Emulator

Play them in your browser.

The real firmware, the same code that runs on the module, compiled for the web. Only the hardware is imitated: the knobs, buttons, lights, jacks and sound. Nothing to install.

Instrument

Plug in a Launchpad, a Launch Control XL and a Haute42 (on screen)

Volume

Pick an instrument and press Power on.
Sound starts when you do.

How to play it

Knobs: drag up or down. The mouse wheel works too, and a double-click puts a knob back in the middle.
Buttons: click and hold B1, B2 and B3, or click the panel and use the keys 1, 2 and 3. Holding two at once (for Settings and other combos) is easiest with the keys.
CV jacks: the sliders under the panel are what you'd patch into J3 to J8. Drag for a voltage, or click GATE for 0 or +5 V.
What each control does: every instrument's manual explains it: .
Switching instruments restarts the page with the new one. Settings and saved presets last until you leave the page.

Test your own firmware

Writing firmware for the Alchemy Lab? The emulator runs yours too, on your own computer: any firmware built on the Alchemy SDK, such as Hermetic's template, compiled against its own copy of the SDK. You get the same panel, plus test scripts that turn knobs, press buttons, send CV and check the sound and the lights. An AI coding assistant can do the setup and write the tests. Open your firmware's folder in Claude Code, Codex or Cursor and paste this:

Clone https://github.com/timncox/alchemy-lab (branch emu-custom), read emu/AGENTS.md, and get this firmware running in the Alchemy Lab emulator. Then write emulator tests for its main controls and run them.

It needs a Mac or Linux (on Windows, WSL) with SDL2 installed; no ARM toolchain. The guide the assistant follows is AGENTS.md, and you can follow it by hand too. The emulator can't tell you about CPU load: a patch that runs here can still be too heavy for the module.

What's real and what isn't

Real: every line of each instrument's firmware, the Alchemy SDK's own framework (pages, Settings, LED rings, presets) and the FAT file system on the SD card. Imitated: the panel, the codec, the 64 MB SD card, the flash chip, and the USB controllers. Not imitated: the module's processor speed, so a sound that works here can still be too heavy for the real thing; and the bootloader and the card picker. HostLink, the USB protocol the control page speaks, is imitated as bytes rather than USB.

These are the builds Tim is working on now, so they can be ahead of the downloads on the homepage. Each build, by branch and commit (not all of them are on GitHub yet):

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The emulator is open source, in the emu folder of the alchemy-lab repo. It also runs as a Mac app with scripted tests.