Korg’s Volca Sample has been one of their most hotly debated recent introductions.
The new Volca is inexpensive (street price around $160) for a sample sequencer – but Korg makes that price point by leaving out sampling hardware. So you can sequence samples, mangle samples and load it up with your custom samples – but it depends on an external app to do the sampling and sample management.
And, while Korg has released a free sampling tool for the Volca Sample, AudioPocket, the app is only available for iOS.
Now Korg is opening up sampling for the Volca Sample to everything and everyone. Korg has released a free software development kit (SDK), designed to help developers create apps that can talk to the Volca Sample.
Here’s what Korg has to say about free Volca Sample SDK:
This SDK allows you to create your own tools with the interface that you design for your platform. Not only will this library unleash the potential to load samples and sequences, it will empower users to combine this code with other features of your making.
Features:
- encode sample data for transfer into volca sample
- encode a 16 step sequence for transfer into volca sample
- delete specific samples in the volca sample
- delete all the samples in the volca sample
You can download the SDK via github.
This SDK makes the Korg Volca Sample a lot more interesting. It opens the door for developers to create sampling apps, for all types of platforms, that connect to the Volca Sample. It also means that we’re likely to see existing samplers for iOS add the ability to write samples to it.
With the SDK, Korg is turning the Volca Sample from a product into a platform that developers can target with their apps. We’re looking forward to seeing what developers do with this.
Sick! Sampling for the masses
Imagine future integration with audiobus.. this will be amazing
So, um…. elephant in the room. When are they releasing the hardware?
They’re available now in limited supplies.
So, are you holding out on us, or are you going to tell where?
On one hand you could accuse them of being lazy and instead of developing a software for Android or other platforms, they leave that to someone else, but on the other hand this could open up a world of possibilities…
The app they made for ios is nothing to write home about.. Really basic. No way to transfer samples from other apps to it and only iTunes filesharing which everyone knows sucks.
The apps you will see on android will be better than korgs offering..
You can use android phone to transfer your sample. Search for volca sample transfer in google play. It is a recent app.
The app they made for ios is nothing to write home about.Really basic. No way to transfer samples from other apps to it and only iTunes filesharing which everyone knows is crappy.
The apps you will see on android will be better than korgs offering.
100% approval here! All WIN!
This is a huge boon for the Open Source community & who knows what creative developers will make with the SDK!
Fantastic! I knew Korg wouldn’t let us down!
THANK YOU for allowing us all to potentially use the Volca Sample. Now . . . we wait for developers to pick up the ball 🙂
This is probably better in the long run than if they’d just came out with minimal clients for Android, Mac & Windows. Developers will have an incentive to offer this as a feature in their apps.
With this announcement, the decision to leave sampling out off the Volca Sample seems like a smart move. It keeps the cost down and multi-touch sample editing with a high-res screen is always going to blow away what you could do with cheap hardware.
Wait. It’s called Korg SYRO?
Think there are some Aphex Twin fans over at Korg?
This is great news. All those people going nuts about the iOS thing can now join in the fun should they wish 🙂 For me this thing keeps getting better and better. For the guy asking when it’s out I’ve got one pre-ordered at Andertons (UK) and they are saying January although both Korg (on Twitter) and the Sonic State vid said December. They are already available in Japan apparently as well (according to one guy on YouTube who has one). It would be nice to get it before Xmas but January is usually a quiet month anyway so this would be a welcome addition then!
I’ve had the volca sample preordered for months, I hope it ships soon. I had hope that it would not be ios dependent and korg came though in a big way. Can’t wait to see what someone does with the sdk and an arduino.
I’ve had the volca sample preordered for months, I hope it ships soon. I had hope that it would not be ios dependent and korg came though in a bi g way. Can’t wait to see what someone does with the sdk and an arduino.
I will keep hold of mpc.
Awesome!!!
Synthesizers go Homebrew. Waiting for the Magic Lantern Hack.. Yessssss!!!
I love the all around Volca concept und it´s special sound. Made funny gigs with them.
But now it reaches a higher level.
If there´s a CPU(DSP) in it, it might be programmable (maybe over the audio data connection).
Nice Move!
I’m liking this thing even more & seems that it could be quite programmable. I’d like to see if the internal effects could be changed or messed around with & resampling employed. Some form of sample transfer back/foward to the mac would be cool too but internal resample faster. I think this could be the most interesting Volca of them all – GOOD WORK KORG 🙂
I heard its a total of 4mB sample memory in the thing.
open api on any device is a win-situation… but that part, where they become lazy: they should make at least one app, that utilize at least some of funcion of those interfaces :))
Bastards! Where’s myAtari 2600 interface? Korg is a bunch of sheeple! Total fail! 🙂
the funny thing is it’s pretty easy to do the transfer from almost anything.
“KORG SYRO encodes binary data into audio using QAM (quadrature amplitude modulation). Like the old dial-up modems!”
major props to korg. the innovative synthesis of tomorrow will be coded by the users of today. (if you want to predict the future just look back 30 years 🙂 )
i think the really interesting thing here is the stuff you ca do to with patterns. i hope this works with the other volcas. anyone tried yet?
oh and i just realized you might be able to load pattern data as samples into one volca and play it back into the other.
Something that has a Bass and Treble knob by default is dodgy.
I really like the Volca line, but this one is digital, when the other 3 are analog. It’s not like the others in the set.
Personally, I am skipping this one and spending the money on the Electribe Sampler when it comes out.
I feel this is more of a gadget/toy than a serious piece of gear. Pass.
You say it’s digital like that is a bad thing. It’s a sampler!
The nice thing about the Volca Sample is that it gives Volca fans a much more complete set of tools to work with, and it’s still pretty cheap.
If you want to create live setup that includes samples and loops, you can do that with the Volca Sample, where otherwise you’d have to sync your volca’s to a laptop, iPad or some other hardware sampler.
Got one of these on Saturday and whilst it’s a great machine many respects, imo having to use an app to transfer samples is a big fail on Korg’s part. I’m using the CEVS app for Android and I’ve spent 4 days attempting to sync 20 samples to no avail – the most I can get on the Volca at once is 5 samples and they’re not even very big.
Of the 99 on board samples nearly half of them I find fairly useless for what I want so if I can’t replace them it’s all a bit pointless.
Wish I’d gone straight for the Electribe 2 now as the Volca feels like a toy in may respects. It’s a real shame as it sounds punchy and has some nice features, but it could have been sooo much better.