Thx for adding your story to the mix as well. Have you send a ticket to elektron as well? I haven’t been too active here in the last year or so, but last thing I read about it was that they are aware of the problem but don’t know what causes it and that it didn’t have a high priority because not many users reported the problem. So sending in a ticket even while they are aware of the problem might help in giving it a bit more priority.
Same goes for everyone else who would like to see this fixed, please let elektron know if you haven’t done so already.
I took your advice and submitted a ticket - got a helpful reply almost immediately! They’re aware and looking for help in finding the error. Just in case it helps anyone, here’s the reply I received:
I’m sorry to hear about the crash.
We have been chasing a bug for a while that we know is related to the arpeggiator and causes a crash like the one you describe. It appears to affect specific patterns only, and we have not succeeded in reproducing it when starting from a new project. We have been sent some projects where this happens and have intermittently been able to reproduce using the affected project, but we are still trying to find the exact culprit.
If you can reproduce the issue, it would help us a lot if you attach the affected project so we can have a look. Using Transfer, it is easy to drag and drop a project to your computer. After connecting the device to Transfer, navigate to the EXPLORE tab (in the upper right corner) and select PROJECTS in the right-hand dropdown menu (just below the EXPLORE tab). You can then select one or multiple projects and drag them to your computer (the left-hand pane in the Transfer app).
cool yeah they have been looking for almost 2 years now The things is though that it affects a lot more projects than we/they realize because the arp fucks up your sequence way before you can get it to crash.
Now I’m not a 100% certain of course that the 3 arp bugs I described above are all related, but regardless they are bugs and there is a good chance that fixing the simpler ones will lead them to the source of the crash as well.
It’s true that it’s somewhat difficult to get it to crash, but the bug labeled “bug 3” can be consistently recreated in a new project with 2 trigs and that one is still there as well
Edit: Yeah I just double checked, just to make sure I’m not talking out of my ass. Recreating bug 3 took considerable less time than hooking up the power and upgrading from 1.40 to 1.40B
I am experiencing an arpeggiator bug as well. I have 3 arps going on track 2,3 and 4. when I switch to the next pattern only Track 3 is programed to still be an arp however, Track 2 and 4 are still playing the arp from the last pattern. They play their arp sound from the last pattern as well as playing the notes that are programed in the current pattern. Even though the current pattern does not have arp engaged on those tracks.
Would love to know where I can ‘send a ticket’ to Elektron. I can upload this project to transfer for reference and take a video of what I’m talking about.
Lets get our big heads on this and squish this little bug into the sidewalk my Elektron comrades!
All 1/16 speed. Track 2 is 2 octaves (range 2) and track 4 I’ve adjusted the note the arp plays in the arp menu (called OFS )
Also this bug still happens even with just 2 arps, track 3 and track 4. On track 4 I have p locked the notes in the arp in the arp menu perhaps this is the source of the bugs power?
And what about your trigs length ? If they are set to infinite (or even 32 or more), it’s normal that the arp continue when you change your pattern. When you set an arp, you have to be very careful with the length unless you can have arps cutting before the next trig, or two arps playing together (if there’s still enough voices), or the arp playing without end (with infinite trig length).
I noticed this yesterday. Had a single-track drum pattern made of a kick (the main track sound) alongside sound-locked claps and hats) and was adding the Arp for some variation. Adjusting any Arp params unexpectedly altered the sound-locked claps, sort of like the clap was being doubled, partly phase-cancelled. I wasn’t using any octave jumps or Note offsets on the Arp so the claps weren’t being affected by changing pitches. Pretty odd.
Here’s a vid where you can hear the 2x sound-locked snares change sound (repitched down an octave i think?) when i toggle the arp on/off. A trig+yes puts it back on the right path:
The arp should only affect the kick (main track sound, step 1, not locked), right?
I am a new Digitone user and just messed around to get familiar with the arps and other features. Yesterday it happened three times that Digitone got stuck on a high pitched tone. It was not possible to restart Digitone using the on/off-switch and I had to unplug the wallwart completely before I was able to reboot the device. I already thought my Digitone is broken.
@garf
Yeah, that’s exactly the same bug. thx for documenting it as well, awesome! I’ll have to look into the mono setting. Nice find, how did that discovery come about?
(and yes elektron has confirmed it as a bug)
@mbms
Yeah it’s a bummer when it happens. Probably best to send elektron a ticket, if you haven’t already done so.
btw if you wait a few seconds between turning it off and on, it should reset just fine with the switch.
Re: the arpeggiator bug that causes crashes with a high-pitched tone, I’ve found what to avoid.
It only happens when there is more than one track with an arp. The crash occurs if you add notes to one of the arp tracks while the sequencer is running. You can be adding trigs in step record mode, or just playing the trig keys. Seems that when the sequencer loops round and encounters new notes, it gets confused.
I have patterns with multiple arps that work fine if you leave them alone, but accidentally live-play one of those arp tracks and “EEEEEEEEEEEE” crash.
“Adding notes while the sequencer is running” is definitely not a requirement to making it crash.
Concerning avoiding the crash: as far as I can tell, at the very least, you can safely use 1 arp per track, just stay away from voice stealing/cycling on the arp-enabled tracks and refrain from sound locking sounds with the arp enabled.
Most likely you have patterns that are almost in an “unstable state” and adding the notes is what pushes it over the edge to crash land.
If you have patterns like that, maybe consider sending them in elektron🤔
This was exactly why I sold my DN - which is a shame as I really loved it. Just couldn’t get comfortable with having it crash in the middle of a flow, or god forbid, a gig! I’d probably pick up the DN again if they finally fixed it.
yeah soundlocks can also get you into trouble, especially with soundlocks that have the arp enabled. (The digitone saves the arp as part of a sound) cool for doing more complex drums on a single track. Cool stuff but very unreliable.
Also don’t forget that it isn’t just crashing, stuff goes wrong way before it wil crash. Wrong as in it wil not correctly play the sequence. For instance:
Soundlocked arps on T1 affect the arp on T2 while voice stealing is off . (see my earlier post for a demo)
There is clearly something not working as intended in the interplay between voice allocation, the arpeggiators and soundlocks
@Prof_lofi
Yeah from what I’ve seen of Elektrons response, is that they genuinely underestimate the impact of the arp bug(s). It’s not a minor issue at all. It’s just easy to not notice and/or attribute to user-error… until it crashes of course.
Once I became aware of the bug though, I started noticing it in the majority of my patterns. Among the userbase it affects a vast amount projects if not the majority (of the even slightly interesting ones)
(Which also means that all those affected projects will not play the same pattern anymore, after this get fixed)
It’s a real shame as I didn’t really want to sell it. But it got to the point where I’d be in the middle of a really good recording session and then the machine would lock up, high pitch - the whole deal. It happened enough that I lost confidence in the machine and finally decided that it didn’t matter how good it was, if it was going to randomly pull the rug out mid-set, it wasn’t worth the risk. So begrudgingly sold it.
That said - I’d probably purchase it again if they properly fixed it. For me, the DT and DN are the golden machine of this era of Elektron devices.
great! what did they actually say, and was this recent or back in 2021? i reported it in january but there was no definite ‘bug’ status given to it afaik.
yeah they have been looking for almost 2 years now 
The things is though that it affects a lot more projects than we/they realize because the arp fucks up your sequence way before you can get it to crash.
