I’m running into some issues with a tune I’m making where the step sequencer shows a warning when adding p-locks. I think I’m running against some limit but I’m not sure what that limit is - does anyone know if this is a limit on a per-track or per-pattern or even a per-project basis? Oddly enough, it seems to still save the parameter lock I add, but it tells me the memory is full anyway. 
There is a limit.
Can’t remember exactly but I think it’s 72 locks per pattern. Could be wrong about that, but there’s definitely a limit.
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Nothing in the manual? The Analog Keys has a limit of 128 p-locks per pattern, Analog Rytm has 72, Machinerum is 64. One parameter can be locked to as many trigs as you like, so it only counts once. Afaik that’s how all Elektrons work, the limit differs from machine to machine (Octatrack has no limit afaik!), but each parameter counts as one lock, even if you p-lock on every step, keep that in mind when trying to free up p-lock space.
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Wouldn’t that mean you’d need 128 (or 72) parameters being locked to hit the limit? Are there that many paramters? 
Useful to learn about as I’ve never hit the limit - clearly I’m not trying hard enough! Challenge accepted
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Just quickly scanned through the parameter list of the Analog Keys; there are a few more (sry, didn’t want to finish counting parameters 
), though 128 covers almost all parameters.
Btw, Syntakt manual says 72 is the limit.
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OK, so the problem is that I’ve somehow managed to lock too many different parameters across that one pattern? I’m surprised it says memory full yet saves the new parameter locks. Is that because I’m locking eg the filter cutoff and that is considered the same lock as a filter cutoff on another sound?
I honestly can’t even come up with 72 unique parameters. 
The thing is, I haven’t even tried hard. Not sure what’s up with this, would be nice to see some list of the least used locks to figure out if I can live wothout a few of them.
Not gonna happen imho. Just keep it in mind before plocking, recording…
I’m checking limit…
Would be helpful to understand this better though:
- Is a filter cutoff parameter lock on track 1 considered the same parameter as filter cutoff on track 2? I’m assuming no. So if you lock filter cutoff across all 12 tracks, that already uses up 12 of the 72 available slots?
- Are filter cufoff p locks across the same track using only one of the 72 slots even though one cutoff parameter value is set to eg 64 and another one is set to eg 127? I’m assuming yes.
- I’d assume that a sound lock counts once per unique sound lock (?) and if you also lock certain parameters on top of the sound lock, those locks count uniquely too?
- What about conditional trigs, they also count, but only once per track, regardless of whether the lock is 50%, 2:2 or Fill? Or is it even just once per entire pattern?
It’s a little confusing. But if my assumptions are correct above, then I can see how I ended up hitting the limit. The tracks use sound locks across 2-3 percussive tracks, and some of those trigs also adjusted those sound locks. That probably counts for half of the p locks. Then on top of that there are the usual parameter locks and conditional trigs across the track sounds.
With 12 tracks on the Syntakt, 72 seems like an arbitrarily low limit to be honest. It would make more sense on the Digitone. The p locks are at least half of the fun of using the Elektron sequencer, so it’s annoying to hit limits when you’re not even trying hard.
I guess a workaround for myself is to make sure that the sound-locked sounds are already perfect for that song before loading them into the sound pool, so I don’t have to dial in adjustments on top of those sound locks. But that’s currently a clunky workflow since you can’t even edit sounds in the sound pool to my knowledge. So you’d have to do some crazy workarounds to achieve this. Would be nice with a “Save p lock to sound pool” feature, too…
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I would assume that conditional trigs aren’t part of that limit as you’re not always changing a parameter value (and I imagine the most common would be the note which would likely already be in your pool). Simple usecase but I figure that’s a different factor?
Correct. Afaik each track counts as its own lock. “Per pattern” in Elektron lingo means across all tracks.
Yes.
I’d guess multiple sound locks count as one (per track of course) - it’s one single parameter. Maybe someone should test this.
To my knowledge, they don’t count.
Yeah, even while the 128 parameter limit on the A4/AK (which is a little parameter monster in itself) could cover all synth parameters and then some more, there are four synth tracks, fx track and cv track…
72 isn’t so much if you are on a 12 track machine, but I never hit the limit myself. Relying mostly on scenes/macros and modulation + knob tweaking^^ so no surprise. I’ll definitely do some serious p-locking later, tho! Want to see how much of a limit it would be for me.
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I’m basically just trying to leverage the unique strength of the Syntakt to the max, which is parameter locking certain settings of the sound to create more interesting bass lines, leads etc. I’ve done things like changing the portsmento and decay on certain notes, adjusting the octave of the srcond oscillator depending on note played to retain the same level of overall bass intensity during a chord progression - things like that.
I also find p-locks to be a useful way of working around the 2 LFO limit, which I also would really like to see lifted/extended somewhat (at least the ability to assign two targets per LFO!). For example, instead of dedicating one of the LFOs for some subtle analog detuning, I sometimes p-lock certain sounds out of tune with some slight portamento instead, which has the same effect without wasting one of the two precious LFOs.
Same here, I always run out of memory on DT & DN but never noticed parameters not being saved 
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Not sure…are you locking a “new” parameter?
I’m surprised that message shows up when trying to lock a parameter that already has been locked and thus only counts as one.
Btw, I guess note pitch, velocity and note length also count!?
It doesn’t just secretly delete the oldest locks in the list, does it?
A digital ‘Mult’ of some kind would be… amazing.
I would be really paranoid that it was removing one from the start of the pool to make space for the new one 
Wouldn’t be a great design choice though.
I sure hope not. I never noticed any missing p-locks but it doesn’t make sense that it can still save new ones.
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I tried but it seems that the LOCK
MEM FULL warning is inconsistent. Can’t figure out.
I plocked 4x64 trigs with 8 pkocks, 2048 parameters without warning, then next track : warning. Go back to previous track, remove paste : no warning.
Just a possibility to assign lfo to Modulations ! Well, possible with midiloop back…
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Yeah, I find this weird too. It warns me but just carries on. Maybe because I already had that parameter locked, not sure.
I haven’t noticed it secretly removing old p locks, I’d be really surprised if it did so I’m not worried about it.
But really, we’re talking about maybe a few bytes of data per p-lock so I wonder why they can’t just bump this up to something like 500 so this isn’t even an issue anymore. It’s not like we’re living in the mid-1980s anymore. 
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Because a byte is 8 bits of data - you’ll notice that everything is oreinted around those kind of numbers (128bit) - it will be based on storing the lock more than processing power, I would assume.
Edited because I was a dummy