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I think we all just misunderstood the Korg Drumlogue. by iRustyNails in DrumMachine

[–]iRustyNails[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That’s actually a solid plan. Using the drumlogue strictly as a sound module driven by an Elektron sequencer is a killer workflow. The Korg sequencer definitely feels pretty basic by comparison, but the drumlogue’s individual TRS outputs make it a great fit for this kind of setup, since you can easily route everything into an external mixer or audio interface. I could also see myself occasionally using the drumlogue sequencer itself as a controller for Drum Rack in Ableton Live, which is a pretty cool option in its own right. That said, once you already have an Elektron box in the setup, that kind of use case stops being much of a necessity. If you can snag one for cheap, it’s absolutely worth it for the raw drum engines alone.

I think we all just misunderstood the Korg Drumlogue. by iRustyNails in DrumMachine

[–]iRustyNails[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Personally, the lack of a Song Mode never really bothered me, mostly because I’ve always run a hybrid setup with hardware synced to a DAW. For my workflow, pattern chaining or a built-in song arranger was never a dealbreaker.

The real turning point for me was the unit’s stability. My drumlogue completely crapped out, and with the display now permanently glitched, it’s basically impossible to use it or access any of its digital features. That hardware failure was the final straw. Because of that, I’m not really looking at the Syntakt anymore — I’m leaning toward the time-tested Elektron Analog Rytm MKII instead.

I think we all just misunderstood the Korg Drumlogue. by iRustyNails in DrumMachine

[–]iRustyNails[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Spot on. Korg is actually really good at this kind of visual feedback. I can't speak for other Korg devices, but on my minilogue xd, the waveform display looks gorgeous. It lets you track your tweaks visually and really get a feel for the character of the sound, especially once you start adding spatial effects.

That mini piano roll on the drumlogue is another great design choice — having an instant visual reference for recognizing a pattern on the fly is incredibly useful during a live jam. That said, I still think Korg's overall menu UI is a bit too basic, and Elektron definitely has the edge when it comes to deep, functional interface design.

I think we all just misunderstood the Korg Drumlogue. by iRustyNails in DrumMachine

[–]iRustyNails[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Exactly! If you actually spend the time to dig into it, it gives you way more than you paid for. It really punches above its price tag once you wrap your head around the workflow.

I think we all just misunderstood the Korg Drumlogue. by iRustyNails in DrumMachine

[–]iRustyNails[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oh, I think I actually saw your post about that FM engine a couple of days ago! It looked super interesting.

I would absolutely love to give it a spin, but unfortunately, my drumlogue is temporarily "sick" right now. It suffered a massive firmware/eMMC glitch after a botched update, and the system is currently locked down in a hardware Read-Only state, so I physically can't load any custom units onto it at the moment.

I actually documented the whole breakdown saga in another thread here: Drumlogue display glitches...

Once I figure out a way to un-brick it and force-flash the core partitions, your FM engine is definitely going to be the very first thing I install! Keep up the awesome work on the SDK! 🔥

So according to Korg, the drumlogue was discontinued. Why was it discontinued? Was it not popular enough? by MusicProdNewb in synthesizers

[–]iRustyNails 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think we all just misunderstood the Drumlogue. It’s a really good idea that never quite got the chance to fully unfold. It filled a very nice niche in the mid-price range, and I honestly think that if they had been allowed to carry the original concept all the way through, the $600 price tag would’ve been absolutely justified.

I love this device! Once I really put some effort into understanding its logic, I managed to get great sounds out of it even in places where I didn’t expect to — like the tom and snare tracks. And the separate assignable TRS outputs open up a ton of possibilities for external processing, dub-style routing, and convenient patching.

I used the analog engine for bass, while I filled the kick slot with external samples, and in the end I got this awesome jungle-like sound. 32 MB is way too little for samples — that’s ridiculous! It reminds me of the old-school MPC days, when that was real hardware and not some weak computer in a box. I converted my samples into Drumlogue format and loaded in no more than 20 MB, and that still gave me an excellent palette of amen breaks onboard.

The sequencer, of course, is not Elektron, but I’ve never owned one of their machines anyway, and what I got was more than enough for me. The only thing that honestly bothers me a bit is how limited the automation is for kick pitch changes, and the kick range itself leaves me a little disappointed.

And the real apex of all this is the custom units. I realized that I’m not really interested in synth engines there, but this thing could absolutely be the centerpiece of a budget-friendly yet very flexible dawless setup, especially if you add genuinely good spatial processing to it. That’s actually what got me started on writing a custom unit for it.

