Custom Firmware Is Still Booming: Third-Party Hacks for Sequential Prophet-5, Arturia MicroFreak & Novation Circuit Tracks
The vibe-coding wave of new firmware continues!
3,8 / 5,0 | 
Three new third-party hacks have dropped for hardware, with custom firmware appearing for Sequential, Arturia and Novation instruments. Would you be willing to risk the brick?
Third-Party Hacks
New Firmware for Prophet-5, MicroFreak & Circuit Tracks
New features for older gear are always welcome. Some companies – Novation and Arturia especially – like to extend the usefulness and life of their gear by periodically adding new parameters and capabilities. Now that vibe-coding is a very real thing thanks to the power and availability of AI, we’re being hit with a veritable avalanche of third-party hacks for hardware too. Last week we talked about some of the bigger ones for Elektron, Roland and Akai gear. Today we have three more.
All of the firmware we cover in this article is free.
Third-Party Hacks: Sequential Prophet-5 & 10 prophet-rev4-mods
Third-party hacks for the Rev4 Sequential Prophet-5 and Prophet-10 are not new. An arpeggiator mod has been going around for awhile. But this new firmware, called prophet-rev4-mods, adds quite a bit more.
With the firmware, you get an arpeggiator with five modes (up, down, up/down, random and assign), one to four octaves, hold with re-latch, a tempo of 40-300 BPM, MIDI clock sync, 13 note values and even Prophet-6-style swing; a polyphonic step sequencer with up to 512 steps of chords that can work in conjunction with the arpeggiator; keyboard octave shift plus or minus two octaves; and arp and sequencer information saved to patch memory.
The prophet-rev4-mods gets added to Main OS 2.1.0 as a firmware patch and you install it over USB. The developer says that it’s been verified on a Prophet-10 Rev4 but not on a Prophet-5.
Sequential Prophet-10 is available from our affiliate partners Thomann* and Sweetwater*.
Third-Party Hacks: Arturia MicroFreak Superfreaker
The third-party hacks continue with Superfreaker, a collection of three firmware modules for the Arturia MicroFreak. The MicroFreak, if you’re unfamiliar, is a fantastic little monophonic digital synth packed with all sorts of weird and wild sound engines inside. Arturia keeps updating the thing too, but apparently modder Freakier Firmware decided it still wasn’t good enough.
Superfreaker, as the mod is called, comes in three freaky flavors. Pack one, called Essentials, is the base that the other packs build on, and contains functionality like a separate release for the envelope, legato glide, transpose, a metronome, sequencer shortcuts, and more. Next there’s Loud, which boosts both the headphones and line out by +7dB. Lastly, there’s Sound, which brings drive and lo-fi effects to the engine, noise and tremolo, a tape echo, a wavefolder and a square wave sub octave plus shortcuts for the new features.
Superfreaker lets you add the new firmware via a patcher, with the option to go back to the original mode available.
Arturia MicroFreak is available from our affiliate partners Thomann* and Sweetwater*.
Third-Party Hacks: Novation Circuit Tracks CIRCUITS-HACKS-RC
Novation’s Circuit Tracks has a lot of fans. But judging by the response to this third-party hack called CIRCUITS-HACKS-RC, there was a lot of frustration happening too. The mod brings TONS of features to the groovebox, including shortcuts and usability improvements as well as new control modes and DSP brush-ups.
Some highlights include using MIDI tracks as sound engines, sample capturing, a glitch control mode, new master bus Grid FX, morphing oscillators, a VA drum engine, a granular synth, and more.
Novation Circuit Tracks is available at our affiliate partners Thomann* and Sweetwater*.
Third-Party Hacks: Safety First
Note that with any third-party firmware, the risk of damage to your instrument exists. It sure would suck to brick your Prophet-10. Make sure you know what you’re doing, and that you trust the developer, before attempting any third-party hacks.
More Information
- More about synthesizers
- Buy synthesizers at Thomann*
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