Mask 1 comments and feature requests
Stu Peter | Hello Kodamo and fellow players. I have had the Mask 1 for about a month now and am very pleased with it. It sounds and plays great, and it can make a wide variety of sounds. The thickness and clarity in the low end especially is really nice. The interface is as advertised and works well for making sounds quickly. As I've seen others say, the envelopes per oscs/noise/filter/pitch are something more synths should employ. Not sure what the plan is down the road, but here are some features I would like to see added: 1 Increased range on ADSR controls. What's there works very well, but I am occasionally trying to find "in between" spots that don't exist. 2 Control over envelope curves, or different curve options 3 Loopable pitch envelope 4 BiDi option on all envelopes 5 "Restricted" Mask modes, where some Masks are omitted. Even only, odd only, only masks shown on panel, every 9th mask, randomly re-sort masks... 6 Filter Mix per osc, or at least on one of them. 7 Lfo/env speeds as mod destinations 8 Secondary mod destinations for the lfos, vel, MW, and AT. 9 A panning mode where lower notes start on the left, moving to the right as you go higher, with a few different depth values 10 Finer control over the quietest values of the fx depth. For reverb and delay, I like to sometimes set them very low for a hint of ambiance, but I find the lowest value too loud for this. I don't believe I have found any bugs, but I do get some ugly internal clipping at times. I have to play around with the envelope levels, the master, and the patch volume to find the sweet spots. Not a major issue, but I'm wondering if this is normal, and if it can be managed via firmware somehow. Anyways, thanks for reading and I will say again that I really like this synth. I have the EssenceFM mki as well and I think both synths are extremely well designed. |
KODAMO | Hi, Thanks for the suggestions. About the clipping this is not normal. Are you using TRS cables? Mask1 (especially early units) do only support TRS cables. If you plug TS (mono) jacks that will short the outputs and make the Mask1 distort very quickly as you increase the volume. Also, at max volume the Mask1 output is so high it may clip your audio interface. It also reduces its internal headroom because it is a digital volume control. I recommend not to go past half the volume on the Mask1 (value = 30), that should leave plenty headroom inside, and output a more reasonable level for your sound card/mixer. |
| Stu Peter | Thanks for the quick response! Unit number on mine is below 50. I had actually switched between trs, ts, and then back to trs, as I was getting ground loop issues and experimenting with solutions. Now I am using trs into radial jdxis with ground lifted and ground noise is gone. I think it's likely that the TS cables caused the main distortion issue, as it has not come up the last few times I played. |
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