We now finally have at least one thing clear regarding Synth1...

[EvilDragon]

Some days ago on Surge Synth Team Discord server, @arturrembe reacted to one of my throwaway lines to somebody who was visiting Japan, "hey maybe you should go find if Ichiro Toda is still alive and ask him kindly if he would want to open source Synth1?".

arturrembe then e-mailed Hyakken of HY-Plugins with a polite expansion of my throwaway line. Hyakken said they'll try and respond back. I actually don't know if artur got that answer yet, but it doesn't matter necessarily because the story continues.

A few lines later, another one of SST members, nuoun, found a user on GitHub (eijis_pan) who according to Synth1 product page was the person who did the Mac port of Synth1, and also seemed quite active. So artur messaged eijis_pan similarly.

A day passed. eijis-pan replied:

彼は、ソースは公開しないと言っていました

"He said he wouldn't release the source."


And so there we have it. Sorry all for the bummer ending. I would be a terrible script writer!

[jamcat]

Hey, at least he didn't string people along for 10 years, as has happened before...

[yzcoruhT]

Such a shame... but... life goes on. Thanks for letting us know.

[Seafire Mk2]

Why would he? Why would anyone want it?

It's a relic, doesn't come close to stuff available now

[jamcat]

Clearly someone wants it, or they wouldn't ask.

Not everyone wants the same stuff for the same reasons.

[Sound Author]

Too bad. I spent a lot of time in Synth1 when I first started out. I made some nice patches for it back in 2014, which I can play on my M1 Mac (after bypassing the security alert) but I have no idea what the Windows experience of Synth1 has been like in the last few years. Even by today's standards, Synth1 has a nice sound. I would've been happy to make new patches for it if it was still actively supported.

[EvilDragon]

It's been rock solid for years on Windows, still is.

[Seafire Mk2]

Clearly someone wants it, or they wouldn't ask.

Not everyone wants the same stuff for the same reasons.

Can't be that hard to copy/reverse engineer. I'm sure the boys and girls at surge or whatever can do it, seem like very intelligent coders, when they already have the code.

[EvilDragon]

We don't have the code, that's the thing!

Also, reverse engineering it without permission is not how we roll. And it's not really the right thing to do either. But somebody else can absolutely be our guest and try.

[Seafire Mk2]

Very generous of you

Presumably you don't use TUS stuff...

[EvilDragon]

I do, for the hardware synths I own and have ROMs of. But that is a different thing altogether.

Also - if you think it can't be that hard to reverse engineer Synth1, why don't you try and do it? It's easy to be an armchair programmer!

[FrettedSynth]

I do, for the hardware synths I own and have ROMs of. But that is a different thing altogether.

Also - if you think it can't be that hard to reverse engineer Synth1, why don't you try and do it? It's easy to be an armchair programmer!

Bummer, I'm sure Surge Synth team would have done it justice. Thanks for all you have done.

[Vortifex]

That's a shame. I know he doesn't owe anyone anything, but I don't see why he wouldn't make it open source if he's been giving it away all these years.

[JerGoertz]

That's a shame. I know he doesn't owe anyone anything, but I don't see why he wouldn't make it open source if he's been giving it away all these years.

Maybe he feels like it's his "baby"? I could understand wanting to keep ownership of it.

[EvilDragon]

That's one possibility. Another one, which somehow makes more sense to me, is that Daichi-san might be embarrased about his old code and that's why he doesn't want to release it out in the wild. And that's understandable, too.