one of my I-wish-I-had-the-skill-and-time interests is looking at projects using microscope images to reverse engineer bespoke, rare or undocumented chips, recover the netlist and perfectly emulate them ... I have also been musical and always been keyboard-curious but never gotten into it ... all that to say that this recent video from #3c93 combines all of these into one neat package - reverse engineering the Motorola DSP53600 as used by many 90s digital virtual analogue synthesizers, notably the Roland JP-8000 https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-from-silicon-to-darude-sand-storm-breaking-famous-synthesizer-dsps
From Silicon to Darude Sand-storm: breaking famous synthesizer DSPs

media.ccc.de

A #3c93 talk from @giulioz, about reverse-engineering the Roland #jp8000 synth, including figuring out its proprietary DSP architecture from scratch:

https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-from-silicon-to-darude-sand-storm-breaking-famous-synthesizer-dsps

They've made a plugin that emulates a 100% accurate JP8K (just bring firmware), and uses a JIT compiler to make it run acceptably (the beast had 4 DSP chips in series, running at 2x the CD sample rate).

https://dsp56300.wordpress.com/je8086/

(I had a JP8K in the 90s and have fond memories of its sounds.)

From Silicon to Darude Sand-storm: breaking famous synthesizer DSPs

media.ccc.de