MIDI problem: Using Elektron Digitakt to sequence Blofeld desktop

First of all, I used my Korg Minilogue to control the Blofeld, and had no problems at all. It was plug and play. Not so with my Digitakt and Blofeld! Apparently they don’t play well together, and the manuals for both products are of little help.

I set both the Digitakt and Blofeld to Channel 1 and there was no sound, yet the Blofeld’s MIDI light blinked every time I hit the Digitakt’s chromatic keyboard. So, signals are being sent. But, again, no sound.

Does anyone have any idea what’s going on? (It would be great if people with both the Digitakt and Blofeld attempt to answer this.)

Are there other MIDI Global settings on the Blofeld that need to be set on certain parameters?

Are there MIDI settings on the Digitakt that need to be set a certain way when sequencing external gear like the Blofeld?

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I had a similar issue trying to control the Blofeld from my Monomachine - same thing, the MIDI light lit up but no sound. I fixed it with a setting on the Blofeld but I’ve since sold it and can’t remember exactly what I did. I’ll try and look it up.

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Ok, this might be it, from some forum that came up when I googled it:

check to see if the Blofeld has been set to respond to MIDI CC’s in the Global settings. This is like the 4th page or so, can’t remember, but there is a page that has the Ctrl Transmit/Receive mode settings on it. You need to set this to Receive Ctrl: ON. This will tell the Blofeld to respond to CC’s and sysex parameter change messages.

Assuming you absolutely, definitely have the midi channel set the same on both devices.

Dang! I wish you could remember. haha

Yeah, I’m pretty sure that I set it to Receive Ctrl: On. Still no sound. I’m going to break the Digi and Blofeld out here shortly and make sure that I did that, then report back.

UPDATE: Rookie mistake, it seems, but I still may need some help. After setting the Digi and Blofeld up last night, I plugged my headphones into the Blofeld and there was sound. haha So, what I did is kept the MIDI cable in both machines, ran audio out from the Blofeld into the Digitakt, and listened in on headphones via the Digitakt. The only problem now is volume level, but maybe that’s a Blofeld problem? By that I mean, the volume of the Blofeld sequence is much, much, much quieter than the samples and presets I have on the Digitakt. Any ideas?

I’ve got the DT running the Blofeld in muliti mode. It works pretty well after some tweaking.
Regarding levels, I have them both running into a hardware mixer, and I definitely have to have the volume on the Blo about 30% higher than the DT!

yeah the blofeld is notorious for it’s low output levels. both of the ones i’ve owned were pretty bad in that regard.

Hallo guys, I have DT sending clock to a blofeld and I’m having issues similar to the ones you mentioned.

First of all, I am noticing an annoying inaccuracy in synchronization between the two machines. My settings should be ok, and actually the Blofeld arpeggios sounds good with DT’s beat 40-50% of the time, but often I can feel a noticeable delay. Meaning that the tempo of the arpeggio is right, but somehow slightly shifted from the beat (grrr).
Sometimes when I press play on DT the synth sounds out of time, then if I stop and make another attempt it will just work fine… so random!

My second problem,as you said, is the volume! Sorry for the super-noob question guys (I started messing around with music hardware a couple of months ago), but is there some kind of “signal amplifier hardware” (lol) that I can apply to the blofeld in order to bring its levels to the DT’s ones? Or maybe an easier workaround I haven’t thought of?

I really hope there’s a solution at least to the first issue (which if not, would make my blofeld almost completely unusable for what I need…).

Many thanks in advance!! : )

What is the audio output of your Blofeld connected to?

Hi @PeterHanes, the Blofeld’s audio output is directly connected to R/L audio inputs of the DT.

Thank you for replying.

I’m having similar problems. I have DT and Blofeld on the same chanel and it works when I play DT chromatic keyboard but problems occured when I started sequencing. The trigs were all captured by the DT and I can see MIDI light on the Blofeld blinked when I play the pattern. But some trigs played no sound!

Have you figured out the solution or what caused the problem?

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Blofeld is notorious for completely ignoring midi clock, and having it screw up other settings when it’s enabled. your best bet is to set the clock to internal and manually “beat match” the tempo to that of your digitakt project on a per-patch or per-multi basis. As long as you aren’t relying on long, multibar LFO usage, retriggering the notes should keep everything in time. the arp is a little more delicate in this regard but i’ve had some success sequencing it without clock. sucks, but, that’s some of the quirks of the Blofeld. haha

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An immaculate second hand Blofeld arrived yesterday at mines. Open the box, plug midi cable out from Digitakt to midi in Blofeld desktop, start sequencing straight away. I have read many comments about low output, not at all. Let’s see how it goes but it was love at first sight :slight_smile:

Reposted to MIDI problem: Using Elektron Monomachine to sequence Blofeld desktop

Reposted to MIDI problem: Using Elektron Monomachine to sequence Blofeld desktop @ericd

A post was merged into an existing topic: Digitakt and Moog Mother 32