Elektron Musical Instruments

Hi all,


I just managed to rebuild my projekt studio these days and was pretty 
exited to work with a new piece of gear - the beloved machinedrum. 

Then I came across strange noises (short pops or clicks, just like noise 
from electric static that gets discharged) and I started to track the 
source. Sadly, I found that it\ufffds the MD, and after that I checked the 
website and this list. 

After checking the friend newsletter, I upgraded my MD OS from 1.12 to 
1.12b (I hope the b doesn\ufffdt mean beta, but 3rd subversion of 1.12), but 
that did help nothing at all - although the readme said so. Now I\ufffdm scared 
my hardware is defective. 

I have all ins and outs connected, although the ins are leading to a 
patchbay with no constant input. However, having all 6 outputs connected 
to a digital mixer, I can easily turn the meters to peak hold and just switch 
the MD on, pattern A1 (factory reset), wait a few seconds and voila : I got 
spikes at about -18 dB from a channel that would normally be a bout -3dB 
when playing sounds. 

What scares me is the fact that the noise seems to go to the single outs 
too, and please correct me if I\ufffdm wrong, but I think after factory reset, no 
sound is assigned to the single outs ? I\ufffdm very very new to this machine, 
so please don\ufffdt be annoyed if I overlook something here. The noise seems 
to come in pairs, i.e. either out AB, CD or EF, most of the time one channel 
of the pair has about 3dB less level than the other. But there is no was to 
predict if it\ufffds the "left" one of a pair or the "right" one. 

I remember that there was something written about the first units having 
problems and getting a hardware replacement, did I dream that ? How can 
I check if my machine is one of those ? the serial number is not self 
explaining here :)

Last question : When going to the maintenace menu (press function  during 
boot), there is one option where you check the hardware. If I press 
buttons, there is a certain pattern of LED going on and off, I guess these 
are binary codes reflecting my button pressing. IS THERE ANY DOCUMENT 
THAT EXPLAINS THIS ? Strange thing here : Most buttons give me just a 
few lit LEDs, while one button seems to light almost all of them ? 


Don\ufffdt get me wrong, I love the MD and I can\ufffdt wait to integrate it forever 
into my setup. But with the actual noise coming out of it, it is really 
unusable, since the unpredictable click screws up EVERY take I\ufffdm trying to 
do. Since it\ufffds no constant noise, I guess there is no cure like gate or 
something....


I\ufffdd be glad to hear if others lost their clicks by software or OS upgrade or 
if the problem persisted, so I can try to track the noisemaker down and 
find a workaround. 


Thanks in advance,



Oliver Keller