Last night I had a good jam going. I saved my Kit and my Pattern. Then I reloaded the Project and my kit and patterns were gone. Should I have saved the Project to save the Kit and the Pattern into that before re-loading?
They’re not floating around somewhere else are they? Like, Kits and Patterns which aren’t locked into a project aren’t stored somewhere else where I can get at them are they?
It was a real ‘oh fk’ moment…
No, your patterns are gone. Also, as far as I know, saving the project does not save the kits. Kits still need to be saved separately. The active kit and all patterns will persist through a power cycle, but as soon as you reload a project, all bets are off.
These are really the only things that make me consider selling my AR. I like everything about it, except the memory and saving architecture. You just have to think too hard to NOT lose work.
If that is the state of things, that rather sounds like some garage programming project in midway status, than like a really matured product.
I like a lot about my AR Mk II, but it is certainly helpful to know the obviously NOT mature logic behind the saving architecture. Else I would definitely run into the same scenario of surprising data loss, time and again.
I learn more and more about the Elektron way of programming - including both the great ideas (and I’m serious about really liking a lot of the functionality), and the absulutely immature, rather amateurish kind of structural deficits in the present OS on the other hand.
Oh, just to clarify: You said you saved your kit before reloading the project. Even though your patterns are gone, you could at least load your saved kit. It’s something, I guess.
I am in full agreement with the idea some of you expressed: That reloading a pattern should mean returning to the same user-defined permanently saved state every time reload is used. I couldn’t care less about the weird “temporary clipboard” type behavior currently implemented. What’s the best way to get Elektron’s attention? Support ticket?
I don’t want to offend anyone, but it’s just a fact that I honestly love the kit system and saving structure on AR. Personally I’d be upset if it was changed…
I don’t have the will power to explain why right now, but just throwing this out there. Some of us think it’s genius. It does have advantages… 
Personally, I have less of a problem with the kit saving structure (I do see the advantages), as I do with the pattern save/reload structure. If we are talking kits though, I can think of two things that would really up AR’s game: 1) When saving a project, how about a little dialog that says “you have unsaved kits, would you like to save?” Yes/no. If yes, you would get stepped through saving each of your modified kits, if no, it would just save the project like it currently does. And 2) For god’s sake, allow kit loads to pull samples into the sample pool. As it stands, Sounds have to be individually loaded one by one to do this. Basically, you can’t mess with the sample pool at all, unless you are cool with kits not sounding the way you saved them, when you load them. Right now, New Project=blank sample pool=Kit (w/samples) loaded from +Drive does not sound right. Did you save every single Sound on every kit? Didn’t think so. Oh well, let’s reinvent the wheel. Again.
I don’t understand, kits aren’t saved on the plus drive, unless that’s new on mk2 or something. Any kit I load to a pattern has all of its samples…
Personally I love that the kits don’t save automatically because I always keep them saved how I want them and then madly tweak away while jamming. I love that they all revert to the saved state after a power cycle except the active one, otherwise I’d have to reload them all before saving. There is a “reload all kits” if you press the right arrow on “reload kit”’ so I guess I’d be alright if it kept them.
I look at it like save them where you need them, and then destroy with tweaking, and easily get back to where they’re default. Save again only when needed…
I don’t mind the pattern reload the way it is… You just make sure when you leave it it’s the way you wanted. If reload reverted to a project saved state and also still autosaved, it be hard to keep track of how many times you’ve changed each of your 128 patterns, and by reloading might take you multiple autosaves back.
Just for clarity I’m not trying to argue over what would be better, just stating my opinion for reference because we all have different preferences…
Of course, no worries!
Everyone has a unique style that works for them. My brain wants “reload pattern” to do the same thing every time, and have the benefit of providing a known pattern that I will never lose no matter how much I tweak, and that can be recalled while the sequencer is running. YMMV. As for kits w/samples, clear your sample pool, and try reloading your kit, you’ll see what I’m talking about. You are exactly right- kits aren’t on the +drive, and that’s my issue. If you ever modify your sample pool or start a new project, there’s no way to bring in a bunch of sample heavy kits without taking years to load each and every Sound, which you are unlikely to have saved anyway. Get my drift?
