Eowave Quandrantid Swarm

Haven’t really checked but would probably have noticed if it was way off .
Had two situations where it suddenly lowered in pitch slightly. Not a really big deal though. Compared to what comes out that i enjoy :slight_smile:

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I think it ‘s noise on the pot inputs. Happens to me sometimes too.

I replaced the sequencer trimmers with pots that have less wobble and it’s been an excellent upgrade. Been thinking about doing this to the pitch CV input because it’s really fiddly to dial in 1v/oct scaling and I like to use that for transposing.

It’s one of my fav pieces of kit. When I want to sound like Raymond Scott I tune in a nice set of pitches on the pads and play with my fingers and do an occasional swipe up the whole keyboard with some delay. When I want to make some techno I advance the clock with some rhythmic pulses at the clock input and throw some sparse pulses at the reset input and have fun with the filters and envelopes

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Just got a €500 government energy subsidy, so the plan is obviously to sit in candlelight wrapped in blankets with one of these all Winter. Here’s hoping that final batch has better quality control than previous ones :grimacing:

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I think the issue is not precisely quality control - there are, afaik, no reports of units failing in any way-, but more a sense of overall ‘flimsiness’ of the Swarm, esp. of the pots, together with a very insufficient ‘manual’. I was a bit disappointed of its touch and feel when I received mine, but it has worked flawlessly since…

Can’t be sure about the quality control part, but certainly reports up-thread from people with suspected issues / odd knob behavior etc. Plus total absence of communication from Eowave. Although seems like the kind of mad device where half the time you wouldn’t know if it was broken or not. Will take the chance I think, while I still can

I think the trimmers used are just not that great and they seem to be digitally scanned, so you can dial in a value on the trimmers that causes the digital scan to jump really fast between wavering values on the trimmer. Perhaps that could be addressed in code, though. The overall build quality seems fine, and I find its quirks (terse manual and weird poly midi implementation) give it an interesting personality to interact with

how easy/hard is it to pull the pots/knobs? im a little afraid to break the darned thing LOL.

really want to replace mine. would you mind sharing which ones you got?

It was very tedious. I had intended to replace all the trimmers but gave up after the 8 sequencer trimmers because they were a pain to remove. I can see someone with low patience pulling up pads easily.

I can’t find the pots in my mouser order history, sorry. But they were t18 shaft so that I could use the small “Befaco-style” knobs from Thonk. Anything larger starts getting in the way of the pads

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I recently spoke with a synths and modular shopkeeper, who complained about some other modules build quality, and when I asked about the Swarm (I have one) he said he never got any returned with issues.

Me too, I like the quirkyness / character of the QS. Quirks are more annoying with complicated machines than with something straightforward as this - it kind of is what makes it special. For example I like how sequencer notes can switch notes some runthroughs when the pot is on the border of a value.

Or another example: how midi implementation is far from extensive, so they just numbered the only midi parameters cc1-8. Works perfect sequencing it from Syntakt, there’s no other synth of which I know the cc numbers by memory like with this one.

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Have you figured out a way to reset the Swarm’s sequencer from the Syntakt? I really want to get these two boxes working together but I’ve only hooked them up once for a little jam and haven’t gotten back to figuring out the rest of it yet.

I was also having trouble with getting the Swarm to start at the same time as the Syntakt when the Swarm is using its internal sequencer.

If you have any other fun tips for this combo I’d be glad to hear them as well.

Oh that works fine with mine. If I run it with midi StartStop works as expected. Best check the manual for the midi settings!

There is a combination of button presses at startup to switch the Swarm into Midi clock/transport receive mode. I do not recall it exactly, but it is described several times in this thread…

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Do you mean ‘reset’ the sequencer? With the AR, I managed to send a reset to the Swarm sequencer using an impulse machine on a single out.

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Whoops, yeah I did mean reset, my bad. The Syntakt also has an impulse machine and I feel like I read somewhere that you can use that on the ST to reset the Swarm’s sequencer, but it doesn’t have individual outs so I’m not sure how exactly to feed just an impulse track into the reset input on the Swarm.

I also successfully set up the MIDI clock send from the ST to the Swarm, but the transport function wasn’t operating how I was expecting where the Swarm sequencer would start and stop when I would start and stop the ST’s sequencer.

Thanks for the reply. I have the day off tomorrow so maybe I’ll get the Swarm back out and have another go at it and check back in if I’m still having issues.

These are back in stock again, just ordered

Back in stock where, specifically?

Good point. The desktop version disappeared in the EU, as far as I could see, but has re-emerged in Schneidersladen and musicstore. Presumably the last batch the Eowave guy mentioned above.

These seem to be available at Perfect Circuit unless I’m missing something