My Rytm 'Flashes' in the dark occasionally, without any power!

There I’ve said it, what is this Voodoo going on? Every now and then the pads of my Rytm ‘flash’ very quickly - I thought a few times I must be tripping, seeing this flash from the corner of my eye but then I waited for it and it does it sometimes - Is this normal? Weird. How come? No power, still flashing ? Voodo.

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It’s just asking to be played.

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Trippy.

A dodgy contact in the power switch, maybe?

Is powerline completely disconnected from unit

It’s just the Secret Service coming for a visit

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Is the unit turned off from its own power switch or are you turing it off at a surge protector with a bunch of other gear attached?

that’s it! it’s connected to a surge protector and sure there’s heaps of other gear on there - the sure protector however is turned off and it does it - do you think it’s harmful ?

Mine has just started doing exactly the same. It’s plugged into an extension cable that my A4 and modular gear is plugged into. Rytm power on but no power going to it (and the extension power has been switched off for 12 hours).

Have switched off it’s own power now.

Weird

America bugs your iPhone.
China bugs your router.
Sweden bugs your drum machines.

It’s tracking whenever you talk about using polyrhythms. That’s like terrorism against techno.

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I have never trusted surge protectors for bulk power switching like that as I have seen tons of similar issues when using them.

That sentence reads incorrectly - I have not trusted them SINCE I noticed these issues.

Either way, I think you’re better off switching the power at the unit itself, as you’ve done.

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I had the same issue some years ago with my Monoaschine. It appeared when net power supply was switched off but MM remained switched on. I guess it was due to electrical capacitance of long wireing from the PSA. Indeed, switching off the maschine resolves the problem.

In case the switch on the power distribution is switched off this could indicate that the switch is inappropriate and only cuts off only one side (and it happens to be the wrong side).
This means that there will still be high voltage going out of the sockets, just there is no return way for the power. The power then may find other ground potentials, maybe through the audio sockets.
Try plugging in the distribution/surge protector the other way around into the wall socket.
If the problem goes away, please dump the distributor/surge protector because it can lead to deadly situations and buy a proper one that switches off both cables of the power cord.

I’m sorry but that’s nonsense. Since power nets worldwide were driven by alternating current every switch cuts only one side. And since (almost) every power net and though the distibutor is grounded there can’t be high voltage on any audio connector. Except you worked on your electrical system and don’t know what you were doing. AFAIK every local power net is protected by a ground fault circuit interruptor - here in europe. In germany it usually has a treshold of 50mA.

There are lots and lots and lots of devices that are not grounded.
Elektron rytm definitely is not grounded. Null phase is not ground.

Ooh. And also i was talking about the power extenders that you plug into walls, not the actual installation. In case it was confusing.

My MDUW does the same (LED screen flashes) when connected to your standard household switchable power bar (no surge protector).
Helps to turn off the unit with the switch rather than just the power bar.

Could a very low voltage ac leakage current into the RYTM ps charge a capacitor enough to reach a threshold and fire off? You could measure a low voltage ac leakage with a voltmeter.

The display is driven by some millivolts. For sure even the PS cables could have enough capacity to generate such peaks. If the maschines switch is on it doubles the cable length and adds the maschines circuit board. This could be far enough to drive the display. This is defintely not an ac leak.

I don’t understand. If a capacitor is formed by the wire, where does this capacitor gets its energy from to make the pads flicker constantly?

This is a generic transformer ac to dc power supply diagram. The capacitor goes across the output to smooth the DC output. It is also a storage of power sort of like a battery. I added a reverse biased zener diode in series on the output so the on current doesn’t ramp in but jumps up when the voltage into the zener exceeds the reverse breakdown voltage.

With this circuit a smaller ac current at the input will slowly build the charge across the capacitor. This charge could potentially exceed the zener breakdown voltage in which case there would be a momentary pulse at the output, the capacitor will discharge and the cycle is repeated. There is not sufficient current at the input to drive the zener and the output load (the RYTM) continuously. This acts like a timing circuit.

Whether this explains the RYTM flash i don’t know. I don’t know what kind of ps the Elektron RYTM ps is, it might be a switching supply instead – the one i have is sealed tight. Whether something like this will act like a timing circuit depends on a variety of factors – but this overly long post ends here!:slight_smile:

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