Sounds like we should all cool our jets until the “L1 2” is out!
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Try customer support again and ask to send it back, they refunded my L1 completely and let me keep it anyway. That is, if you bought from Donner directly.
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Ah I kinda skipped over the Dreadbox stuff and was just thinking about Donner. I think the reason these things slip through is that there are no musicians involved; business people see what sells, run the numbers, and decide to make cheap analog gear, engineers are given the job and quality control comes down ‘does it look OK on the oscilloscope’ rather than ‘how do I feel trying to use it for a track.’
Then again maybe they do try but whoever signs off on the musicality already has tinnitus and doesn’t care about the odd digital noise, or tells themselves it add color 
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Some people are also very OCD about any issues, even the slightest niggle which might not affect 99% of use cases gets blown out of proportion. Many undesirable sonic artefacts are emphasized by headphones, for example - something which sounds noisy on the cans might sound acceptable on monitors, and so on…
Since everyone got used to VSTs, we have raised our expectations of all music HW to the same levels - ie, faultless sonic performance, zero noise or undesirable artefacts etc etc. But older gear often had some niggles…
Examples which come to mind - Zen Delay HF “noise”, Roland JD-XA filter, Sound devices MixPre “clipping issues”… reading about these issues online make you think the devices in question are close to unusable, yet people IRL have no probs making great recordings with them.
Now, I’m not saying these issues should not be discussed… this is more insight about said gear, for better or worse… but sometimes things need to be judged against ones’ personal experience…
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I don’t find that to be the case with Donner
The B1 is a really well thought out playable device which was clearly designed by someone who loves 303s.
I haven’t tried an L1, but again it strikes me as being designed in a very thoughtful way even if the implementation seems to be poor in some regards.
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It’s not perfect but I love it. There, I said it.
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I think I found the solution to the screen problem…
Edit: We have accused the wrong culprit all the time! I completely detached the screen from the circuit board and the noise is still there in the main outs.
Poor, little screen 
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And the headphone out is clean?
Problem solved eh?
Not ideal like, but not a dead end either.
Yeah, looks like it. The LEDs from the buttons also had a major impact on the sound. The L1 has two little breakout boards, one on the far left with USB, power in and the other ins and outs and the other one is on the far right where the headphone out is located.
Also found a few adjustable pots on the back! They are called NOISE TRIM, VCF WIDTH and VCF OFFSET:
NOISE TRIM is on the max volume by default and I found it to be a bit too loud in comparison. I’m not sure whether it also changes the character of the sound as well. But I made recordings from the highest and the lowest setting!
PS: Looks like the audio samples are identical, just a different volume.
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I like their designs. I haven’t tried the B1 but you’ve increased my interest. I was already interested in the L1 and I can’t tell right now if it has real problems or people are making a mountain out of a molehill.
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Consensus seems to be, use the headphone out and its a good un? Aside from no CV control and some MIDI syncing issues…
Yes, headphone out is clean on mine. Main output has digital noise. Dimming the light in the synth menu reduces that noise in the main output. I use Headphone out always.
Maffez has proposed a modification on his website based on the SH-101 circuit diagram as a potential fix for the noise issue. Naturally it requires some soldering, but worth looking into for those who plan to go the distance with this synth.
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Hilarious isnt it?
The lyra thread is full of praise for the sounds coming out of a synth predicated on noisy, bleedy circuits.
Over here in El Syntho Cheapo, bunch of complaining.
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It appears there’s a new OS out (1.2.4) and that looks like it has fixed the external sequencer freezing issues I was having.
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