v0.4.0 — a config layer, a punch button, and a DJ filter

Three new things on a panel that had run out of room, paid for by compiling the flash-bound build for size.

Flash from Noise Engineering's firmware page with smack_versio-0.4.0.bin — no Daisy bootloader, no toolchain. The full zip adds the manual, the flashing guide, the faceplate template and a BOOT_SRAM build for anyone using the Daisy tooling.

PUNCH — GATE switch left

The button becomes a momentary effect punch. Hold it and every slice is forced through one chosen effect; release and the pattern snaps back.

Nothing else is on the button in this position — no re-roll, no capture, no clear, no LIVE. A punch you have to think about is not a punch, and a gesture that might re-roll your pattern instead cannot be played hard. Capture in the centre position, then flip left to perform.

Punch CLEAN is worth trying first: instead of adding an effect it momentarily drops the glitch pattern, so a busy loop snaps back to unmangled for as long as you hold.

The config layer — triple-tap CAPTURE

Three knobs stop driving their printed functions and address a setting instead: PITCH picks its own second role, FX picks the punch effect, LENGTH picks how the gate is read. Any single tap leaves.

No cursor and nothing to scroll. With seven absolute controls on the front there is nothing for a menu to navigate, so all three settings simply show on the LEDs at once. Opening the layer to check a setting cannot change it — a knob is only adopted once you move it — and leaving hands the knobs back without jumping their normal functions.

The DJ filter — the PITCH knob's other job

Left sweeps a lowpass down to 40 Hz, right sweeps a highpass up to 6 kHz, and the centre is a true bypass. It runs last, after BLEND, across the whole output — so it works on your dry input before you have captured anything at all, which nothing else on this panel does.

It takes over when the knob next reaches the centre, not when you select it, so choosing the filter never drops one on a loop that is already playing.

Other changes

• The GATE switch no longer selects a clock source. Auto already tells a steady train from sparse triggers, so that position was really a manual override for a rare case — a set-once decision, and set-once decisions moved to the config layer.
• BOOT_NONE is now built at -Os. It had 4,056 bytes of headroom at -O3, less than one feature; it now links at 117,132 of 131,072 with everything above added.
• The manual's claim that the two switches are mirror images of each other was wrong and is gone — left is left on both.
• Corrected memory figures: the SDRAM pool is 32 MB and the buffer is 150 seconds.

Not a Noise Engineering product

Third-party firmware, not supported by Noise Engineering. Fully reversible — flashing any official Versio firmware puts the module back.

Manual and full documentation: https://timncox.github.io/smack-versio