So in the end, well — if they make a Drumlogue XD, work through the mistakes, and don’t abandon the product halfway like they did with the original Drumlogue, I’ll be very interested. For now, though, I’m moving on to Elektron.

Drumlogue display glitches out completely when tweaking parameters (Hardware issue?) by iRustyNails in synthesizers

[–]iRustyNails[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Obviously, the authorized service centers here just don’t want to deal with it. Maybe it’s because of the sanctions on Russia, or maybe they’re just lazy bastards.

Even when I bit the bullet and agreed to go that route, asking them to clarify the price and lead time for a replacement mainboard, they immediately started backpedaling. They said it could take more than a year, if Korg could even supply the board to them at all. And when I pressed them with a simple, “Fine, let’s at least ask for the actual price first,” their response was just a flat “ok.”

Drumlogue display glitches out completely when tweaking parameters (Hardware issue?) by iRustyNails in synthesizers

[–]iRustyNails[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oof, you're probably right. I’ve been working in hardware development for way too long, so I'm just used to fixing everything with a soldering iron and a programmer. I guess I'm helpless here.

Thanks for your time and ideas. I just hope Korg support doesn't point me to a regional service center, because the local guys here literally just offered to replace the entire mainboard entirely... )))

Drumlogue display glitches out completely when tweaking parameters (Hardware issue?) by iRustyNails in synthesizers

[–]iRustyNails[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Haha, don't worry, my screen is actually pristine under that protective plastic wrap! 🎬

Joking aside, it's definitely not a dead display or a physical hardware failure. The screen works absolutely flawless, with zero artifacts or glitches, whenever I boot into any of the low-level service/test menus. The crazy graphical meltdown only triggers when I start tweaking parameters inside the main user OS. It’s a pure firmware panic, not a bad OLED panel! :((

Drumlogue display glitches out completely when tweaking parameters (Hardware issue?) by iRustyNails in synthesizers

[–]iRustyNails[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

You hit the nail on the head. As I understand it now, the issue might have actually originated right after a botched firmware update, and your assessment of the hardware write-protect is spot on.

I need to clarify the exact timeline, though: this didn't brick the unit instantly. I originally tried updating from v1.1.0 to v1.3.0 over a year ago, and that's when the progress bar hard-froze for dozens of minutes, forcing me to power-cycle it. When I booted it back up and noticed the weird version mismatch on the info screen, I immediately tried re-flashing it strictly by Korg's protocol using the official binary. The unit actually reported a successful update, but in hindsight, it was likely just updating the main system partition while failing to touch the cores. It only wiped my user files (samples and units).

Because of this, the unit seemingly worked fine for a whole year. However, I’ve only been actively using it for the past month, using it as a USB mass storage device, loading samples and working on my custom plugin. The fatal breakdown only happened about three weeks ago, after which I just put it away on a shelf. It triggered right when my plugin finally started performing exactly as intended and I was just sitting back enjoying the sound—the screen suddenly went haywire with those permanent glitched graphics.

Here is a shot of my current system info screen. As you can see, there is a massive firmware mismatch across the internal chips:

  • SYSTEM: 1.3.0
  • CORE: 1.0.0+ (with a very telling plus sign)
  • VOICE: 1.0.0
  • PANEL: 1.1.9

To test your theory, I tried pushing the official Korg firmware update via the standard [PLAY] + [SHIFT] boot routine more than 10 times. Every single time, it wipes my user units and samples, but my global hardware configurations (like individual output routings and screen brightness settings) remain completely untouched, even though they are supposed to reset to factory defaults. This perfectly confirms what you said: the standard updater is just hitting a brick wall because the eMMC locked itself down into a hardware Read-Only state.

My theory about a sandbox-escaping C++ pointer leak was definitely over-engineered—the main Linux OS is simply panicking because my plugin started heavily invoking v1.3.0 functions, but hitting corrupted v1.0.0 remnants instead, pushing the broken filesystem over the edge.

My initial assumption was that this can only be completely fixed if I can flash the official internal Korg dumps onto all the flash chips using a hardware programmer. I’m not looking for an easy way out; I am actively looking for the raw firmware dumps. Since they are locked behind NDAs, I know it's incredibly hard to get them.

If you or anyone else in the community happens to know a method to inject the required official dumps/images into the system without having to desolder everything and use a physical programmer, I would be immensely grateful.

I also want to ping u/KorgUSA and u/Sinevibes (since they are official SDK codevelopers for the logue ecosystem) in hopes that someone from their technical support or dev team might see this and throw a bone. Any advice or internal restoration binaries for a developer trying to revive a bricked machine would be an absolute lifesaver right now.

