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got an essence + some bugs?

phosphenes
Finally got one! It’s delightfully weird and wonderful 👍😍👍😍👍😍👍😍👍😍👍

Thanks for bringing FM hardware to the 21st century! It's the most innovative hardware synth I’ve used in the near 20 years I've made music with synthesisers. Been playing about with it all weekend and still wrapping my head around the workflow.

Below are what I think may be bugs, and I thought I’d share. Realise this is going to be a huge message, but I'm just gonna go for it:

Also if these issues have already been dealt with, I apologise for the duplication!

on OS 6.0d

- Erratic volume changes occasionally happen within a voice when the base volume is altered while notes with complex mod matrix settings are being held. Usually the volume becomes very loud when compared to the max volume of the patch.

- Changing note durations or moving note events in the voice sequencer while the sequence is looping caused voices with complex mod matrix settings to miss-trigger and cause held notes. I’ve lost the voice patch that made this happen consistently, but I can try and recreate if needed. I may have been modulating wave phases with an lfo or a looping envelope.

- Assigning a new layer while the voice sequencer is playing fairly consistently triggers a held note.

- Midi panic resets the voice sequencer ’Latch’ to ‘off’. I can understand why this is the case, but can be a bit cumbersome to reset the latch.

- Filter resonance settings above 105 cause audible distortion artifacts regardless of the ‘global digital gain’ settings on most sounds I’ve tried this on (Maybe this is intentional?). The distortion is more apparent when the resonance is increased above 105 while notes are held.

Not really sure if below would be considered bugs or a feature request, but is it possible to implement ‘smoothing’ for more of the other ‘clicky’ controls? Specifically:

- Voice mode: ‘Base tab’ volume
- Voice mode: LP/HP slider
- Voice mode: Filter dry/wet
- patch mode: dry volume setting in "effects and routing"
- patch mode: Fx1 & Fx2 vol control in "effects and routing"
- performance mode: Dry Vol controls (this would be very useful for smoothly mixing performances live)
- Fx: Chorus depth control
- Fx: Phase shift fx control
- Fx: Dist 2 gain control
- Fx: Output volume (mono mode, equaliser, phaser, delay, reverb 2)
KODAMO
Thanks for reporting these!


- Erratic volume changes occasionally happen within a voice when the base volume is altered while notes with complex mod matrix settings are being held. Usually the volume becomes very loud when compared to the max volume of the patch.

That may happen due to the fact that the matrix takes control over the volume, then when you try to adjust something related to it manually it again forces it to another value. Can you share the voice that exhibits this problem?

- Changing note durations or moving note events in the voice sequencer while the sequence is looping caused voices with complex mod matrix settings to miss-trigger and cause held notes. I’ve lost the voice patch that made this happen consistently, but I can try and recreate if needed. I may have been modulating wave phases with an lfo or a looping envelope.

Yes, changing that while playing is a very complex thing, not sure we can completely prevent it.


- Assigning a new layer while the voice sequencer is playing fairly consistently triggers a held note.

We'll check that

- Midi panic resets the voice sequencer ’Latch’ to ‘off’. I can understand why this is the case, but can be a bit cumbersome to reset the latch.

Midi panic should stop any sound playing and reset all CC. Since Latch is based on the sustain CC (same as the pedal) it's also resetted.

- Filter resonance settings above 105 cause audible distortion artifacts regardless of the ‘global digital gain’ settings on most sounds I’ve tried this on (Maybe this is intentional?). The distortion is more apparent when the resonance is increased above 105 while notes are held.

This is normal, the filter has some saturation built-in to prevent exploding at the output. It's really not the best filter out there (enough to do some shaping), we suggest lowering resonance if that happens - we cannot change the filter as that point, as this would impact all the wondeful sounds made by people using the EssenceFM


For the smoothing, we'll try adding it to more parameters as you suggested 👍
phosphenes
That may happen due to the fact that the matrix takes control over the volume, then when you try to adjust something related to it manually it again forces it to another value. Can you share the voice that exhibits this problem?


I lost the sound for this one as well (didn't save and turned the machine off) I'll try making this happen again and will report back.

Yes, changing that while playing is a very complex thing, not sure we can completely prevent it.


Ok. This happened with the same patch as the above issue. I will try to reliably recreate the setup.

- Assigning a new layer while the voice sequencer is playing fairly consistently triggers a held note....We'll check that

Thanks! changing the voice of an already assigned layer was working without issue. It's only when assigning new voices, and it doesn't happen in all patches, but in the patches that it does happen in the issue is fairly consistent. Once again, I didn't saved any of the patches with issues, but I will from now on.

