The Elektron documentation thread

[avantronica]

my qualified take is presented here - i believe the documentation is lacking clarity - i do not believe it’s even possible that the device is lacking this ‘hinted at / or interpreted’ functionality

but there is no doubt that the phrase …

Use the TRACK LEVEL knob to set the overarching velocity range.

… is muddying the waters, i don’t believe it does more than ‘meter’ input and offer a partially useful velocity ‘controller’ (as explained in my linked reply)

A clarification/amendment should be forthcoming either way

[imacactus]

Hi there!

While digging through the AMP section of the Octatrack manual (page 59), I can’t really figure out what FX are reffered by :

• The multi mode filter FX > There is only one FX called FILTER, so I guess that’s the one but it could surely use it’s exact FX name here

• The amplitude modulator FX > By searching with these words in the whole pdf, the only occurrences occur within the LO-FI FX described at page 132. So i’m making a guess that the AMP documentation actually refers that FX too.

Are my guesses correct ?

Wouldn’t it be worth to update the documentation p59 so that it refers to FX with their exact names ?

Manual:

So, in my personnal notes, I have re-written the whole AMP Setup section like so :

---

- Setup

AMP: Defines where envelope starts from
	ANLG: The envelope starts from the current envelope level when the sample is trigged
	RTRG: The envelope starts from zero when the sample is trigged (default)
	R+T: The envelope starts from zero when a Sample Trig or a Trigless Trig is met
	TTRG: The envelope starts from the current envelope level when a Sample Trig or a Trigless Trig is met

SYNC: Toggles if the envelope should be synced to the OT BPM or not
	ON (default)
	OFF

ATCK: Defines Attack curve type
	LIN: Linear (default)
	LOG: Exponential > Allows for smooth fade ins

FX1: Controls how the envelope affects FX1
	ANLG: 
		With Filter FX, the filter envelope starts from the current envelope level instead of starting from zero when a Sample Trig is met
		With Lo-Fi FX, the phase restarts when a Sample Trig is met

	RTRG: 
		With Filter FX, the filter envelope starts from zero when a Sample Trig is met
		With Lo-Fi FX, the phase restarts when a Sample Trig is met
	R+T:
		With Filter FX, the filter envelope starts from zero when a Sample Trig or a Trigless Trig is met
		With Lo-Fi FX, the phase restarts when a Sample Trig or a Trigless Trig is met
	TTRG:
		With Filter FX, the filter envelope starts from the current envelope level instead of starting from zero when a Sample Trig or Trigless Trig is trigged
		With Lo-Fi FX, the phase restarts when a Sample Trig or a Trigless Trig is trigged

---

Can someone please convirm I have not mis-interpreted anything ? I would very much appreciate it

Regards,
David

[imacactus]

Just came accross that bit way above in this thread, from Feb '19

The Octatrack manual has been written, rewritten, and edited by multiple people over the years. The most merciful thing would be to put it out of its misery and the rewrite the whole thing… But that would be so much work that I’m afraid it will never happen.

In yesterday’s world, one poor guy would have had the tremendous and unwise task of doing it all by himself.

In today’s world, publishing the documentation on github and letting 1000+ people iterate over it in an open-source manner will yield way better results both in terms of quality and speed, in addition of making the whole process humanely manageable.

All you have to do is:

• Publish the whole OT documentation in an easily editable format (Markdown is common, for instance) to an official Elektron repository
• List the 10 most well-versed and trustworthy people from the Elektronauts forum and propose them to become moderator/maintainer/expert and supervise the repository (in addition to a few Elektron persons who remain owner of it)
• Give and enfroce guidelines such as:
  • No-one ever writes directly to the main repository
  • Documentation changes can be proposed by anyone, by creating small, fine-grained Pull Requests. That’s very important.
  • Every Pull Request is reviewed, debated and fine-tuned by the maintainers you have appointed.
  • Changes can be merged to the main repo only by these people, Pull Request after Pull Request, in an itterative way.

On the + side, you can fully automate the generation and upload of the pdf to Elektron servers every time the main repository is updated.

You can start with one product (like the OT) to get the hand of it all and once you are comfortable with it, extend to other products, one by one (by creating specific repository for each).

I, for sure, would make proposals and, judging by this thread, I’m sure I’m not the only one.

That’s quite easy to do actualy, all in all.

And if you don’t want to do it by yourself, you can find IT people to help you (like me).

[johnl]

@eangman re-reading the latest Rytm manual, I noticed a rogue “POLYPHONY” in the Index, ostensibly on page 30 - but it’s not there.
Maybe the Index needs regenerated?

