I have listened to most if not all demoes now, and as far as I can hear there are no general clicking problems, especially when the sequencer is in use. Can't track any on most where they actually are playing it either. If there are clicks, they are masked enough for me as far the vids concern. I look forward to confirm it (hopefully), when I get the synth.
However, there seems to be a general noise problem with the delay. It has to be set on lower levels to avoid too much white noise. There is no postfilter. Bummer.
Korg Minilogue
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- Banned
- 3946 posts since 25 Jan, 2009
Last edited by IncarnateX on Sat Jan 23, 2016 9:10 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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- Banned
- 2238 posts since 19 Dec, 2014
More audio... better presets this time...
'clicking' 'popping' etc evident in some patches, but in patches that you'd expect them in for an analogue synth ... I think ? , hard to say for sure without seeing exactly the EG/vca settings, but you can take a reasonable guess.
at any rate for those reporting issues with thumping or whatnot, maybe you could select times within this vid that illustrates what you're talking about.
'clicking' 'popping' etc evident in some patches, but in patches that you'd expect them in for an analogue synth ... I think ? , hard to say for sure without seeing exactly the EG/vca settings, but you can take a reasonable guess.
at any rate for those reporting issues with thumping or whatnot, maybe you could select times within this vid that illustrates what you're talking about.
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- KVRAF
- 4589 posts since 7 Jun, 2012 from Warsaw
^In this video I can see circuit board flashing through the keys. So if you spill anything on your Minilogue, it's instakill 
Blog ------------- YouTube channel
Tricky-Loops wrote: (...)someone like Armin van Buuren who claims to make a track in half an hour and all his songs sound somewhat boring(...)
Tricky-Loops wrote: (...)someone like Armin van Buuren who claims to make a track in half an hour and all his songs sound somewhat boring(...)
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- KVRAF
- 3080 posts since 17 Apr, 2005 from S.E. TN
I can't hear clicks right now in the videos, listening on laptop speakers.
Maybe if the clicks only happen with fast envelope attack, it is a feature not a bug.
Back in the old days, a minimoog had a fast enough envelope attack that it could click. Lead players liked that, hot-wired immediate response. An old-style VCO is always running, it doesn't reset from zero on every note-on. So if you have a fast enough attack, and it turns on the VCA and filter anywhere except when the VCO might accidentally be at a zero crossing, it will click. Just like the click on a too-close unfaded trim in an audio editor program.
On the other hand, the arp odyssey attack at its minimum setting, was not fast enough to click. Which gave the odyssey a more detached feel if you were trying to do blistering fast synth leads. Maybe arp intentionally limited the minimum attack time to make it impossible to get note-on clicks, but the real fast clicky envelope is what made minimoog more popular for athletic lead synth players.
Maybe if the clicks only happen with fast envelope attack, it is a feature not a bug.
Back in the old days, a minimoog had a fast enough envelope attack that it could click. Lead players liked that, hot-wired immediate response. An old-style VCO is always running, it doesn't reset from zero on every note-on. So if you have a fast enough attack, and it turns on the VCA and filter anywhere except when the VCO might accidentally be at a zero crossing, it will click. Just like the click on a too-close unfaded trim in an audio editor program.
On the other hand, the arp odyssey attack at its minimum setting, was not fast enough to click. Which gave the odyssey a more detached feel if you were trying to do blistering fast synth leads. Maybe arp intentionally limited the minimum attack time to make it impossible to get note-on clicks, but the real fast clicky envelope is what made minimoog more popular for athletic lead synth players.
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- KVRAF
- 2813 posts since 14 Feb, 2001 from What do you care? :)
I think we are also not taking into account that maybe the guy just received a bad apple. I'm not saying that he doesn't know what he's talking about, but at the same time, I find it interesting that with all of the gazillion people who already have this synth or worked with this synth, nobody else seems to have commented on this.
Honestly, I would be more worried if we were hearing dozens of similar complaints. This dude may indeed be god's gift to synthesists, but that does not mean that all the rest of the world are idiots. I mean, we're talking about folks like John Lehmkuhl, who has been doing this for going on thirty years now. Then people like Devine, etc.
Also, on that Rekkerd thread there did seem to be a little hint of back peddling going on.
I already have one on order... so it may turn out that I'm one of those aforementioned idiots. But I'm hoping that it will turn out to be okay. Also... just because you have a Jupiter8 and a rack of Mother32's does not necessarily mean that you exactly know what you're doing. It just means that you have a decent job with money to burn, lol. Just saying...
Honestly, I would be more worried if we were hearing dozens of similar complaints. This dude may indeed be god's gift to synthesists, but that does not mean that all the rest of the world are idiots. I mean, we're talking about folks like John Lehmkuhl, who has been doing this for going on thirty years now. Then people like Devine, etc.
Also, on that Rekkerd thread there did seem to be a little hint of back peddling going on.
I already have one on order... so it may turn out that I'm one of those aforementioned idiots. But I'm hoping that it will turn out to be okay. Also... just because you have a Jupiter8 and a rack of Mother32's does not necessarily mean that you exactly know what you're doing. It just means that you have a decent job with money to burn, lol. Just saying...
