[MD FEATURE REQUESTS AND BUGS LIST]
2004-02-01 by tahvenaine2002
[BUGS] 1. SONG-SLOT REMEMBERED WRONG after a fresh restart of the MD, enter song mode then try to save the song; regardless of which slot the song was originally saved to, the MD will try to save it to the first slot; which pisses me off enormously because I've lost at least a few songs when I wasn't watching carefully enough (and didn't expect the bug) 2. THE FAMOUS MUTE-BUG IN SONG MODE In song mode, if the scale setup LED is lit for the second portion of the pattern, then song mutes can't be changed; changing it to the first portion of the pattern fixes the problem (though clearly this isn't right) 3. LFO SPEED INACCURACY 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 (maybe9). 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. 4. TRACK CLEAR UNDO DOESN'T WORK Fixing the track clear undo (which was implemented in the last OS revision but never worked) would be a nice start though :) 5. PARAMETER LOCK ERROR WITH LINKED MACHINES Take one machine and link it to e12-machine (this is easiest to hear). Now sequence the machine and e12 triggers nicely. Fine. Now go to track with e-12 machine and put one parameterlock there with long retrigs. Now play the original pattern and you should notice that the e-12 machine stays on parameterlock after the seq has run over parameterlock and it won't change to normal. This makes it impossible to do velocity sensitive snareing with linkable snares, because when you do parameter lock on original machine the second machine has too much volume, ok you go to second machine track and fix it with parameter lock and then the volumes stays there and the next snare sounds wrong. 6. MONOMACHINE AND MACHINEDRUM MIDI LATENCY I've been building my homestudio and been trying to setup everything to answer my musicmaking techniques. Ive setup the elektron gear this way: Cubase SX sends midiclock to both units via RME hammerfall midiport. With the midiclock it also sends transport commands (Start, stop, continue). Then I I've setup Monomachine and Machinedrum so that they receive transport commands, but do not use midiclock. This way because I want solid bpm timing and I'm using songmode (chopping patterns) a lot. So now I have dreamsetup where I can for example put cubase to loop 8 measures and when I hit play from cubase, all machines start ticking in sync and I can start sequnecing both MM and MD. Well I almost have it and here comes the problem: I've noticed and measured that Monomachine reacts to miditransport- command (play) in about few ms (4.5 exatcly on my rme midiport). But in the Machinedrum it takes about 25 ms!! So you can see it's reacting to play command pretty slowly, which makes hard to do groovy hihats (exepts if you want a really groovyones :) Is this something that have been overlooked possibly or somekind of bug or just the way it is and which can't be changed?? This is not a audiocard latency since I've tried it with 1.5 ms latency from rme card and I can get tight timing with Monomachine. 7. MACHINEDRUM TEMPO DRIFTING!! Machinedrum tempo seems to drift sometimes. It can be reproduced very easily. Make up quite long song with different kits and patterns (you can also set some offset's and mutes but maybe it doesn't matter). Now if you want to record every single sound to it's own channel throught MD Dynamix you need to mute other tracks than BD (for example) and play song from start to end with computer (or something else) recording it. Do record the BD two times with different tracks. After something like 60 bars you start to see drifting of kick sounds (and this happens when MD is Master!!). I've gotten over 30 ms differencies at the end of files. I know it can't be perfect, but this is just too much. Try recording snare and the hihats and you will see (and hear!!) how they drift at the end of files!. Should be corrected, if possible! [FEATURE REQUESTS] 1. DIFFERENT ACCENTS WITH DIFFERENT TRACKS feature to adjust the accent parameter for each machine separately. I might want to add accents to the hihats, but not to the bassdrum for example. It would make the accent feature more powerful and usable. 2. INDICATOR OF PLAYING PATTERN A blinking led for the pattern wich is playing when pressing bank select. That way you don't have to fiddle a knob to minimize the mute screen to look at the tiny pattern number. 3. DIFFERENT STYLE OF PALYING PATTERNS Id LOVE to see a way to jump to a new pattern without it being qued for playing, so you could: Have A01 playing, copy it. Jump to A02 with A01 still playing, paste A01 onto A02. Make some changes, and then switch playback to the new pattern in A02. Would be really handy for live jamming 4. NEW GND-MACHINES I´d like to suggest the incorporation of new GND machines. More specifically 2 new machines with pulse (with PWM if possible) and saw waveforms. I guess these wouldn´t take up much memory since these waveforms are already used as LFO modulators and they would increase the sound possibilities of the MD a lot. Another one would be some sort of color knob for the noise machine. 5. FINER NOTE LENGHT WITH MIDI MACHINES I would love a finer setting possible for note length on midi machines... the current setting is way to coarse for getting what I'd like to. 6. SOME THINGS TO BE COPIED FROM MONOMACHINE Monomachine seams to have better EQ and Distortion. Maybe these could be copied to MD also (especially the distortion, which seems pretty weka now). Mono have better way of using Midi-cc's. Could be done this way with Machinedrum also. 7. TRX-B3 WITH PITCH ENVELOPE SPEED SETTING TRX-B2 is a very good kick-machine but with one flaw. The speed of the pitch-envelope cannot be changed! It's is tuned way too slow and you can hear the 'ziiuuupp' very clearly. Ok, somebody want's it and some don't, but as I understand the machine is designed for special type of kick (let's call it the 'oommmpphh' kick) and makes it with really good hold parameter. I would like to see TRX-B3 with one distortion-knob taken away and put ramp-speed knob instead. I think molding the basic sound character (to fit the song) is way more important and effecting it with distortion or something else. 8. SCREEN FOR MULTIPLE KNOB ADJUSTS! Imagine this in live-situation: A screen with one SRR, DELAY, AM, DISTORTION AND FILTER. Every knob in postion 64. Now you tweak the SRR to 96 and every tracks SRR value is moved +32, instat robo- electro. You tweak it back and everything is normal again. Try same thing with delay, instat dub! Now tweak with you both hands, very nice live-possiability!!! If this could be also controlled from it's own track with parameter locks!!! Huh, what a machine!! This is basicly the same thing that Monomachine does with its joystick. Maybe this could be implemented to MD in a form of a screen, in which you would enter by pressing [function]+extended (extended tweak!) or something else! 9. WAY TO CHANGE OTHER TRACKS VOLUME Press [function] and twist Level button and every other tracks level is changed. Very handy in situations where you need more volume to snare, but it's allready in maximum! 10. NEW MACHINES OF COURSE!! New machines would be nice as always. Anything...