People get defensive about gear preferences around here, sometimes my replies come with disclaimers to avoid confrontations… 
I would love kits on the plus drive that imported samples to slots, for sure… 
And also I use the analog about 90% and 10% samples, so this doesn’t come up for me I guess. I don’t think I’ve ever put more than 40 samples in the pool, and have never cleared it. So I guess I’m less affected…
No sadly the kit was gone too. Which is bizarre because I gave it its own name too. I’m just going to save every new tune to its own project for now and deal with capacity/memory issues if and when they come up. Guess this is just one of those things you learn from and adapt accordingly. I have various bits of sticker and tape on various bits of gear saying 'Save AND WRITE". They Rytm gets its own bit of sticky tape now.
There’s two ways of dealing with samples:
a) a raw, basic system referencing to sample slots (the place where they are saved permanetly or temporarily)
b) an advanced system with intelligent sample management, identifiying samples by headers/content, independant of locations/slot management, always finding and loading proper sample content from a physical drive.
Elektron still uses basic sample slot management. This makes it impossible to use kits across project boundaries, which is a heavy limitation for everyday use. They simply have to invest some programming time into a smart sample management not relying on sample slots. But I guess, with so many overdue OS (new devices, new versions for old devices) and software tasks (Overbridge) on their ToDo list, this will take quite a while, if it ever happens.
Since my use of the AR Mk II is rather 60% sample based and 40% synth based, data management issues DO concern me. For the moment, not to lose data, I am saving kits, patterns and projects all the time like mad, simply because the Elektron system is completely weird compared to usual data saving logic as I know it from about any other context. So no matter if the present Elektron way may have some advantages or not: it’s definitely completely counter-intuitive and tends to cause lots of unwanted surprises for users.
I own an A4 and I think this unusual “pattern auto saving” should be optional .
This really makes Elektron machines UNUSABLE .
I mean, I’m a newbie . I work on my project, I do my changes to a pattern. I like it. I SAVE IT .
Then I mess around, I move to other patterns, I make some experimentation. Than go back to first pattern with stil my latest changes. All good.
Now, I WANT to switch back to my original pattern that I manually saved, which is part of my new song, but I CAN’T .
This really DOESN’T WORK as expected .
Imagine you edit a document on your PC, you save it, make some changes and you can’t go back to your version. That’s SOOO unusable…
This makes me think I should sell my A4 .
Please Elektron, make this optional !!
Best solution, IMO, would be to differentiate between last auto-saved state and last user-saved state, so that: [NO] + [PTN] go back to most recent between last auto-saved and user-saved state ( just like it is now) , and, for instance [PTN] + [<- left arrow] go back to most recent user-saved state .
EDIT: maybe this post is a bit “too loud” with capital letters here and there . This is due to the acknowledgement of that “unexpected” behavior .
You would be better off trying to understand the way they have designed it, rather than wanting it done differently…
I actually like the way it’s done, except how kits can be lost after powering off if not saved…
You said yourself you’re a newbie, once you understand it, it’s easy
Pattern save and reload is a performance feature that allows you to save it, change it, then jump back to the saved version… it’s meant to be used while staying in the same pattern
Interesting to see this thread come back after all these years. For the record, I like having the temp save/reload functionality. But the original post wasn’t about that, per se - it was about not having a totally safe pattern that can always be recalled on the fly no matter what. It’s obvious that Elektron has thought about this because it’s been integrated into the Digi series OS’s. Reload From Project does exactly what I’m asking, and does it on the fly. If this could become part of the Rytm OS, I’d be such a happy camper.
Couldn’t they make it work like the Model series? You can reload single patterns from +drive anytime on them, on top of being able to save to and reload from a temporary buffer. Also individual pattern save is supported. You can discard everything else except what you saved by loading another project.
I like the current pattern save/reload thing, it’s great for live performance, which seems to be its function. If you want the current state of the pattern saved after leaving it, all you have to do is save the project. Just trying to understand the issue, have I missed something or is there a disadvantage in using “save project” to do what people are looking for here?
Check out the original post again. Digi series “reload from proj” solves this problem, and at the pattern level, which is cool. On AR you have to stop the sequencer, and you can only reload the entire project.
Ah, sorry I did misread the original post (early morning here, just woke up). Yes, it would indeed be useful to have a function on the Rytm to preserve a state after leaving during a live performance. Didn’t actually know about the Digi series “reload from proj”, good to hear about that. 
Yeah, I only have the DN, but I love that feature, and use it all the time. You can also reload just the sequence without changing the sounds, which is also great. Really want this for AR. Maybe one day.