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- Banned
- 2238 posts since 19 Dec, 2014
agreed.Sequent wrote:Also... just because you have a Jupiter8 and a rack of Mother32's does not necessarily mean that you exactly know what you're doing. It just means that you have a decent job with money to burn, lol. Just saying...
I also think it behooves anyone wanting to convince others that there is a problem to show us the settings they are using to elicit the clicks.
Can i hear clicks ? yes. Can I deduce if these clicks are unreasonable given the settings ? no, not at all. I can't see a damn thing.
I have to rely on the fact that most of the audio demos I've heard have not displayed this behaviour, and I have heard a wide range of sounds by now. Still though, assuming the guy in that video is using settings where this shouldn't be happening, I feel confident it can be fixed considering the relevent components are digitally controlled. In fact, there has been a firmware update addressing bugs in the last couple of days but according to the comments in that video, the video uploader has not had a chance to update his minilogue yet.
anyway, staying tuned.
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- KVRAF
- 5223 posts since 20 Jul, 2010
I'm willing to accept artifacts, clicks, noise, as part of the instrument. Especially at the price point 
Honestly, if there's a quiet bit in one of my tunes with no hi-hats or drums, and the point at which a pad note is played there's a little click where the note starts, is it really going to f**k my shit up? I doubt it
If I get a really bad one, I'll just use the money back guarantee. Probably talk to Korg about it and see if it was just a bad apple. But a bit of clicking isn't a huge problem to me. Neither is the noise in the delay. It's "murky"
There may also be a problem with DC offset problems, perhaps due to component variation (I don't actually know, just saying what electronics people usually say about this kinda thing). I'd recommend running most analog synths and emulations through DC offset removal anyway. Sync, PWM, FM and ringmod can create unsymmetrical waveforms. Poly voices is just going to compound that. And all those waveforms have a strong fundamental. I'll be highpassing anything that isn't a bass instrument most probably.
BLAH BLAH BLAH still waiting for mine to arrive
Honestly, if there's a quiet bit in one of my tunes with no hi-hats or drums, and the point at which a pad note is played there's a little click where the note starts, is it really going to f**k my shit up? I doubt it
If I get a really bad one, I'll just use the money back guarantee. Probably talk to Korg about it and see if it was just a bad apple. But a bit of clicking isn't a huge problem to me. Neither is the noise in the delay. It's "murky"
There may also be a problem with DC offset problems, perhaps due to component variation (I don't actually know, just saying what electronics people usually say about this kinda thing). I'd recommend running most analog synths and emulations through DC offset removal anyway. Sync, PWM, FM and ringmod can create unsymmetrical waveforms. Poly voices is just going to compound that. And all those waveforms have a strong fundamental. I'll be highpassing anything that isn't a bass instrument most probably.
BLAH BLAH BLAH still waiting for mine to arrive
http://sendy.bandcamp.com/releases < My new album at Bandcamp! Now pay what you like!
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- KVRer
- 3 posts since 23 Jan, 2016
I originally posted on the video, but I just thought I'd make a comment here because there seems to be some confusion. Granted, VCA clicking at high rates is normal, but only when there is an input to the VCA. What sawwaveanalog's video shows () is that the clicking is present even with no audio input when the filter is cranked all the way down.
This is an example of VCA thump, which can be caused by either: CV bleedthrough of the envelope CV to the VCA output, or an input offset problem (effectively the input to the VCA is offset by a DC voltage). Normally VCAs either have trimmers to dial out this effect, or the design is carefully managed so that the effect is minimised given expected component tolerances.
In the one PCB shot of the minilogue it's hard to tell, but there don't seem to be any PCB trimmers (that helps to explain the low price; minimal factory calibration time = cheaper production). There are lots of potential causes, assuming the prototypes worked well with no thump. Perhaps in production the wrong tolerance passive components were used to populate the VCAs, or a different batch of ICs with different characteristics to those in the prototype. Whatever the reason, the problem exists, and as it is in the analogue domain it will be impossible to fix through firmware. That is, unless Korg are trimming everything digitally, which I very much doubt considering the complexity that would add...
This is an example of VCA thump, which can be caused by either: CV bleedthrough of the envelope CV to the VCA output, or an input offset problem (effectively the input to the VCA is offset by a DC voltage). Normally VCAs either have trimmers to dial out this effect, or the design is carefully managed so that the effect is minimised given expected component tolerances.
In the one PCB shot of the minilogue it's hard to tell, but there don't seem to be any PCB trimmers (that helps to explain the low price; minimal factory calibration time = cheaper production). There are lots of potential causes, assuming the prototypes worked well with no thump. Perhaps in production the wrong tolerance passive components were used to populate the VCAs, or a different batch of ICs with different characteristics to those in the prototype. Whatever the reason, the problem exists, and as it is in the analogue domain it will be impossible to fix through firmware. That is, unless Korg are trimming everything digitally, which I very much doubt considering the complexity that would add...