Midi panic should stop any sound playing and reset all CC. Since Latch is based on the sustain CC (same as the pedal) it's also resetted.

Makes sense. Thanks for the clarification.

- Filter resonance settings above 105 cause audible distortion artefacts regardless of the ‘global digital gain’ settings on most sounds I’ve tried this on (Maybe this is intentional?). The distortion is more apparent when the resonance is increased above 105 while notes are held.
This is normal, the filter has some saturation built-in to prevent exploding at the output. It's really not the best filter out there (enough to do some shaping), we suggest lowering resonance if that happens - we cannot change the filter as that point, as this would impact all the wonderful sounds made by people using the EssenceFM


Yes I figured this would be the case. I actually like how simple the filter is. It's very useful in low resonance settings for subtle sculpting of sounds without having to change operator level relationships.


I've found some more issues this morning, will post them in a separate reply.
phosphenes
more possible bugs?

- voice sequencer: while a sequence is latched: moving a note event while the sequence is actively playing fairly consistently triggers a held note. Seems more consistent when more than 3 layers are sequenced. 'Quantising' a note never seems to trigger held notes when a sequence is looping; but the data wheel and the screen control recreate the issue.

- voice sequencer: when adding a new note event, the data jog wheel in certain situations cannot move the selected event position on the grid after the duration slider on the touch screen is pressed as the data jog wheel starts editing duration settings. This occurs in certain cases if the duration control has been used on successive note event additions. Selecting an 'older' note event doesn't seem to consistently cause this behaviour.

- voice sequencer: when the voice sequencer grid is very full it becomes close to impossible to deselect the 'note event window' to access 'quantize all'. Further along this, when a different layer is selected, the previous layers selected 'note event window' stays open unless an empty area of the grid is deselected to remove the still selected 'note event parameters'. Realise this isn't really a 'bug', but the workflow is a bit confusing.

- voice sequencer: clicking a note event and moving it quickly over another note event can occasionally delete the note event

- voice sequencer: changing the tempo quickly on the touch screen or with the direct access knob sends the voice sequencer 'play-head' in reverse when slowing down, and the playhead advances past the current tempo setting when sped up.

- layer morphing: layer morphing causes clicks when altered by the trackpad, and via the morphing LFO. This is even more apparent when a patch is being voice sequenced (would sound pretty amazing if it didn't click so much)
(¡...feature request...! options for even slower x&y lfo speeds would be really amazing + a control to assign layers into the 4 morphing groups instead of only having the first four layers automatically assigned would open up a lot of timbral complexity)

- layer morphing: layer morphing deactivates when dimming is engaged.

- layer morphing: layer morphing deactivates when exiting layer morphing. (Realise this may not be a bug but it's confusing workflow + It's a shame that layer morphing wont stay active within a performance)
phosphenes
patch mode: effects and routing: if the 'out parameter' for the patch or the Fx is selected, and the keyboard in the top right corner is used to input values, no values actually change. Doing this in one instance caused a crash of the unit straight to a black screen. Haven't been able to recreate the crash reliably.

patch mode: patch select: if a patch is looping (latched) and a different patch is selected, the latched voice stay looping, but the effects change to the new patch settings.
KODAMO
Thank you for all the reports - you would make a great beta-tester!
As usual we'll look at every single issue and try to fix it. By quickly reading your reports some of them are not bugs but simply limitations (eg. Layer morphing working only when you're on the layer morphing page - it's meant for live use, but I agree having this page accessed from the Patch Edit page can make it confusing)
phosphenes
If you're looking for someone to beta test the VFM's... I'd definitely be interested!! 😉

Yeah, I haven't been sure if the some things I've brought up are design choices/limitations, or bugs. This synth is really deep- excited to try it all out! I haven't even attempted any real midi sequencing yet- (but can already appreciate that there are built in midi filters).

Re. morphing... think I remember reading somewhere in this forum reading that the layer morphing is for specific use cases, but I wasn't expecting the LFO to stop when the screen went black. Also, maybe it was just the voice layers I was using, but the morphing was very 'clicky' when I was using it, especially when the LFO was engaged.

I found some more things that may be bugs... don't want to fill the forum up with topics... think it makes sense to keep on posting things I come across here?

Cheers,
R
KODAMO
For detailed reports you can send them at contact@kodamo.org
Please allow some time though! The morphing stopping when the screen goes black is definitely a bug and will be 100% fixed.
phosphenes
ok will get in touch via email 👍

Truly appreciate that you respond so quickly to these messages + totally understand that things take time. Anyway, looking forward to future updates!

R

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