Just a small victory that I thought I’d share in case anyone else is ever trying to crack the same problem.
I love the Roland JX08 and I love the arpeggiator on it, with one critical shortcoming. Common to many devices, while the tempo of the arp on the JX08 is clock synced, the time at which a note plays is not. So if you hit the first note 100ms late, the arp carries on playing 100ms late forever until you start again. Fine sometimes, but usually… miserable! To me anyway. Quantised notes on arp is rarely discussed online, some devices have it on as default, some don’t have it all, but it’s critical to (my) arpeggiator fun!
Anyway, I found I could fix this using the OPZ, when nothing else in the house would do it. There’s a clock input on the front of the JX08. Driven by a PO sync signal it’s really really slow on the JX08 arp (and no division available). But using the sync output mode of the OPZ line module, and putting a click on every step in a pattern, and using the tip out of the Line MIDI out (the ring has a 5v start/stop btw), I can get the JX08 finally behaving like I want, and synced to midi on whatever device I want via the OPZ (mostly OP1F!).
This is a small reminder to me that the OPZ is a magical, incredibly powerful, incredibly versatile machine. Often maligned, I feel weirdly defensive of this device: hang the occasional double trig, it’s tiny and magnificent!