Elektron devices for installation purposes

If there’s enough heat dissipation possible i wouldn’t be scared if the product work for 1 hr it should be no problem to leave them on for hours. The electronics in a smart tv are differemt but on the other hand quitte the same and can be left on for days. Converters, resistors, opamps, capacitors, ic’s and more of that are fine as long as the elektron’s keep flowing . Surge spikes can ruin things but otherwise i bet those elektrons could run for months without issues.
Edit: a surge protector or something like power conditioner will enhance the odds in your favor.

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That is good to hear! I will be able to arrange a fan for the devices in case the temperature gets too brutal like it often times does during the summer. :slight_smile:

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i would, as suggested already, make sure you’ve some sort of backup…even if that means an MP3 player/computer and make sure you rehearse the set you’ll be playing so you can kind of get a feeling of what could happen.
i’ve had the machines running for hours at times and never really experienced any crash or hardware problems otherwise. heat dissipation is a must though i think, just to be on the safe side :smiley:

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Or maybe I’ll just bring all of my Elektron gear and just replace them as they go. :slight_smile:
But seriously, I better borrow some Ipods just to be sure.
I kind of like the idea of hiding in this small room outside the actual exhibition area and playing live to ppl without them knowing it.

If I was in your situation, I’d put a cheap DJ mixer and a digital audio recorder in the installation.

I would make 6 hour recordings from my Elektrons, setup the installation to use those, and then use the DJ mixer to let me bring in my live gear when I show up with it.

I would not make this bet. While it’s true that modern electronics are incredibly reliable, I wouldn’t trust software designed for performing minutes-long tracks to be stable for hours without some evidence. In preparation for my 45 minute live sets years ago, I rapidly found out that both my Sony HR-MP5 and Roland SRV-3030 reverbs couldn’t run reliably for 45 minutes.

Two things to think about are counters and memory leaks. Counters are numbers that increase or decrease, until they hit their limit. At the limit they might wrap around back to the start, or they may stay stuck at the maximum value. This can cause the system to lock up or behave erratically when the condition occurs. Sequencers seem likely to have this kind of problem. The other problem is memory leaks. Memory leaks are where a system uses memory but doesn’t give it all back. Over time, all of the memory is in use and the system can’t get free memory for new tasks. Plenty of other software flaws can occur, but those are two fairly common ones that are easy to reason about.

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I think the OT will be fine, I am not convinced about the Analog Four as it is analog and it gets very hot in less than 2 hours

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Thanks for the heads-up! I will be able to powercycle the devices many times during the six hour days to avoid this.

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Thats a good point! I’ve noticed that the A4 gets way warmer when used than the MD, MnM and OT.

I do multichannel sound/video installations and would recommend you have the content playing on a loop from some type of audio player. Then you can schedule some special live performances where you play for an hour or two. I’ve been using the Super Tsunami wave trigger sound board for recent installations, but am going to experiment with the Bela system. These boards are designed for multichannel interactive installations and the Bela can run Pure Data patches. I’m currently working on an installation for the Smithsonian Hirshhorn museum for a sound art show in June.

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Thank you for the info!! I will definitely look into those devices. The opportunity to create an exhibition presented itself by surprise and the time window has been kinda limiting and I don’t know anything about the gear ppl usually use with installations.
My problem ATM is that I don’t have the money to buy any new gear and also the NGNY challenge still lives strong with me even though I did kinda mess it up a bit recently. :slight_smile:

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By all means use the gear you have. I was mainly thinking that playing that kind of schedule would be exhausting. If you can create generative compositions that might be a good option that lets you take breaks. There’s nothing wrong with using recorded material though. Usually in art exhibitions visitors are passing through and not staying for extended periods, so looping material is ok.

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That in-depth knowledge I don’t have, so glad that this forum has others to react too. I can only speak of experience with DT and DN and HEAT. Had all of them running like 3 or 4 times over night (forgot to turn them off) and they where still running in the morning.

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Yes, print to “tape” just in case.

Better to have a backup, it’ll give you luck for not ever having to worry :slight_smile:

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Mark Fell did it with a couple of Digitones, worked out fine. :smiley:
http://www.markfell.com/wiki/index.php?n=Mf.Parallelling

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You WOULD push for the digitone :wink:

@Ess I was just about to say that from my experience, all the latest firmwares have seemed fully crash resistant to me… except for the digitone :see_no_evil:

@Strutter besides all the solid advice already given: Personally I avoid using the USB port in all situations in which I really don’t want the machines to crash. (Especially in overbridge mode)

@resonant_space I have nothing but good things to say about the Bela platform, highly recommended :ok_hand: (although I mostly interface with it through c++ and not PD)

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I’ve run my Elektron gear all day, overnight etc… never had an issue with overheating or crashing. The only time my DN has been flaky is occasionally on start up. Once it’s going it’s been fine.

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Don’t get me wrong, I love my DN, it’s my favorite elektron box after the AR, but depending on what you do with the arp, it has definitely not been fine for at least as long as I have owned one (years). Both in terms of not crashing and working as intended.

In case you were wondering how to crash your DN

@Strutter actually I do have experience in this - so going to try and give you some advice other than just finding an excuse to post a cool link (sorry) :sweat_smile:

I don’t think the machines crashing and/or overheating (when just left running) is going to be an issue at all, I think what you should be more concerned about is what this setup needs every day. Unless you are willing to be at this gallery every day starting things up and shutting them down you need to provide the people running it with solid instructions how to get the machines up and running. (And how to identify when something is going wrong / how to reboot etc) – maybe that’s obvious but I suppose what I’m saying is consider trying to make things as easy as possible.

Secondly, if you are at all worried about theft I would recommend to look into securing the devices somehow. I once did an installation with a Nord Modular G2 that I bolted (with the rack mounts) down to a board attached to the wall for example.

If you need to hide the devices out of sight - then maybe I’d question why they are even there besides the novelty of live synthesized sound (perhaps that is integral to your piece which is totally fair), and perhaps then replacing it with a media player could be better. In any case, as some other people pointed out the analog devices shouldn’t be fully covered by heavy cloth or similar things as they could overheat.

The last thing I would be concerned about is the machines crashing due to a bug, really. If that would be an issue you would have probably already encountered it with the patterns you intend to play on a loop, no?

Hope that helps!

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This was very helpful, thank you so much!!
Please do share a link, I’d love to see what kind of stuff you’re doing.

Hearing that the overheating shouldn’t be an issue is nice. I will do some tests just in case though. The house has some small closets and such where I can place the gear so that it’ll be out of sight.

I will be going there everyday and spend my time there from morning to evening.
The location is basically an abondoned old mansion so I will have to take all of the gear home with me every day. Might regret this eventually lol.
Anyways I’m so stoked about this chance to have an exhibition that the voice of reason really has no say.

I do feel that having the synths there as a part of it is v important and offers me something to do while staying there. It is kind of a remote location so having some synths to tweak will undoubtedly be nice.

About bugs, yeah I’d too think that it would have presented itself by now.

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