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- Banned
- 2238 posts since 19 Dec, 2014
even with ... or only with ?marinedalek wrote:even with no audio input when the filter is cranked all the way down
in the clip you linked to, the clicks only become noticeable - as you say - once the filter is cranked 'all the way down' or almost all the way down (i.e, filtering out all sound) ... I can't imagine ever creating such a patch ? what kind of sound designer wants to filter out all the sound when the vca is activated ? sure, it would be nice if it was super smooth all the way, like the $700 single voice moog mother 32 he compared it to, but I seriously doubt I would ever encounter this problem in any of the patches I would likely make and balancing out the bang-for-buck ratio I doubt I would care for that once in a blue moon time I would want to design a patch with practically all if not absolutely all of the audio content filtered out.
and by the way ...you say 'no audio input' ... but clearly there is audio input in the examples posted, it is just filtered out.
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- KVRer
- 3 posts since 23 Jan, 2016
The reason you test it with no audio input (or in this example everything filtered out as you say - it makes no difference to the input of the VCA) is because that shows up the problem the most. However, people have been noticing it on normal, louder patches which is why it caught people's attention in the first place. The problem remains, no matter what the input to the VCA is. A DC jump manifests audibly as a pulse of broadband noise, in this case from DC up to around 2khz. The frequency distribution of the click is governed by its rate, which is why the click goes away as you increase the attack time; you're effectively low-pass filtering the click.
This is a spectral analysis of the demo shown above. You can see the clicks as the little spikes along the bottom of the screen, and also that they are present at the start and, to a lesser degree, end of notes even when the filter is opened up (on the left of the image).
The primary reason that this behaviour is undesirable is that the magnitude of the click is constant. This means that if the input to the VCA gets quieter (a high note with a non-tracking filter, compared to a low note), the click gets more pronounced in comparison to the wanted audio. This contrasts with the clicking caused just by "snappy" envelopes, which is always in proportion to the volume of the input audio. Consider also a bass patch which sustains at a moderate-low volume with a low filter cut-off. Releasing the key with a simple snappy envelope would result in a quiet click. However, releasing the key with this issue present results in a much louder click, and as it stretches up to 2khz it will be extremely noticeable.
It's fine that *you* would never need it to work properly, but to say it shouldn't have to work properly for anyone as a result is frankly laughable.
This is a spectral analysis of the demo shown above. You can see the clicks as the little spikes along the bottom of the screen, and also that they are present at the start and, to a lesser degree, end of notes even when the filter is opened up (on the left of the image).
The primary reason that this behaviour is undesirable is that the magnitude of the click is constant. This means that if the input to the VCA gets quieter (a high note with a non-tracking filter, compared to a low note), the click gets more pronounced in comparison to the wanted audio. This contrasts with the clicking caused just by "snappy" envelopes, which is always in proportion to the volume of the input audio. Consider also a bass patch which sustains at a moderate-low volume with a low filter cut-off. Releasing the key with a simple snappy envelope would result in a quiet click. However, releasing the key with this issue present results in a much louder click, and as it stretches up to 2khz it will be extremely noticeable.
It's fine that *you* would never need it to work properly, but to say it shouldn't have to work properly for anyone as a result is frankly laughable.
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- Banned
- 2238 posts since 19 Dec, 2014
not me. only time I've noticed clicks is on patch settings I would ordinarily expect them, and these patches account for maybe 2% of what I've heard so far. other than that, the only other example is this frankly laughable clip you just posted which almost no one will ever likely re-create for the purposes of making music...marinedalek wrote:people have been noticing it on normal, louder patches
as far as your comments on DC jumps go, is this something you've concluded from using an actual unit yourself - or something you've extrapolated from the youtube clips posted on this issue ?
at any rate, what's laughable is these guys with OCD, jupiter 8's and racks of mother 32's making these asinine comparison videos against a barely launched $500 mass produced consumer keyboard....
from what I can gather, if nothing were to improve the situation - no firmware solutions - that keyboard still works well enough to make music with, and to get more than your $500 worth of click-free sound designing... and I'm sure many folks will still be able to make music with it even in those clicky instances.
which isn't to say I don't think it wouldn't benefit from making it completely click free, if possible. but at least I realise we're discussing a $500 musical instrument here that punches well above its weight, and not a scientific instrument.
ymmv.
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- Banned
- 3946 posts since 25 Jan, 2009
Obviously there are some who desperately need this clicking issue to be true, invalidating and universal to all units. And if I couldn't afford such a hot synth, I would like it to be true too to ease my pain.
There is just this problem that aside from the clicking vid there are not many annoying clicks to be heard in other vids and all other reviewers haven't really noticed.
So yes put the clicking vid into your scopes, make your hypotheses, conclusions and (over)generalisations and cross your fingers that you will actually believe them yourself when the net is flooded with positive reviews and the deep agony of envy brings tears to your eyes. You are excused
There is just this problem that aside from the clicking vid there are not many annoying clicks to be heard in other vids and all other reviewers haven't really noticed.
So yes put the clicking vid into your scopes, make your hypotheses, conclusions and (over)generalisations and cross your fingers that you will actually believe them yourself when the net is flooded with positive reviews and the deep agony of envy brings tears to your eyes. You are excused