Hi everyone, and welcome to the latest episode of my fantastic luck when buying musical gear both new and old.
A couple of days ago I bought a used DN Keys. Got it home, checked all the hardware was working, including testing velocity and aftertouch on each key. Everything seemed fine, presets were clearly responding to aftertouch at this point.
The next day I cleared the previous owner’s content, updated the firmware (1.41 to 1.42A), did a factory reset, sat down to start learning the thing and noticed the aftertouch wasn’t working. Presets weren’t responding to it anymore, it wasn’t being sent over MIDI (except an initial value of 0 the first time it’s engaged) and in the aftertouch modulation setup if I change the value with the encoder then engage the aftertouch with the keys it resets the on-screen value to 0. Same behaviour on all keys.
I’ve tried reinstalling the firmware, various factory/empty resets, fresh projects etc. with no luck. Obviously I’m not familiar with the device and some of the way it’s set up is pretty different from a ‘normal’ synth, but I don’t feel like I’ve missed any settings that could be causing this…
I’ve opened a support ticket and I’m currently waiting for them to get back to me but since then I’ve actually had the mod wheel glitch out once as well. It suddenly stopped affecting the sound, and moving it wasn’t changing the value on its modulation page. In this case a reboot and factory reset seemed to do the trick, but that obviously made me wonder if there’s more going on than I initially thought.
I’m a bit baffled by this considering it did seem to be working OK in the brief time I used it on the first night.
Just curious if anyone else has experienced anything similar and how it all worked out (or not) if so.
A good clean slate (for comparing with others) is a New Project imho …
FWIW, as part of a sanity check about what should be doable straight into a new project (i.e. no need to look at any settings or configs) is to go to the Aftertouch Macro in Sound Settings, give it a depth (say +12) and assign it to Pitch ALL destination
With that single modulation assignment i can see and hear the aftertouch working as expected
The visual feedback of your pressure is shown on the Left as a pressure ‘meter’ and the sound rises an octave - it looks like it sounds with the added pressure
That’s with nothing else connected - just power and headphones
If your unit isn’t delivering on one or both of those metrics, then it’s a safe bet there’s more than a ‘settings’ issue at play and your best advice will likely come from support in due course
It’s something to try as a direct comparison to set expectations
You might want to look around in the Startup Menu for TEST Mode to see if it has detected any issues there
Maybe you’ll ultimately (after advice from support) need to check connections within the chassis in case a ribbon cable is marginally attached
Thanks, yeah I’ve kind of done all that including the fresh project, eliminating every other variable outside of headphones and checking the test mode.
I did wonder if it might be something as simple as a ribbon cable that was just on the edge of coming unseated maybe did during the journey home and being moved around but yeah, obviously waiting for support is the thing to do. Just trying to cover all angles here really.
I just found out FUNC + MOD to mute the mod wheel modulations is a thing, so realised I’d probably done that (albeit well after the aftertouch stopped working) and the mod wheel part was likely to be a red herring.
But the weird thing is that after toggling that off and on a couple of times and reloading the presets project the aftertouch now works?! Since this time yesterday I’ve been through multiple factory resets, a firmware reinstall, new projects, everything… And it’s been stuck not working with the exact same behaviour.
you never know - maybe doing a factory reset takes its status to somewhere dodgy
muting mod/pitch wheels here isn’t related to the software side of the AT, but perhaps the engagement with the pcb under your fingers there has pushed a dry joint (or cable) back into a good position, seeing as that’s your only ‘changes’ since you started examining the issue
perhaps it’s of no possible connection, but i imagine the pcb for the keys has additional functionality in a cluster removed from the ‘original’ sound part of the pcb that is mostly somewhat like the og DN … or it could be a secondary pcb
it’s just guesswork - you just need to monitor whether it’s reliable with user input and so on !
It’s a funny one! I guess with so many potential parameter combinations there could be some that might cause an issue? But I would’ve thought the update process would account for that in some way.
I’ve asked about some replacements for sticky buttons so it’ll need cracking open at some point anyway, I’ll have a look what’s around that area in case there is some hardware thing involved. And post some pictures since I couldn’t find any photos of the inside of the Keys at all online… They might be useful for someone else at some point regardless.
All’s well that ends well, thanks again for the input
