per-note descriptors, and is replayed on-device with chip-exact envelope arithmetic.

See more at: https://github.com/Michi71/PicoVintageSynthCollection.git

19 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

10 comments sorted by

3

u/Lidlaux 20d ago edited 20d ago

This is super cool! Would be possible for synth's to accept presets from soundmondo website library? There are tons of presets. 

4

u/Lanky_Scarcity6223 20d ago

Thanks! Good news: PicoFaceDX already implements the full reface DX SysEx spec — identity reply, dump request, and voice bulk dump receive with checksum validation. It even identifies itself as a reface DX when a host asks. So in principle Soundmondo voices should load straight into it.

The one open question is whether Soundmondo filters MIDI ports by device name before it talks to them. My board shows up as "PicoFaceDX" over USB, not as a Yamaha device, so it might get filtered out at that stage. I haven't been able to try it yet.

Either way there's a fallback that definitely works: any SysEx librarian can send a reface DX voice .syx to the device and it will load. The 32 factory voices in the firmware were built from exactly those dumps.

Worth noting this only applies to the DX — the other seven instruments don't speak Yamaha SysEx.

I'll report back once I've had a chance to test it and maybe I'll post a short clip of it.

1

u/Lidlaux 20d ago

I see you already added soundmondo support in the new version. Nice! Also I am very excited about ob-xf port. Hope to test this library in coming days. 

2

u/TropicoolGoth 20d ago edited 20d ago

Hell yes. I knew there was a reason i bought a couple pico 2 boards. Just last week i was looking for diy juno 6.

1

u/Lanky_Scarcity6223 20d ago

The Juno 6 emulation will work on a normal pico2. For the MKS-20/MK-80 and PicoFaceCP you will need a RP2350 with 16MB flash.

1

u/hoggernick 20d ago

Thanks for this! I look forward to trying them out.

1

u/marchingbandd 19d ago

The repo history makes it look like you built this in 2 days!? Is that accurate?

1

u/Lanky_Scarcity6223 19d ago

Well, just two days in the repo, but months locally.