This morning I tried updating my Syntakt to firmware version 1.30, and it seems like the update may have caused serious problems.
The update went normally, but then when it rebooted afterwards the screen was dark and it started making a strange riser/siren sound (through the audio output, not mechanical).
Now, when I power it on, the screen remains completely off, and it just starts emitting a continuous, crazy riser sound / series of risers that won’t stop. I’ve tried booting into STARTUP mode, but it’s completely unresponsive - the only difference this makes is that the risers start after 15 seconds or so instead of instantly. I even let it sit unplugged for an hour to discharge the capacitors, but no luck.
Has anyone else experienced something similar? Any suggestions on how to fix this, or am I looking at a hardware issue?
Well it doesn’t sound good, that’s for sure. The best thing to do is open a ticket with elektron support. Is it still within the 3 years warranty?
If it’s currently still hooked up to USB, definitely try unhooking the USB connection before you proceed any further.
couple ideas here you can try but probably won't do much
It sounds like it was fine before but if you have a different power supply, try it. At least inspect the power supply that you already have and if it’s the style where you can unplug the wall portion of the cable from the brick do it and then try reseating that by plugging it back in.
If you hold down func and its not taking you to the boot menu on startup then it’s either not getting power or sounds like it would be difficult to resolve without getting elektron involved so I do think a support ticket through your elektron website account would be the smart thing to do now.
If you try that other stuff and can’t get it to respond, maybe see if it’s still being detected by transfer when it’s plugged into the USB or if it’s somehow lost the device identity which might suggest that it’s bricked.
Also, as a long shot, if you have a USB midi to DIN interface, you could send it some kind of sysex command over DIN like an all off command or whatever just arbitrarily to see if it will respond. I doubt it will do anything but (though I don’t know what your prior set up was) if it was somehow stuck in a midi feedback loop maybe it would respond.
Thanks, I did contact customer service immediately. Should be within the 3 years warranty though I bought it lightly used ~9mo ago.
Appreciate the tips @shigginpit - tried all those things already except I don’t have a USB midi to DIN interface. Seems like it’s bricked which I really don’t understand how that could happen from an update. Woof. Worst part is I have a show in 2 days…hope people like songs that don’t have percussion
Yeah that’s messy, sorry you have to deal with it at the worst time possible. I can’t imagine why it’s making any audible sound, almost like it’s doing an oscillator test or something.
When it went to reboot it must have encountered some kind of conflict (like old OS didn’t fully get overwritten) causing a critical error. Hopefully support can give you more insight.
You can check the manufacture date regarding warranty date by looking at the tag on the bottom of the ST for the week number and year, then count 36 months from there to figure out the end date.
I had this happen to my Syntakt as well. I had turned off the array to run a couple of breaker tests for labeling purposes. When I turned everything back on, all my machines were great except for the Syntakt, which put out this riser sound. I reset it a few times and it continued to happen. What was weird was the ext in was still audible when I played the other synth on the midi controller.
MY SOLUTION:
I unplugged the power from the surge protector and tested on another outlet. The system turned on and worked. I then changed where it was powered at and it’s back in the array with no issues.
