Digitone suddenly not recognized as midi device in Transfer/Ableton

Hi all,

I urgently need help with the following issue. I own a Digitone since 2019 which I am preparing for selling (updating the firmware, backing my projects up etc) and never had connection issues. It appears my Digitone is not recognized anymore as a midi device by Transfer nor Ableton. I’m on a Macbook Pro M1 Pro (2021) running Monterey.

Things I tried:

  • Downloaded the latest version of Transfer
  • Rebooted my Macbook Pro several times
  • Using different usb cables in different ports
  • My Digitone was initially on 1.3x (something) and in order to fix the issue, I was able to update the Digitone to the latest firmware (1.42) via my TM-1 using Transfer. Unfortunately this didn’t help.
  • I followed all instructions on this help page, of which most importantly putting the midi settings on USB MIDI instead of Overbridge: Transfer - Elektron device connection problems : Knowledge Base (Beta)

Test mode resulted in 0 errors, though I do not know if it can even track issues with the USB port.

When I plug in my Syntakt or Digitone II, it’s recognized fine.

Very bad timing since I am expected to ship the Digitone. Any clues?

Thanks a lot!

Hi, if you have Overbridge mode enabled in the Digitone menu, try switching out of Overbridge and into the normal USB audio / midi setting and then see if Transfer will recognize the DN. I saw someone else with a similar not recognized issue and maybe the underlying issue won’t be addressed by this, but it will help establish some kind of foundation for what is going on.

If Transfer recognizes the device when Overbridge is disabled (and Ableton can see it as an audio or midi device) then now you’re at least looking in a specific direction.

Thanks, I appreciate the reply!

I initially tried the USB MIDI setting without result in Ableton or Transfer, but was now curious to check if Ableton would recognize it as an audio interface when using the USB Audio/Midi setting, which it doesn’t.

I’m afraid that’s bad… I already created a support ticket in the meanwhile.

Ok support ticket is good, I have very little confidence in my knowledge of Mac products so I just can’t say if the conflict is related to that or not.

You might be able to check and verify the USB audio connectivity (possibly also midi) by using a mobile device, I know that some people stream audio into their phone or tablet. I don’t use mine in that way, but it should confirm that the issue is on the computer side as opposed to the digitone side (that would be my thought anyway).

I’ll see if I can think of anything else you might be able to try though!

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Good one! I’m gonna test that tonight and will report back!

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Indeed, my iPhone does not recognize it as a midi device and does not record its audio, while my Syntakt is recognized and recorded… I suppose the usb port is broken :frowning:

Hrmmmmmmmm… this is very strange, and while I think that the USB port being broken is unlikely, I do suppose it’s possible. I’m trying to think of other ways you might be able to get it to respond and test for any connectivity.

Your Syntakt connecting is helpful though, it lets us know this is more directly a problem related to DN.

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Can you identify the catalyst? What I mean, is that there must have been an event which triggered this problem. Computer crashed, tried to update something, tried to update computer, digitone bounced off the ground… Any small thing that happened right before the connectivity issue appeared? I feel like we’re missing one ingredient for the dish…

Something come to mind at all?

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I treat it super carefully and haven’t used it a lot in the past 6 months

But, I can identify a catalyst: one of the last times I used it was to replace the keyboard buttons. The coating started to peel of a bit, which is why I ordered a new set of the white buttons. This involved having to open up the Digitone and detach the front plate. I was also very careful during this process and don’t remember any bumps though.

I suspected an half an hour ago that I may have improperly reconnected everything back then, which is why I opened it and checked for the connections. However, the issue remains (but I only checked the connection of the two red wires, didn’t see anything else to check)

But either way it is still possible that something may have gone wrong back then.

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I think that it’s very unlikely you damaged it unless you opened digitone with a hammer.

The ribbon connectors should only go back into the plugs in one way, so there is not a lot of room to make an error. The inside of the digitone is so simple that it’s hard to believe it’s such a complex machine.

Ok so tell me what happens when you run test mode. You hold down the func then flip the power switch “on” and during start up you release func, the error test runs, and then? Any errors shown? Tell me what you see.


Seems all good…

(Btw thanks again for all your help on this!)

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Yeah, no problem. We’ve yet to see if it’s actually “helping” but maybe we’ll crack it!

Ok so give me a few minutes and when I finish what I’m doing I’m going to pull up my digitone manual and make sure there is not a setting which I’m missing. There are really only a few which might impact it.

And to confirm, when you use it with headphones or normal midi cables you get sound and everything works as expected? You’ve plugged it into a midi controller, or controlled some other synth with it since that time?

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Indeed, with headphones & normal midi cables it wouldn’t appear that there’s an issue as everything is working fine.

Given that I don’t use usb all that much, the issue may have even been there for some time (if there’s an issue :smiley:)

Ok so I assume this is already set but just to confirm, under the Midi port settings we have Midi+USB for output. You could change that to just “USB” although I think it shouldn’t matter, only if something is stuck and it needs to be changed to re-enable the port, but I doubt that’s the case. It’s certainly not the expected behavior.

You already stated that in USB config you tried the settings for USB midi as well as USB audio/midi.

You couldn’t get Ableton to detect it, do you have any other DAW you can try?

I think that since Transfer doesn’t recognize it, I would normally check the settings on the Mac computer to make sure some administrator setting wasn’t blocking it. I’ve seen for Sonoma that someone said:

"You have to enable it in privacy and security settings within 30 mins of install. Did you check Privacy and Security even though it doesn’t flag a warning?

Try uninstalling, reboot, install, check Privacy and Security."

but that was for a different scenario of not detected, I’m just quoting the part that makes me think of the administrator type settings. Since you were unable to connect Digitone to your mobile device and Syntakt was successful, it’s sounding more like there’s no USB coming out of the Digitone at all.

When you did the firmware upgrade to 1.42 using the TM-1, was that in order to try and fix the USB issue? So, the USB issue appeared before the sysex update, and that didn’t help but was done in an attempt to fix the problem. That’s correct?

I’m sure there is something that I’m missing here but it’s sounding progressively more like a hardware issue. I’m not positive of any other way to test the USB port, I’m sure that Elektron has some way to test that using their diagnostic equipment which I assume connects to those open headers on the PCB but unless the MIDI out port is not set (or reading) correctly, I think you explored the other possibilities.

Even if the USB port shows one of the correct options, USB or MIDI+USB, I still think trying the other one is worth doing.

I’ve read about a lot of problems with connectivity between Elektron and Mac, but usually it’s just a bit of a different scenario which does not sound like your issue. If it had connected to your mobile device, I would go down that path, but it seems unlikely at this point.

Unfortunately, I think that’s all I got, so if changing the midi out port setting doesn’t do it, probably have to wait for the response from support :frowning:

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