I am still getting my sea legs with MK II at the moment. I am noticing that my beat sounds like its going through overdrive or distortion and is pretty wooly sounding. I am trying to get a sense of what’s possible and how to shape the sound of Rytm. I noticed that if I go to the Distortion FX page and turn AMT to 0, the SYM control still has a massive effect on the sound. I am curious if there is a way to disable all overdrive and distortion circuits so that I can hear this machine as clean as possible?
Part of the reason I am doing this is that I made a nice beat and individually the sounds are pretty clean, but when it plays back a beat, sounds like the whole thing is playing through an overdrive pedal. Honestly, I think it sounds quite cool, but its not exactly what I was trying to do.
Put the sym parameter to zero, it’s a nasty(in a good way) effect that destroys the sound with asymmetrical clipping, independent of the dist amount…
Set master volume knob not above 3:00, turn vol for synth and sample below 100, and also amp vol and track levels… Set overdrive to zero…
Turn compressor mix all the way to zero until you figure out how to work it…
Crank things back up if needed…
4 Likes
Yeh, the SYM parameter is always active and is actually a separate circuit from the master distortion altogether. The SYM affects even the audio input! Always make sure it is at zero, unless you specifically want to mangle your rytm output.
2 Likes
Also check the velocity on the trig page, perhaps set below 100…
Wow, thank you so much for all of the advice. I am a bit surprised at how difficult it is to eliminate the signal overdrive (not the overdrive module). I was having some trouble getting the Rytm to be loud enough for recording, I guess I must have pushed too hard. I just set my I/O to -10 input and this should help.
Thanks all for the thoughtful, helpful guidance.
1 Like
Ok, I think that was it. Thanks for the good advice.
I have so many more questions. First, RTFM. I am sure I will be back!
2 Likes
Are you sure it’s not just the sound of the oscillators of the machine your using and the waveform you’ve selected?
Perhaps load a sample, there’s some in there that come with it. See if it plays clean… I personally haven’t thought the AR always sounds distorted, and my levels are often above what I suggested. Sometimes I add distortion just a little bit to boost the sound and change the harmonics, and it still doesn’t sound distorted… I can even set the overdrive quite high if the synth vol is lower and it doesn’t distort…
Maybe something else is going on with your monitoring setup?
If you can maybe post an audio clip or video if you want and we can see if it sounds normal… Or listen to some demos online and see if you notice it there…
Or did you figure it out? What did you mean when you said “I think that was it”?
The above advice has already made everything sound better. Well, sound different. I am trying to learn what causes distortion and what doesn’t. And with a machine like this its apparently really easy to drive it hot internally.
Because my I/O on my system was set to +4, the input single was relatively quite and so I was cranking up the volume of the internal voices and for a while even adding overdrive just to get the volume louder. It was a pleasant sound, but with all the voices driving hot and overdriven, the outputs was mushier than I wanted.
I am having odd problems now that I am rebalancing the kit to taste like the reverb is not loud enough anymore, but the delay is quite hot. Delay is probably about 3x louder than the reverb.
Anyhow, I have got this feeling that I am still learning and probably borked the settings. This is one of those rare times which making mistakes is actually kind of fun.
1 Like
Yeah, there’s an amazing amount of gain staging on the AR, so many places…
In the end it makes for a wide variety of tones, in the being it makes for a lot of confusion…
1 Like
Oh, I even thought of another one. I keep thinking of more… 
The vol setting on the compressor is like a master volume for the whole AR…
And the reason I said to turn the mix all the way to the left/dry is because if you have too quick of compressor settings it can affect long wavelength bass tones and cause distortion…
1 Like
Yeah, I had a feeling that is how it worked. I set this volume to 100 too, just to be safe. I have to say, overall, I am starting to coax some magic out of the box. I do wish the machines were a bit more programmable.
I was hoping to find a huge old school electro bass drum but that was not as easy to find as I would have liked. I seem to get bigger juicier kicks from my DFAM.
1 Like
The reason behind the loud delay and quiet reverb may be the Pre and Post settings in the master distortion page.
There is an insane amout of gain possibilities within the Rytm. Keeping levels under 100 will provide a clean signal flow. Experimentation with levels can really change things up.
2 Likes
I am learning, thank you!
