Firmware Docs for the OP-1

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Documentation and research for creating custom firmware for the OP-1.

Firmware Description

The firmware update files that TE distribute contain the full firmware needed to run the synth. The files are named something like 'op1_218.op1' and begin with a 4 byte CRC32 checksum. The rest of the file is the actual firmware compressed with LZMA. The checksum is used to verify that the entire file got transfered to the OP-1 and that it's contents haven't changed during the transfer.

|    CRC32 (4 bytes)    |    LZMA compressed data (the rest of the file size)    |

Decompressing the LZMA data yields a TAR archive, which can be unpacked to reveal all files in the firmware. The directory structure is shown below.

├── content
│   ├── audio
│   │   ├── drum [.raw files]
│   │   │   └── [all drum samples for preset slots 1-8]
│   │   ├── factory_drum [.raw files]
│   │   │   └── [all drum samples used for factory presets]
│   │   ├── factory_synth [.raw files]
│   │   │   └── [all synth samples used for factory presets]
│   │   ├── preset_drum
│   │   │   └── [empty]
│   │   ├── preset_synth
│   │   │   └── [empty]
│   │   ├── speech
│   │   │   └── op1patch.raw [audio that's added in all non-sample .aif patch files]
│   │   └── synth [.raw files]
│   │       └── [synth samples for presets slots that use the sampler synth]
│   ├── display [.svg files]
│   │   └── [all the graphics for the UI]
│   ├── kerntable.db [font kerning data]
│   ├── op1.db
│   ├── op1_factory.db [factory presets/factory reset data]
│   └── tape.db [tape clips, loop points etc]
├── OP1_vdk.ldr [firmware code]
└── te-boot.ldr [bootloader]

Encryption of OP1_vdk.ldr

The code blocks of OP1_vdk.ldr are encrypted using the XTEA algortihm. In each block of 24 bytes the first 8 bytes are encrypted and the following 16 bytes are unencrypted. The key is read from the blackfin OTP memory page 0xd0.

Databases (specifically op1_factory.db)

TODO: Table descriptions, synth & drum table data descriptions, 16 preset limit, etc.

Notes:

The folder column in synth_presets is actually an arbitrary string, not the synth engine name. This means we could have custom folders that contain any types of synths.

Graphics (SVG)

TODO: How the svg ID's are used, how the file format should be preserved and recommended svg editors etc.

Font & Symbols

The OP-1 font is defined in the opfont.svg file. It defines the basic alphabet only in upper case and also contains additional UI symbols. Each character or symbol in the SVG file is mapped to a character by the id attribute. For example, the symbol for letter A has an id of a. During rendering the spacing between characters is determined by the kerntable.db database file.

All alphabetic characters are upper case, but are refered to with a lower case id.
Various UI symbols are refered to with an upper case letter. E.g. the drum symbol has id D.
Special characters that can't validly be used as an id, are instead referenced in a special hex notation. E.g the id for < is _x3C_.
Custom symbols can be added as long as all symbols have unique ids.

Special symbols:

D: Drum icon
Q: Sequencer icon
X: FX icon (blue)
A: Envelope icon (blue)
L: LFO icon (blue)
H: FX icon (green)
E: Envelope icon (green)
F: LFO icon (green)
S: Synth icon (blue)
T: Tape icon (red)
M: Mixer icon (gray)
Y: Musical keyboard icon (blue)
I: FX blend icon (blue)
J: Blend icon without FX text, only the overlapping circles (blue)
Z: EQ icon (blue)

Preset Files (AIF)

TODO: How the preset data is embedded, how to extract it, etc.