recent polaris sonic freakout and memory loss+
2013-03-15 by steven
just had the oddest thing happen while recording w/my polaris--- it was on for a couple hours, basically fine, but while playing and fooling with the mod levers suddenly the sound burst into a loud distorted buzz that wasnt operated by the keys. it continued when i stopped . i briefly paniced, noticed that the sequencer had two Leds on simultaneously [like stop and record] i sensed this was real wrong and instantly hit the power switch off . this might have taken 5 seconds. on restarting -- the loud sound was gone, but it was obvious that my sound memory was all messed up-- many sounds were different or missing/blank .It seemed the controls worked normally, so i did a reset and reloaded the memory off my backup cassette-- now it plays mostly ok -- except for the memory--- some sounds didnt load correctly-- of the 132 sounds--about 20 are certainly 'wrong'. On most banks, the number 11 and 12 positions dont play or only very quietly on one of 6 voices, (9 of the 20 bad sounds are on numbers 11 and 12) most others sound fine --a few scattered ones also seem weak or missing . but oddly i have a split sound in a number 12 spot(k-12) that includes number I-11 as half of it and it sounds stronger than using the sound solo in its normal spot (I-ll). 5 of the bad sounds are in the I bank. (sadly many of my faves) im still not sure all the sounds are 'normal' some sound a bit less full-- but my backup cassette and reloading has worked fine before and i just reloaded it again with the same inconsistant memory result. any ideas about what happened and if there is something damaged