Problem with Program Change from OP-Z

I’m struggling to have my OP-Z properly control my Model:Cycles with program changes.

Like some in this thread: Program change lag between MS and MC, I am experiencing a lag when program changes are sent.

You can change patterns on the OP-Z in two ways:

  • Instantaneous – the pattern changes right away regardless of where it currently is in the current pattern
  • Queued (song mode) – you can chain a sequence of patterns, but when a pattern is already playing back, if you create a new chain of just one pattern, it will essentially queue it so that the patterns don’t switch until the currently playing one completes (good for performance)

So when I do an instantaneous change (which I don’t really have a use for), the Cycles will switch once it reaches the end of the pattern. So the Z will instantaneously switch, and the cycles will catch up shortly after.

When I queue a pattern (how I use the Z in performance), the Cycles takes one playback of the pattern before it switches, the same lag people seem to mention in the aforementioned thread. In that thread, people seemed to get it working correctly by changing the scale mode from TRK to PTN, but this has no effect for me.

In the manual in section 9.2.1, it says “Patterns can be changed and queued by sending program change messages”. The behavior I’m seeing for both of these cases is “queueing”. Maybe I’m misunderstanding the language of the manual, but “changed” to me would suggest immediate changing.

Am I missing a piece of the puzzle here? Are there any other settings I should try fiddling with? I tried setting my Cycles pattern’s CHG parameter to be LEN, but that didn’t do anything either.

Would really like to be able to lock my Cycles patterns to my OP-Z patterns. Can anyone help? :slight_smile:

I did some more searching and discovered that this problem is much broader than Model:Cycles. It seems that it effects most Elektron machines in varying amounts, some having more successful workaround than others.

This comment from another thread does a good job summing it up:

That thread started more than six years ago so I’m not gonna get my hopes up that this will ever be fixed.

Pretty absurd to me that Program Change is so functionally useless in Model:Cycles as well as many other Elektron boxes :confused: