Finally updated my OP-Z from 1.2.8 - Sharing My Thoughts

OP-Z
#1

Hey friends.

I finally exported my full OP-Z out to ableton, and now have updated my firmware from the ooooooold version of the OS - I was on 1.2.8 from way back 19-09-06! (Didn’t want to update cause I’d heard the “new” LFO’s would change the sound of existing patterns)…

Here’s some of my reflections: praise-points & suggestions that I think would take the OP-Z to the next level…

PRAISE POINTS

The three “new” synth engines are great! Better than any of the existing engines. Sure they’re simple and there isn’t a lot of range, but they sound good, so that’s a step up!

The new chorus is very nice! The new reverb sounds pretty good. Definitely a step up from the OG reverb.

One thing I noticed when exporting was that sometimes after recording out a track out, I would switch to the next track, and notice a thickening of the sound, so I doubled it out. I didn’t do a real thorough check for mono phase compatability, but just putting it out there as a very simple way to thicken your exports up.

FEATURE REQUESTS: (Lemme know if there’s a way to do these things, but I’m just too slow to figure it out :stuck_out_tongue: )

Persistent Mixer screen triple tap - Love this! But kinda useless without the app??? It would be great if holding down a specific track ie. kick when mixer screen is locked on let you ADJUST VOLUME of each track with a dial? Or even toggling the four knobs to be volume of tracks 1 to 4, and volume of tracks 5 to 8… Panning would be cool too.

Microtiming Nudge on whole tracks - plz plz plz - the feature is already there

You can perform to multiple tracks, but I don’t think you can record to multiple tracks at once… It would be rad for instance to set melody and chord to analog (my new favourite engine) then you have 7 note polyphony analog, and if the Z could do a bit of smart distribution of notes, I would find that really cool.

Copy tracks - after recording

Better Master Compressor - Current one just doesn’t sound very good. Doesn’t have mojo, or any agression to it. It’s more of a glove slap than a punch.

Just get rid of the Master Chorus, it sounds bad (the new chorus is dope!)

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#2

I agree with some others that the overall sound is improved somehow. Even the master comp sounds better maybe?

#3

more headroom is my guess, optimizing the engines behavior leads to an overall better sounding Z

still in love :heart_eyes_cat:

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#4

I agree too.
Also, I want a way to access steps if the seq length is set to more than 1.
They can put some kind of button combination to access this steps. I’m not an expert or anything about cpu usage, but access this is not something I think is going to impact hardware performance.

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#5

I think accessing “micro steps” is a good idea. Potentially, one could avoid chaining patterns for longer compositions as the pattern resolution is quite nice. I mean, the sequencer aready allows for quite some variation in a single pattern, but sometimes one might like to “hardcode” a longer sequence.

Maybe a “zoom button” with paging would be a nice idea? I think the OP-Z offers enough opportunities for visual feedback so that one would not get lost.

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#6

Yes, I was thinking something in the ways of a shift+track(or else)+number (ex. shift+T+2 to access 16 steps of second bar,etc…) when you set the length of the track to more than 1 bar. Sometimes is very difficult to program offbeat and/or syncopated rithms and recording it is challenging because changes cannot be made in a precise way.

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