DGX Sparks (Was Re: DX / FM1 Librarian and Editor)

[Jay Vaughan]

They are fantastic, although I don’t believe they’ll be state of the art within the next few months - things are moving so rapidly - but if you need to use them in isolated/contained/secured environments for things (as I do, SIL-4 project) they are a real boost in productivity.

You do need to train yourself to use them properly, and model shopping is a skill in itself, but I have settled on a multi-model setup which works really great for my project, although I can’t share much detail - its like having a very enthusiastic junior software developer who will literally perform on any stupid task you give it.

Highly recommended if you need to get models trained/use LLM’s locally/securely for your project, right now. 

It’s quite fun to stack them and then have different configurations as needed for the task at hand.  It’s kind of important to treat them like a Swiss army knife and not just a fire-and-forget server.  

I have different configurations for my project, according to the type of task .. and don’t let anyone tell you that you shouldn’t use good ol’ waterfall to manage the AI, like, really truly .. you don’t encounter the (human) problems of waterfall with AI, you just get proper waterfall, always…. Set up an “Analysis” model rig, set up “Specs” and “Requirements” rigs, “Develop”, “Test”, “Integrate”, “Release” model/training configuration, etc.


On a personal basis I will wait until April next year until I invest in a local LLM accelerator for my home lab.  Might be an Apple thingy, but it might also be DGX Spark2.

BTW there are other music-bar’ians with them in use, maybe we’ll hear their thoughts too ..

j.

> On 14.10.2026, at 15:13, James Coplin <james at ticalun.net> wrote:
> 
> How are getting on with the DGX? We've been looking at those for interfacing with our data and business service layer for analysis of our forensic and digital analytics warehouses. 
> 
> James
> 
> On Wed, Oct 14, 2026, 8:01 AM Jay Vaughan via music-bar <music-bar at lists.music-bar.org <mailto:music-bar at lists.music-bar.org>> wrote:
>> Yes, it’s really pretty cool what can be done.  I’ve been given a stack of DGX Sparks for my project at work and is like a lightning rod hitting the lodestone.
>> 
>> 
>> I’ve been also thoroughly enjoying all the firmware hacking going on in music technology right now.  
>> 
>> The M-vave FM1 scene is fabulous!
>> 
>>  Quite a bit like the SoundArt Chameleon days, only cheaper )$60 FFS!) and far more acceptance across the market of users. 
>> 
>> Anyone else hacking an FM1 firmware this week?
>> 
>> ;
>> --
>> seclorum 
>> 
>>> On 14.10.2026, at 10:35, Joost Schuttelaar via music-bar <music-bar at lists.music-bar.org <mailto:music-bar at lists.music-bar.org>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Cool! :) and how fun that we can audition everything just in a browser these days…
>>> 
>>> AI powered tools are fun too, reverse engineering the AN1x right now, got most of the voice going. Fascinating how you can now take a look at how things were implemented back in the days…
>>> 
>>> -- 
>>> 
>>> Joost Schuttelaar
>>> The Hague, NL
>>> 
>>>> On 14 Oct 2026, at 02:44, James Coplin via music-bar <music-bar at lists.music-bar.org <mailto:music-bar at lists.music-bar.org>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Getting a couple of these plus my TX-802 pushed me to finally start a project I had long wanted to do. It's at dxgarden.ticalun.net <http://dxgarden.ticalun.net/>
>>> 
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