[Schnork]

AR Mk1 OS 1.70 manual, we Mk1 enthusiasts don’t have no purple led.

Page 42:

When you turn on Euclidean mode for a track, the [REC] button will turn purple, indicating the mode is active

And the DVCO still describes the old behaviour with 24 values in an octave for osc 2 and 48 values in an octave for osc 2 . I haven’t checked DVCO since the update, but I read that there have been changes.

[main_loop]

On the Digitone manual, page 65, section 14.2.1 Sound Browser, where it says “Press [FUNC]+[TRIG 9-16] to select Sound bank A-H”, it should say “Press [BANK]+[TRIG 9-16]”.

The exact same bug repeats on the next page, at the 14.2.2 Sound Manager section.

I’m looking at https://cdn.www.elektron.se/media/downloads/syntakt/Syntakt_User_Manual_ENG_OS1.21_231108.pdf which is the current version from this month, and it has a different but still incorrect instruction.

What it currently has is

Press [TRIG 9–16] to select sound bank A–H.

What it should say is

Press [BANK]+[TRIG 9–16] to select sound bank A–H.

This applies to both the Sound Browser and Sound Manager sections of the Syntakt manual.

The same bug is in https://cdn.www.elektron.se/media/downloads/digitakt/Digitakt_User_Manual_ENG_OS1.51_231108.pdf.

Thanks!

I checked the Digitone manual https://cdn.www.elektron.se/media/downloads/digitone/Digitone_User_Manual_ENG_OS1.41_231108.pdf has the correct instruction.

I also checked https://cdn.www.elektron.se/media/downloads/analog-four-mkii/Analog-Four-MKII-User-Manual_ENG_OS1.51C_220204.pdf and it has a different doc bug: it doesn’t mention this feature at all. On the A4 unlike the Digi-guys, you do just press a trig key with no modifier to change banks in the Sound Browser/Manager.

[GurtTractor]

The Octatrack manual has only one reference to the MULTIPLY functionality for pickup machines, in the MIDI implementation section of the appendix. There’s no other information about this useful feature or how to do it in the pickup machine or key combination sections.

Multiply just doubles the length of a pickup machine’s buffer, duplicating the audio. It allows you to overdub for some extra variation over a longer period. A pretty handy feature.

Aside from the MIDI note command you can use to do it you can also hold the track button + REC3. I don’t even know where I found out how to do that now, I think it was a forum post about patch notes that had a reference to it or something. Tx + REC3 works for the OT Mk.2 btw, I think the Mk.1 uses something else, seems to be Tx + the MIDI button if the couple of threads about multiply are accurate.

[Udi9]

Just a follow up to the post below (and our little discussion @avantronica):

1.70 fixed this issue and now incompatible sounds are crossed out in the sound pool.
However, this isn’t reflected in the manual which still shows the original text (now on page 48).

@Udi9

1. I’m not sure if this is a reference to an older behavior that is no longer used and should be edited in the manual, or maybe a bug? (did a forum search, but couldn’t find anything).
   Page 46 of the AR MKII manual says, that when browsing the Sound Pool to “Sound Lock” a sound, incompatible sounds will have a flashing exclamation mark next to them, which is not the case (at least on version 1.61E).
   When browsing the pool to add a “main” sound to a track, only sounds that are compatible with the specific track are shown.
   However, when browsing the pool to sound-lock a sound to a trig, all the sounds in the pool are shown without any indication if they are compatible with the track or not.

[impbox]

Interesting, I was trying to do this vid the audio editor which has a duplicate > function but it seemed to do nothing. Will try out this track+rec 3.

[LyingDalai]

Isn't the Analog Four the most incredible and deep instrument from Elektron so far?

Thank you for the answer, the manual is not clear at all about this point.

@eangman, it could be nice to add in A4’s manual a paragraph about mattias/@_mr’s precisions on amplitude modulation, maybe.

Amplitude modulation

From the manual: AM1 (Osc1 AM) engages Amplitude Modulation on Oscillator 1, which means that its signal is switched on/off (multiplied) by the pulse wave of Oscillator 2. […] Note that the waveform and pulse width of Oscillator 2 also affects the result, even if that oscillator is not heard. Regardless of what waveform is selected, it’s always the oscillator’s Pulse wave that AM-modulates the other oscillator. In other words, this modulation simply means that the Pulse signal switches th…

The use of PWM depending on the waveform is not something one can come up with by themselves I guess

[protrusion]

Analog Four 1.51C manual –

10.6.2 SPD
Sets the speed of the arpeggiator. It is synchronized to the BPM of the project. A setting of 6 equals 16th notes, a setting of 12 equals 8th notes and so on.

