The happy side effect of this is that it tempers my GAS somewhat, because I don’t really wish to buy gear that doesn’t interface well with Linux without a patchy (or any) Wine workaround - the Yamaha Seqtrak comes to mind, for instance, and a lot of grooveboxes that rely heavily on software to function (e.g. Native Instruments’ gear).
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For anyone interested, I’ve just added support for uploading samples to tracks to the Digitakt (OG). Also, RAM can be accessed and it’s possible to upload and download samples and delete sample slots.
Code is available in the feat-digitakt-upload-to-track branch. Although experimental, it seems to work well. Notice that the shown tracks are the ones in the currently selected pattern.
For technical questions, I’d rather discuss them in Drag Digitakt samples to track on active pattern · Issue #136 · dagargo/elektroid · GitHub.
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Elektroid 3.3 is just finally out! 
This has been quite a big release that has been in the works for too long.
These are the most relevant changes.
- Add support for Elektron Digitakt (OG) track filesystem with optional timestreching in the
track-loopfilesystem - Merge Digitakt II
sample-stereofilesystem into thesamplefilesystem - Add support for KORG Volca Sample and Volca Sample 2
- Add support for KORG padKONTROL
- Use floating point for audio (16 bit integer still user configurable)
- Add support for tags (
IKEYchunk), which are user configurable - Add support for tempo (
acidchunk) with “tempo:x” and “note:x” search options (using locales) - Add support for MIDI note fraction (
smplchunk) - Add gross tempo estimation based on beats and sample length
- Add tools: channel splitting and normalization
- Generate SFZ file generation when using the auto sampler
- Use cross-zero detection when selecting and editing loop points (use while pressing shift to skip cross-zero detection)
- Add playback cursor
- Add stereo monitoring
- Improve waveform visualization and speed up drawing
- Replace hyphen with colon in the CLI command (still backwards compatible)
A couple of notes.
- It might be possible that the
trackand thetrack-loopfilesystem might work with the Digitkat II. Take a look at Drag Digitakt samples to track on active pattern · Issue #136 · dagargo/elektroid · GitHub for more information. - The Flatpak is not available yet due to infrastructure maintenance. I’ll keep you posted whenever it is.
I hope you enjoy this.
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wow, i am not sure exactly what some of these things mean, but i am especially curious about the support for track filesystem…what can we do with that?
and it is nice to see that there are some things still for the OG DT.
Actually, there are 3 new filesystems for the Digitakt OG.
RAM, which is exactly the same as the Digitakt itself provides through the Samples/RAM screen. If a sample is loaded into RAM, it is copied to the/incomingdirectory and then loaded into the selected slot. Slots can be emptied but samples will remain in the/incomingdirectory. As with any other sample, moving them around later will not mess with the assigned samples to the pattern tracks.track, which is exactly the same as the Loopcloud offers. It loads a sample into a track of the current selected pattern (the sample is loaded intoRAMin the first free slot and assigned to that track slot points to it).track-loop, which is the same as thetrackfilesystem but it timestretches the sample to follow the pattern tempo. In order to work, the tempo in the sample must be set.
Additionally, unassigned slots can be emptied up by using a new menu called Purge Unused RAM Slots.
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Elektroid 3.3.2 is out!
This is a small patch that only includes changes in the documentation that needed to be applied for the release of the new version in Flathub. See here.
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With Syntakt 1.40, a new machine for samples has arrived and I’d like to add support for it to Elektroid.
While I have no idea of the actual MIDI SysEx implementation, some technical details are available and some of its limitations might imply some details of the underlying design.
For instance, it seems that the sample filesystem is similar to the projects and sounds ones as it is a slot filesystem where items are addressed by their ID. Another detail confirming this would be that changing the order of the samples would affect any project using that slot. Additionally, we know there are 64 samples whose maximum length is about 5 s. Besides all this, there is no project or RAM management and samples are configured globally.
All in all, it might be that samples can be addressed as all data filesystem, like projects and sounds, and its content is directly load into RAM at startup.
Here is something for anyone interested to try. Just list the data filesystem and cross your fingers.