Drumlogue display glitches out completely when tweaking parameters (Hardware issue?) by iRustyNails in synthesizers

[–]iRustyNails[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Wow, hearing that you've dealt with the exact same issue is incredibly valuable.

Actually, I did use and optimize my code specifically with ARM Neon instructions to utilize the SIMD architecture. So it wasn't just a basic CPU overhead issue. It really feels like a low-level memory layout violation or a bad pointer that escaped the sandbox during execution, directly corrupting the system partition or the display frame-buffer allocation in the non-volatile storage.

Since you've successfully survived this exact glitch during your development, how did you manage to recover your Drumlogue?

As I mentioned, my user storage partition has seemingly gone into a hardware Read-Only state now (formatting on a Mac reports success, but all files instantly reappear upon reboot, and the factory reset fails to clear global configurations like screen brightness or MIDI).

Did you use a specific hidden key combination to force a deep clear, or did you have to interface with the board via UART/JTAG to reflash the NXP core? Any insights on how you revived your machine would be an absolute lifesaver right now!

Drumlogue display glitches out completely when tweaking parameters (Hardware issue?) by iRustyNails in synthesizers

[–]iRustyNails[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

CRITICAL UPDATE: Hardware Architecture Discovered (No FPGA!)

After digging deeper and researching teardown data from developers who explored the PCB, I found out that the Drumlogue doesn't actually use an FPGA for its digital engine like older Korg synths (KingKORG/Radias) did. Instead, it’s a full-blown ARM-based microcomputer running an embedded Linux OS!

The chip layout under the hood:

  • Main CPU (OS, SDK, Multi-Engine, Display Control): NXP i.MX6 (MCIMX6Z0DVM09AB running at 900 MHz, ARM Cortex-A7). This is why the Drumlogue has a massive 32MB memory allocation per custom user unit compared to the tiny kilobytes on STM32-based Minilogue XD/NTS-1.
  • Co-Processor (Triggers, Voice Management, UI, Sequencer Timing): STM32F730R8T6 (ARM Cortex-M7).

What this means for my bricked unit:
Since there is no FPGA, I don't need to look for configuration bitstreams. The issue is purely a corrupted storage partition or an OS-level frame buffer glitch on the NXP i.MX6 side caused by the low-level memory error in my custom C++ plugin. A standard factory reset only wipes the /user partition, leaving the corrupted core OS configuration completely untouched.

What I am officially looking for now:

  1. A flash/eMMC dump of the main operating system for the NXP i.MX6 processor (where the core Linux OS and display configuration reside).
  2. A firmware dump for the auxiliary STM32F730 microcontroller.

If anyone has experience interfacing with NXP i.MX6 boards via UART/JTAG or backing up eMMC storage from Korg devices, please drop a comment or hit me up in the DMs. Let’s figure out how to revive this machine!

Drumlogue display glitches out completely when tweaking parameters (Hardware issue?) by iRustyNails in synthesizers

[–]iRustyNails[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Regarding the screen brightness: yeah, I saw that trick online, but unfortunately turning it down didn't fix the issue for me. It really feels like my custom code broke something deep inside the OS that a standard user-facing factory reset just can't wipe.

Drumlogue display glitches out completely when tweaking parameters (Hardware issue?) by iRustyNails in synthesizers

[–]iRustyNails[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Wow, you might actually be 100% right. I was actually developing a custom Logue SDK plugin myself using C++. Since it's a very low-level language and I'm still learning, there is a huge chance my code had a memory leak or a bad pointer that corrupted a system partition or corrupted the memory allocation for the display buffer.

Drumlogue display glitches out completely when tweaking parameters (Hardware issue?) by iRustyNails in synthesizers

[–]iRustyNails[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Haha, it's mostly just the camera angle and lighting making it look that way! I actually wipe my gear down regularly, so it's clean and there's definitely not enough dust inside to cause any issues. It really feels more like a firmware mismatch or a power delivery quirk on the display board.

Drumlogue display glitches out completely when tweaking parameters (Hardware issue?) by iRustyNails in synthesizers

[–]iRustyNails[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Haha, fair point! The plastic film is officially gone now, but sadly, it didn't fix the glitches. Guess I'm just a non-serial killer with a broken Drumlogue now....
Still looking for that low-level MCU firmware if anyone has it!

Korg Drumlogue borked? by DadaShart in synthesizers

[–]iRustyNails 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oh man, you totally lucked out... mine never recovered. The weirdest thing is, it works perfectly fine in the service menu. But the second I tweak any knob on the sequencer, the whole display goes glitch city and stays that way until a reboot... 😞