The original Radio Music is one of those modules whose idea outlived its hardware. Tom Whitwell built a 4HP Eurorack module that isn’t a radio at all — it plays samples from an SD card — but organises them into stations you tune between, so using it feels like scanning a dial and catching whatever is playing. Drop field recordings, loops, shortwave noise or drum hits onto a card, and you get an instrument that supplies material you didn’t choose in the moment.
Radio Music Mk2 is a complete rebuild: new hardware, new software, same concept. Pre-orders are open through Thonk and it ships October 2026.
What’s new
- RP2040 at the centre, replacing the original’s Teensy-era guts
- Noise floor better than −86dB — the Mk1’s audio quality was its main weakness and this is the headline fix
- Hi-fi playback with smooth, tape-like speed changes, plus a ”90s sampler mode” when you want the grit back deliberately
- microSD up to 2TB, playing WAV, AIFF and RAW up to 24-bit/96kHz
- Up to 16 stations for organising material
- Under 2ms latency, +2 to −2 octaves of pitch range, and a new V/oct chromatic mode so it can be played as a pitched voice
- New operating modes: speed, loop, tuner and pulse
- 4HP, 25mm deep — skiff-friendly
There’s also an optional Radio Remote, a USB-C companion that puts the settings under your fingers instead of in a menu.
Prices
- Assembled: £149–156 (ex VAT)
- DIY: £115–125
- Remote: $130 assembled, £105 DIY
Why the hackability line matters
Whitwell’s stated commitment is that, like the Mk1, the Mk2 hardware is hackable and developers are free to build alternative firmware. On the Mk1 that produced a genuine ecosystem — people wrote entirely different instruments onto the same board, turning a sample player into granular engines, drone machines and sequencers.
That’s the real argument for buying this over a closed module with better specs. A hackable module is a platform with a long tail, and it ages in the opposite direction from a sealed product: the Mk1 got more interesting over a decade because other people kept writing for it. Choosing the RP2040 helps, since it’s cheap, extremely well documented, and the chip a large share of hobbyist developers already know.
The DIY option at £115 also keeps Music Thing doing what it has always done, which is put buildable, understandable hardware in front of people who want to know what’s inside.