My Korg esx sampler seems to drift in bpm. It’s subtle enough when used by itself but is an issue when synced with other midi gear. It’s been this way for the five or so years I’ve had it and as a result I just use it on its own but that’s obviously very limiting. Has anyone else experienced this? If so, is there a fix for it?
It’s a great machine in all other ways except for the gimmicky tubes running at a laughably low plate voltage. Sounds great, intuitive workflow, and 128 step patterns. It even has a few useful mods I’ve been meaning to do. I don’t want to replace it but it’s driving me a little bit nuts.
Ive had 2 EMX1, and an ESX1. Never had a problem syncing with other gear. Their clocks are so tight I could run two electribes with no midi cable connected and they would stay in time. Are you using ESX as master or slave?
Is it just the clock that drifts? Is audible or just the numbers on the screen jittering?
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It’s audible, nothing weird on the display. It goes out of sync with whatever it’s connected to via midi clock. Interestingly it stays in sync when it’s actually sequencing something else but not if it’s synced via clock.
I usually use it as master but it happens either way.
Although I no longer own an ESX when I did it was always solid for me. I used to use it in my live sets and did a few gigs with it and a few other machines and never had sync issues even when changing patterns or improvising over top of the beat.
I have the same problem with my EMX. It has been doing this since I got it off Ebay a couple years ago, but have never had other gear to know what is right and wrong. When i use Ableton’s clock into it, it sounds like its skipping almost trying to keep up with the timing, but then when i record without it, the bpm drifts dramatically. I love this machine, but this is pissing me off
Welcome to elektronauts!
So that’s interesting. What you’re describing is a bit different. Your emx sounds like it’s trying to adjust its clock sync but is struggling to do so. The problem I was talking about upthread was more of a subtle but perpetual drift. Subtle enough that it’s almost imperceptible if there’s nothing else playing to compare against, and no audible artifacts or glitches, it doesn’t even “try” to catch up.
The original post here was about a year and a half ago. Since then I’ve not been using it as much but when I do I have a kind of dumb work around. I don’t midi sync it at all. I just sync it manually with tap tempo and whenever I feel the need I quickly hit stop, tap tempo again, and restart it. I’ve gotten pretty good at it. One of these days I’ll try reloading the operating system and see if that helps, I don’t have a good excuse for not having tried that yet, I suppose I’m just used to it now. You might want to give it a try, I think korg has it available on their website.
Very odd.
Ive had 2 EMX-1s and an ESX-1 .
All three units were rock solid timing wise. So tight I could sync them together with no cables, just hitting play at the same time and they would not drift away from each other at all.
When I synched my EMX1 to ableton or Octatrack, solid timing there too.
Hope you figure it out.