Music Tribe has published a demo firmware repository for the Behringer BCR32, a 32-encoder MIDI/CV controller that’s been five years in the making, under the AGPL-3.0 license. The repository — MusicTribeOpenSource/0715-AAW, created and pushed on October 30 — holds the BCR32’s demo firmware, schematic, and MCU interface documentation. It’s the fourth Music Tribe firmware release to go open in six weeks, after KICK and IGNITE, and it lands on a controller whose whole identity is already tied to community firmware.
The backstory makes the open-sourcing almost inevitable. The BCR32 is the successor to the BCR2000, a knob-heavy MIDI controller that, years after its original release, got a second life when a developer named Christian Stöcklmeier wrote Zaquencer — unofficial alternate firmware that turned the BCR2000 into a standalone four-track step sequencer. For the BCR32, Behringer skipped the fan-firmware step entirely: Music Tribe worked directly with the original Zaquencer author to build the sequencer into the device from the start. Press a button and the controller is a sequencer; no firmware swap required.
What’s on the hardware: 32 assignable rotary encoders with LED rings across four rows, 16 freely assignable buttons that double as sequencer controls (pitch, velocity, mute, direction, shuffle, delay, step skip), four drum-note select buttons, and a small OLED display for track selection and transport. On the back: two USB-C ports, a full 5-pin MIDI interface (in, out A, out B/thru), two footswitch inputs, sync in/out, and — notably for a MIDI controller — four CV/gate outputs for driving analog hardware directly. It ships now at $269 / €169.
The repository itself, per GitHub’s API: AGPL-3.0 licensed, 19 stars and 3 forks as of this writing, created the same day it was pushed — a fresh drop rather than a slow-building project. Following the pattern set by KICK and IGNITE, Music Tribe frames this explicitly as an invitation: “I’m curious to see what the community will do with this,” as Synth Anatomy’s coverage put it, echoing Music Tribe’s own framing on the earlier releases.
This is the fourth Behringer firmware to go open in six weeks, and it’s the first one built around a sequencer whose entire cultural history is a fan modding a predecessor device. Where KICK and IGNITE were drum synths and sequencers opened pre-emptively — code released before any firmware ecosystem existed around them — the BCR32 is open-sourcing into a lineage that already has one. Whether that changes how fast a community firmware scene forms around it is the thing to watch.
Behringer’s own introduction to the BCR32 and its built-in sequencer.
Related Reading
- BCR32 demo firmware repository — GitHub (MusicTribeOpenSource/0715-AAW)
- Behringer BCR32: MIDI/CV controller with sequencer — now with open-source firmware — Synth Anatomy
- Behringer’s BCR32 is finally available to pre-order after five years — MusicTech
- Behringer Just Open-Sourced a Flagship Hardware Sequencer Before Shipping Any Firmware — our IGNITE coverage
- Music Tribe Open Source Steps Up: Behringer KICK Goes AGPL — our earlier coverage
- Hardware as Platforms, and the Rise of Firmware Communities — our series on this pattern