No offense, but “and so on” might deserve elaboration. Like maybe a table.

From reading the paragraph, without consulting the forum, I’m doing these calculations in my head:

1? - 64th notes?
3? - 32nd notes?
6 - 16th notes
12 - 8th notes
16? 24? - 1/4 notes?
32? - 1/2 notes?

Maybe it’s somewhere else in the manual

[B_LD]

The confusion has indeed been been there ever since:

Arp speed

I’ve been struggling a bit with the arp on the A4. Having read the woefully inadequate section quoted above from the manual, I was still baffled as to what the speed was measured in. I appreciate the clarification Void, and if I understand you correctly, the corresponding clock divisions for speed values are: 1=1/96 2=1/48 3=1/32 4=1/24 5=1/19.2 6=1/16 7=1/13.71 8=1/12 9=1/10.67 10=1/9.6 11=1/8.73 12=1/8 …etc why? who has ever wanted an arp synced to 1/10.67 clock divisions? e…

[Tapepusher]

Here’s a mistake noticed in the AH+FX manual with CC numbers:

Can empty preset slots just leave params wherever they are?

just spent a whole evening wondering why some of those CCs weren’t working lol The manual gives these wrong values for the BITS effect: SRBR SRR 88 SRBR BR 88 SRBR Filter 89 SRBR Mix 90 The correct ones are: SRBR SRR 88 SRBR BR 89 SRBR Filter 90 SRBR Mix 91 I’m not sure who to tag that could correct it Btw do the MIDI CH MAIN and MIDI CH FX have to be different for them both to work? The only way I get it to work is if one is set to 1 and the other is set …

[Speldosa]

From the Analog Heat +FX manual:

Analog Heat -FX sounds like just the original Analog Heat

[protrusion]

Octatrack 1.40B upgrade instructions

Should there be a step in here before (3) which says to boot up holding FUNC?

[garf]

@eangman DT II manual: p54 shows VFAD’s icon as a square fader, but it’s now a bi-directional knob icon

[eangman]

Oh, thanks. I will fix that. There were 100.000 last minute changes and some of them slipped past me.

[wotar]

Hi @eangman, I’m stepping over from another thread where the DT LFO speed has been widely discussed: https://www.elektronauts.com/t/i-finally-solved-and-understand-the-lfos/194190

The manual is a bit shy with information on this toppic. On page 47, 11.7.1 SPD it only says: “Speed sets the speed of the LFO.” That’s not excactly any new information.

As I learned from this thread, to put it in my own words:
"…a speed setting of n represents n/128 LFO cycles per bar."
If this is true and correct, could you add this information to the manual in a future update?

[avantronica]

@wotar

a speed setting

To qualify this further it does require a certain amount of context, which includes (which shape s/h is obviously an outlier), what the pattern speed factor is set to etc and it’s specifically the

ABSOLUTE of the FACTOR of SPEED multiplied by MULT if the PAGE SPEED is 1X

it’s probably better as an addendum in every manual as it needs a tiny bit of qualification, but a short description will at least point people in the right direction

see this old post for examples

@avantronica

Firstly, if you want a regular LFO shape to cycle every bar, you set the factor of speed and Multiplier to 128 (or -128)
so e.g. Spd 1 Mult 128, Spd 4 Mul 32, Spd -2 Mul 64
this is in free mode btw !

wrt phase, 0 is 0deg , 32 is 90deg and so on

There are many parameters which divi up this way, it’s usually defaulting to a musically/tempo related value and in the case of speed, it makes more intuitive sense to vary Mult for consistent/related periodicity

An addendum for all these significant values would be a nice move … including referencing that 32 is equal to 100% filter(one of the filters) tracking on e.g. A4 etc

Likewise certain time values work this way, such as ‘delay’ on DN modifier envelopes, 32 and multiples gets you tempo related time values

Elektron expect us to do a bit of work it seems, but it would be prudent to help illustrate these hidden gems that many will be missing

If this is done in every section it would read poorly, i think an addendum may be an option to ‘dive deeper’ … the cool thing is that it’s going to be very similar across devices

[eangman]

Yeah, it dont really provide a lot of extra info. As avantronica mentions below, there are a lot of things that can be said about the LFO speed (and a buch of other parameters) and hopefully at some point I will have the time to dig deeper and provide a bit more meat on the bones. Thanks for bringing it up.