The high pitch noise is not in a mode. It’s a characteristic of the filter around 2k. Erica Synths told me it was a feature of the filter and could not be fixed. Frankly, terrible service/support for $600 digital delay at the end of the day.
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The midi clock is only used for syncing delay times to multiples of the bpm, and sounds pretty stable to me. But there’s no visual indication of it anywhere and I’m sure if my delay repeats drifted a BPM faster or slower I’d never notice. So… sounds stable to me but that’s not very exacting? 
I’ve spent a long time trying to figure out what the high-pitch thing people are talking about is. Best I can figure, they mean the self-oscillating whine that will (intentionally — it’s called out in the manual) affect the vintage tape delay mode at high bit reduction values (delay time knob CW) and a wide open filter. It’s a gnarly source of feedbacky clock noise if you want that, but if not, turn the delay time knob CCW (which backs off the bit crushing) or cut the highs out with a LPF or the band pass.
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That’s is not it. The whine in question is a characteristic of the filter. You can disable the delay, using only the filter. It’s still there.
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And you don’t mean cranking the resonance to make it self-oscillate, I assume.
This is such a mystery to me. Do I need to do anything to make it happen? I swear mine is dead silent with the delay bypassed and the resonance down, but maybe I’m, like, holding it wrong or something?
Or do you mean it’s a nonlinearity in the filter transform? Like, it boosts whatever goes through it around 2k? I’m not seeing anything there either. Here’s noise going through bypassed:
And here it is in line:
Apart from the rolloff around 15k (even when wide open), looks pretty flat. And I have noticed that, if I have something particularly bright going through it, adjusting the resonance to about 9 o’clock compensates for the rolloff well:
What am I doing wrong?
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I think that tempo/clock is stable. Mine is hooked up to midi clock from other device and when playing with the divider it’s syncing up good.
I also played it without clock sync and found the tap tempo pretty good as well.
I’m using the Zen a lot as an instrument, using delay and the filter in combination and I think it’s really good at that.
There’s a whining tone somewhere but the more you play on it the more you know it’s sweet spots and know how to focus on the cool sounds it’s making.
My upcoming Album release is full of Zen delay stuff in different forms and languages.
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I am pretty sure the whining noise happens in BP mode
Hi, Regarding whining see Stimmings older review at 13:37 ff.:
Hmmm, seems to be a feature one should avoid.
i thought it was digital mode where it was more apparent, like a constant high squeeking noise
see my video for the noise I had on the one i bought-
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I don’t know what other result one would expect when passing any audio through any delay with short delay times and well past 100% feedback.
And this doesn’t look like it has anything to do with the filter, so I’m not sure it’s what people are talking about here.
That is ANOTHER issue - negative feedback. Which they claim they “fixed” but in my opinion did not.
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My friend - it absolutely does. Use the bandpass, sweep high - you don’t even need to run a signal through it.
On the other hand - if we can run two tests where yours DOES NOT exhibit the noise and mine does (after returning a previous unit) then I would like to send these results to Erica so that they may finally acknowledge the defects and hopefully offer some kind of replacement plan.
I had the whine too and I don’t recall pushing it to extremes to make it happen. I think there’s just a few sour spots in this thing, unfortunately.
That’s not why I sold it though, because the sweet spots did sound nice and the layout was fun to play. But in the end I just couldn’t get over some of the design decisions, like not having the filter in the feedback loop (or making that an option). I rarely say this but it felt too expensive for what it was. Now that I’m back to a hybrid setup, I’ll give the plugin a shot which fixes a lot of the things I didn’t like about the hardware (filter placement, LFO, etc). I’ll dedicate one page of my MF Twister as my interface.
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Very helpful video! Yeah, I can confirm mine is dead silent with the same setting you show there. I can’t rule out wiring, ground loops, or other details of your routing. But with the settings on the front, at least, there’s no noise like that on the HP or any of the filters for me.
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Exactly.
Then can we coordinate to let Erica Synths know?
I don’t know what that means, but sure?
Thanks. I had watched this a bunch of times before getting mine but couldn’t remember what caused it. I’ve never encountered this in practice, because I don’t play and squeeze the delay to that extent. I can see how that would be a deal breaker for some though.
When the delay is in its sweet spot (which is a pretty wide range) for how I use it, things sound amazing. For me, the weakest part is the drive which I almost never touch. More than just 5-10% and its unusable (IMO).
If there was ever another version, I think it begs for an assignable LFO and/or midi CC modulation capability. Being able to automate some of the parameters would have been amazing.
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Thanks - I mean, use the same test - nothing running through the delay, high pass and band pass filter, and the same cutoff, measure output using the same plugin, record the result using the same plugin (e.g. MRecorder).