Arturia/MicroFreak/Idea/Rust CLI Preset Manager

• freakio — a Rust CLI preset manager for the Arturia MicroFreak

  • A narrow, single-device Rust CLI for managing Microfreak presets, samples, and wavetables over MIDI, cross-platform (macOS, Linux, Windows), using Elektroid as a protocol and architecture reference.
  • Working name: freakio. Checked 2026-07-12: no crate on crates.io (exact or fuzzy match) and no matching GitHub repo.

  • Why Elektroid is the right reference

    • Elektroid already ships mature MicroFreak support (since v3.1): preset, sample, and wavetable transfer, with the reverse-engineering acknowledged as legitimate by an Arturia staff member — see Arturia/Forum/24/05/MIDI Control Center alternative for MicroFreak on Linux.
    • An Arturia staff reply in that thread notes the MiniFreak (a different, newer instrument) dropped MIDI configuration entirely. That doesn't affect the MicroFreak line this idea targets.

  • Protocol facts to reuse

    • Elektroid's src/connectors/microfreak.c + microfreak.h + microfreak_sample.c (GPLv3, dagargo/elektroid) document the MicroFreak SysEx protocol in detail:
      • Arturia manufacturer ID 00 20 6B, MicroFreak family/model bytes, a firmware-major-version-5 gate in the handshake.
      • Preset = a 0x23-byte header plus 146 parts of 32 bytes each.
      • Sample and wavetable directory entries are 28-byte header structs (address, size, checksum, name, id).
      • Samples transfer in 4096-byte blocks using 7-bit/8-bit MIDI-safe packing, with a documented memory-fragmentation model and a defragment operation.
      • A storage-stats query reports free space; transfers carry a checksum.

  • Architecture

    • Elektroid's layering: MIDI/SysEx transport (generic identity handshake, send/receive with timeout and cancellation) → device protocol (MicroFreak-specific message framing) → data model (a generic byte-blob container) → CLI dispatch.
    • elektroid-cli is already GTK-free (~1150 lines, buildable standalone via the ELEKTROID_CLI_ONLY build option) and shares all of the above with the GUI. Its verb set (ld, info, df, ls, ul/dl/rdl, send/receive) is a workable starting command surface, trimmed to the MicroFreak's three storage domains.

  • What to leave out

    • The GTK GUI, the multi-connector plugin registry (regex-based handshake dispatch across a dozen device families), every non-MicroFreak connector (Elektron, Casio, Korg, Moog, Novation, etc.), audio playback/recording, and the generic slot/VFS abstraction — a fixed set of three storage domains doesn't need a virtual filesystem layer.

  • Transport

    • The midir crate covers macOS (CoreMIDI), Linux (ALSA), and Windows (WinMM) behind one API, so the same transport code runs on all three without Elektroid's separate ALSA/RtMidi backend split.

  • Testing

    • Elektroid ships both unit tests (test/tests_microfreak.c) and per-filesystem integration shell scripts. Unit-test the message framing and packing in isolation, then integration-test against a real device (or recorded SysEx fixtures) per storage domain.

  • v1 scope

    • Presets and samples first, wavetables following once the core transfer-and-checksum path is proven.
    • macOS first, with Linux and Windows following from the same midir-based transport.

  • Crate split

    • freakio — SDK crate: transport, handshake, and the MicroFreak protocol and data model.
    • freakio-cli — thin binary crate: argument parsing and command dispatch, depending on freakio.
    • A future freakio-tui could depend on the same freakio SDK.