New Life | Westlicht Performer alt firmware, Rings, Streams, WMD TrshMstr

video upload by Cinematic Laboratory

"It's spring! It's probably my favorite season of the year. This video showcases a few new ideas with Rings & Streams, add some rock with the WMD TrashMaster while Westlicht runs an 'alternative' firmware.

I got a tip from a subscriber there's a new firmware for WestLicht Performer. I checked it out and noticed is a 'fork' by Mebitek. A fork is a sidestep from the original code, where developers can try things out, and merge good stuff back into the main firmware 'branch'. I am not sure if this is ever going to happen because there isn't much going on in Westlicht development. So you'll need to see it as an alternative firmware, it may not be supported and it could bring new bugs to your module.

However, this firmware adds stochastic tracks, gate length variation probability, scale overrides and note repeats. I also noticed a few small bug fixes. Transposing from another channel now works as expected.

You can find the firmware here if you're interested: https://github.com/mebitek/performer/...

You only need to download UPDATE.DAT, put it on an SD and press the encoder while booting the module. Then follow the instructions. You can always go back to the factory release, so make sure you have a backup somewhere, and make a backup of your original SD including presets.

I think the firmware is great and it brings 'new life' to the module, but it's not very interesting if you don't have a Westlicht.

Streams also needed attention after keeping it stored for six years. It's a unique take on a low pass gate, and it brings new life to anything that's supposed to sound organic. So I gave it a shot with Rings. Since you can push Streams into saturation and clipping, I wanted to run Rings through WMD Trash Master. 'New Life' also qualifies for WMD. This great brand is back in business after the Covid-19 electronic parts nightmare. So yes. Winter is over."