Elektron Musical Instruments

Has anybody noticed inaccuracies in their MD?  First of all, let me 
make it clear that I am not writing this message to complain.  I 
just want to point out some things I've noticed after owning an MD 
for over a year now.

First of all, filter clicking.  I've created patterns on several 
occasions which cause audible, random clicks in the filter.  For 
example, yesterday I created a hihat track which simply trigs the HH 
on every 8th note.  I locked the filter cutoff to 93 on the 1st 
trig, and zero on all other trigs.  When I hit PLAY and leave the MD 
looping it will often make clicking/popping sounds when it trigs the 
2nd hihat note.  This is because the filter cutoff is jumping down 
from 93 to 0 in one 8th note step and it appears the MD cannot 
always make the adjustment in time.  Sometimes it trigs perfectly, 
but sometimes it misses it, hence a clicking sound (which clicks to 
varying degrees as well, sometimes very loud, sometimes soft).  I've 
read that the MD uses MIDI internally.  I'm curious if it's mis-
trigging because the MIDI messages are too slow (I don't trust MIDI 
myself), or somewhere else in the MD's brains (maybe the DSP)?  
Clearly something is a little slow in there.

In the example I just gave you, I was able to eliminate the 
clicking.  By locking the 2nd trig's cutoff to 45 (instead of zero), 
the clicking disappeared entirely.  As you can see, what I did was 
give the MD some time to step from 93 to zero (over the space of 3 
trigs instead of just 2).

CLICKING
Trig:    1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8
Cutoff:  93  0   0   0   0   0   0   0

CLICKING ELIMINATED
Trig:    1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8
Cutoff:  93  45  0   0   0   0   0   0


Another inaccuracy in the MD occurs in the LFO's at high speeds.  
Here's an example using just 2 tracks.  I set up the CH track to 
trig on all notes (16ths), with no locks.  Then, I set up one (and 
only one) trig on the very first note of the OH track.  I set up the 
LFO on the OH track to modulate the VOLUME of the CH track.  I use a 
50/50 mix between a triangle and square LFO shape.  I set the LFO 
to "TRIG" mode, and set the depth to 127.  Now I press PLAY and set 
the pattern looping, and set the LFO speed to something slow (maybe 
9).  Now just listen to that loop, what you get is some nice 
modulation of the hihat's volume.  Because I've set the LFO 
to "TRIG", and placed one trig at the start of the OH track, the 
modulation resets at the beginning of each bar.  This is a nice 
trick.  Try tweaking the LFO speed a little (still slowish) and you 
get different variations in your hihat rhythm.  The nice thing is 
that the modulation is not random like when the LFO is set 
to "FREE".  The modulation resets every bar, so you get predictable 
results.  Every time the pattern loops it sounds exactly the same, 
as it should.  However, here's where the MD goes wrong:  Try pushing 
the LFO speed up to 127.  You'll notice that with each loop some 
variations start to creep in.  At the low speeds every loop was 
identical, but at high speeds the MD can't keep up (with whatever 
calculations its making), and so each loop starts sounding audibly 
different.  If you turn the LFO speed down, you should be able to 
find the speed at which the MD starts to return to normal, with 
every bar sounding identical.

You should try these examples out on your own MD's.  They clearly 
demonstrate some of the MD's imperfections, and they are readily 
reproduceable errors.  Who knows where the errors come from?  Is it 
because the MD uses MIDI internally and the MIDI messages are not 
transmitting/receiving in time?  Is it because the DSP's in the MD 
are too slow to make high speed/complex calculations?  Is it the 
programming?

Like I said, I'm not complaining.  I love my MD.  I just want to 
throw this out for some discussion and to see if other people have 
similar examples.  Who knows, maybe these sorts of issues can be 
solved in future OS revisions?  It would be great if they could.  

Fixing the track clear undo (which was implemented in the last OS 
revision but never worked) would be a nice start though :)

Cheers.