Behringer has revealed the KICK, a new sampling workstation designed around open-source software from the beginning. And with a reported target price of around $150, it raises some interesting questions about how music hardware could be developed and supported in the future.

This week brought a pretty interesting mix of new hardware, custom firmware and experimental ideas. The SP404 MK2 custom firmware scene somehow found another way to completely rethink what the sampler can do, Donner showed off Sample Boy, a new portable sampling workstation, and an open-source synth concept is being designed around swappable firmware from the beginning

It seemed like this week was turning out to be quieter on the music gear front than the last few, but to my surprise, quite a lot has happened. Twisted Electrons opened preorders for an unusually deep hybrid groovebox, 1010music gave Bento and Blackbox 2 some substantial new production tools, an offshoot of DOOM OS is turning the SP404 MK2’s sound generator into something much more capable, and Teenage Engineering’s founder says the company plans to eventually stop making sy

After a couple of weeks dominated by custom firmware and community-built operating systems, this week's new music gear announcements has shifted back toward hardware and creative production tools. Here are a few of the things that caught my attention this week.

Last week, custom firmware felt like an interesting trend that was starting to bubble up around samplers and grooveboxes. This week, it got a lot more real. The SP404 MK2 already has a publicly available custom OS, the original Digitakt has gained a new synth engine through unofficial firmware, and the Model:Cycles is being pushed well beyond its stock feature set.

This was a surprisingly busy week for hardware music making. The SP404MKII community has started digging into the sampler’s firmware, Polyend introduced a completely new looper and drum machine, Native Instruments gave Maschine some long-requested sequencing tools, and even the decades-old MPC2000 and MPC2000XL are getting new features. Here are four things that caught my attention this week. SP404 MK2 Custom Firmware Might Actually Be Really Close The SP404MKII has received