Syntakt Firmware Workbench

Change how your Syntakt sounds, in three steps: load your firmware file, make your changes, build a new file. Everything happens in this browser tab. Nothing is uploaded, and this site cannot talk to your instrument.

Unofficial. Not affiliated with, endorsed by or supported by Elektron.

Before you flash anything

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The way back: hold FUNC while powering the Syntakt on to reach the Early Startup Menu, choose OS UPGRADE, and send the official .syx over a MIDI DIN cable with a real MIDI interface (USB does not do this). Confirm you own that cable and interface, and keep the official file on your disk, before you flash anything from this site.

The authors used that recovery path themselves, over MIDI DIN, on OS 1.41, on one unit. That is not a guarantee for yours. Verify it on your own instrument first.

There is no server here, no upload, no analytics and no external request of any kind. The site reads the file you choose and writes a new file to your download folder. Flashing is a separate step that you do yourself, with Elektron's own tools. You do all of this at your own risk.

1 Load your firmware file

Drop your Syntakt firmware file here.

The official Syntakt_OS1.41.syx, or an image you built here.

Your file and your changes stay in this browser, so a reload does not lose them. Press Forget my files to erase them.

2 Make your changes

Open a tool and make your changes there.

Nothing is written to a file until you build in step 3.

  • Loading the tools ...

3 Build and download

Build your new firmware file.

Load a firmware file first.

Using more than one tool

Load your file once, change what you like in as many tools as you like, build once. Tools that touch different parts of the firmware can be combined; a tool that would overwrite another one is blocked before you start.

To add something to a file you built here earlier, just load that file in step 1. The site knows its own work. Adding the official file next to it is recommended: only then can a tool show you what is already changed and put the original sounds back.

Details: how that is decided

Every tool declares, up front, the exact byte ranges it may write. Two tools can be combined when those ranges do not touch; when they overlap the site refuses instead of guessing. No tool changes the length of what a section holds, so every offset inside it stays where it was. This is the weakest useful guarantee, deliberately: disjoint bytes mean the tools cannot corrupt each other, not that they make musical sense together. That part is your judgement.

Some parts of the firmware are stored packed. A tool that changes one of those is allowed to, and the site packs it again when you build: that part of the build takes about twenty seconds and the file comes out a little smaller or larger than the one you loaded. The page shows both sizes before you download.

An image is recognised without the official file because the site stores SHA-256 fingerprints of the official firmware, never the firmware itself. Anything it cannot account for - another tool's work, a file some other program rewrote, a damaged download - is refused, with the sections listed.

Supported firmware

Syntakt OS 1.41 only. Every tool here writes at places that were found by reading that exact version. Another version is built differently, so a file that is not OS 1.41 is refused instead of patched blindly.

You supply the file. This site contains no Elektron firmware and no factory sounds: everything you see in a tool is read from the file on your own disk.

In progress

A safer test loop - every change that touches program code is now tried in an emulator before it goes anywhere near a real instrument (the digikit emulator, a separate GPL project, unmodified in spirit: it runs our firmware file, we do not ship it). Data-only changes (waves, pictures) never needed this.

If you are working on something similar, or want to, open an issue first so nobody does the same thing twice.