Korg’s Volca Sample has been one of their most hotly debated recent introductions.
The new Volca is inexpensive (street price around $160) for a sample sequencer – but Korg makes that price point by leaving out sampling hardware. So you can sequence samples, mangle samples and load it up with your custom samples – but it depends on an external app to do the sampling and sample management.
And, while Korg has released a free sampling tool for the Volca Sample, AudioPocket, the app is only available for iOS.
Now Korg is opening up sampling for the Volca Sample to everything and everyone. Korg has released a free software development kit (SDK), designed to help developers create apps that can talk to the Volca Sample.
Here’s what Korg has to say about free Volca Sample SDK:
This SDK allows you to create your own tools with the interface that you design for your platform. Not only will this library unleash the potential to load samples and sequences, it will empower users to combine this code with other features of your making.
Features:
- encode sample data for transfer into volca sample
- encode a 16 step sequence for transfer into volca sample
- delete specific samples in the volca sample
- delete all the samples in the volca sample
You can download the SDK via github.
This SDK makes the Korg Volca Sample a lot more interesting. It opens the door for developers to create sampling apps, for all types of platforms, that connect to the Volca Sample. It also means that we’re likely to see existing samplers for iOS add the ability to write samples to it.
With the SDK, Korg is turning the Volca Sample from a product into a platform that developers can target with their apps. We’re looking forward to seeing what developers do with this.
