I am starting this thread to document the power consumption of the Elektron Syntakt.
This can be useful for those who are looking for custom power supplies.
During the measurement I power the Syntakt with a lab power supply set to 12 volts and measure the current with a bench-top multimeter.
I will try to repeat the measurements when a new firmware version comes out.
DISCLAIMER: These measurements come as-is without any warranty or guarantee for correctness. I take no responsibility for damages. Use at your own risk!
Firmware version 1.0.0
The current consumption seems to peak at about 1.1A. Playback or using the analog effects seem to make about 10-20mA difference.
The average current consumption is just below 1A with some spikes here and there.
Some remarks
USB power supplies such as the Ripcord that works with the Digitone/Digitakt will likely not work with the Syntakt
A CIOKS DC-7 - at least on paper - cannot provide enough current for the Syntakt. Even with a parallel adapter, at 12V it can only provide 1A which might work but there is little to no headroom
Graph of the current consumption from power-up and nearly a minute of playback
Since the unit has bunch of analog components, my guess is that power draw will be highly dependent on what exactly you play. What did you play when doing these measurements? Might be useful to go through all the factory patterns and write down low/high measurements based on those, as they are likely to make use of most of the features.
Or, write one pattern yourself that doesn’t necessarily sounds good, but makes use of as many features as possible at once, like a stress-test of the device, and use that pattern to measure the powerdraw.
In any case, thank you for the scientific approach, will help me and others for sure
Yep - maxing out all voices (especially the analog ones) with maximum BPM and triggering each voice at every step should make up a pretty good testcase. Turn up the volumes and similar controls to “11” and route all voices through all effects.
I went through all the factory presets, played around with the effects and such but the difference was negligible so I didn’t try to test further. Connecting my Sennheiser HD600 headphones also didn’t make a measurable difference.
I didn’t a “torture” test where everything is turned all the way up.
I will do something like that sometime next week and post the results.
Well, this explains the background to my machine’s labelling a bit more (see photo in link) - but i do believe that powering on load is an important aspect when specifying the psu - then there’s running OB/cans/DinSync simultaneously i guess
also linking a related topic for people landing here