$ elektroid-cli ld
0: id: SYSTEM_ID; name: computer
1: id: hw:3,0,0; name: hw:3,0,0: Elektron Digitakt MIDI 1
$ elektroid-cli elektron-data-ls 1:/
D 0000 0 0 0B -1 projects
D 0000 0 0 0B -1 soundbanks
This is just wishful thinking and it might be totally wrong but we’ll see.
As a side note, remember that you can use Elektroid to upgrade your machines.
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Keeping my fingers crossed. Your app did reinvigorate my love for the Microfreak after i abandoned Windows.
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Installed via flathub! It sees the syntakt but doesn’t want to see the .syx for the firmware upgrade…what am I missing?
Isn’t there an item in the application called OS upgrade? There you’ll be able to choose a SysEx file.
Oh god I missed it…duh, ty
EDIT: I looked at the menu before I’d connected the Syntakt, that’s why it wasn’t there…installed 1.40 without a hitch
1 Like
Glad it worked!
This is by design. Menu changes dinamically depending on the selected device because not all devices allow the same operations.
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Out of curiosity - Is support for the SP-404 MK II possible and / or planned?
I’d like to add support for as many samplers as possible but I don’t have the time to do it. I’ve been thinking of getting a Teenage Engineering K.O. II or an SP-404MKII but with the new Syntakt OS… I don’t know.
If anyone wants to add support for something, they should try creating a new issue for it as it might spark other people interest to add support for it, which would be great as most of the cumbersome code needed to create the basics is already there.
On the technical side, Elektroid has an internal API that allows quite easily adding pseudo filesystems with an underlying SysEx messaging system. But anything that might be mounted as a filesystem can be used too.
I always thought this is the case of the SP-404 MK II because I assumed it could be mounted and then browsed within Elektroid. Isn’t this the case?
Same approach could be used with the Novation Circuit Rhythm and other samplers.
It can be mounted, but only shows a generic “programs” list.
I completely misunderstood something I read recently.
In order to access the SD card it must be removed and inserted into a computer. Then you could use Elektroid to copy samples to it.
But, alas, there is no direct access to it via USB. 
We’ve been working on Add support for Elektron Syntakt sample filesystem · Issue #213 · dagargo/elektroid · GitHub and support for Syntakt samples is ready in the feat-add-syntakt-samples branch.
The only remaining thing is that samples are not uploaded if the size exceeds the limit.
The approach with other devices is to truncate the sample to the maximum allowed length, which we don’t know yet, and do nothing else as the user is expected to know the limit in advance. Alerting them in any way would be best but I’m not sure about this both from the UX and code perspectives.
Also, I wanted to thank the Elektron team for providing us with some help that was absolutely needed.
4 Likes
Thanks a lot for working on this!
I just tried out commit 4d64b42485b114d862e7998f400bc3416f8f1aab with Syntakt 1.40 connected via USB but couldn’t get it to work:
$ ./elektroid-cli ld
0: id: SYSTEM_ID; name: laptop
1: id: hw:2,0,0; name: hw:2,0,0: Elektron Syntakt MIDI 1
$ ./elektroid-cli info 1
Type: MIDI
Device name: MIDI device
Device version:
Device description:
Connector name: default
Filesystems: program
$ ./elektroid-cli elektron-data-ls 1:/
ERROR:elektroid-cli.c:1195:main: Error: No such device
$ ./elektroid-cli default-data-ls 1:/
ERROR:elektroid-cli.c:156:cli_connect: Invalid filesystem 'data'
ERROR:elektroid-cli.c:1195:main: Error: Invalid argument
I am I doing something wrong? Thanks in advance!
Happy to help!
It’s weird because that commit should work and it doesn’t seem you’re doing anything wrong.
The right connector is elektron, the right filesystem is data-sample and the preferable way of using the CLI is with : as in this example.
$ ./elektroid-cli elektron:data-sample:ls 1:/
But the issue seems to be in the handshake because Elektroid doesn’t detect the Syntakt and defaults to the default connector.
Have you checked the MIDI configuration and routing so that the MIDI output goes thru the USB port?
Can you post here the output of ./elektroid-cli info 1 -vv?
Ah found the problem thanks to -vv output: the devices.json file wasn’t found (because I only did make and not make install).
Thanks again!
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