^ Ya I have a suppressor on a USB I randomly found, but never realized what it was. Is it the pressure from the clamping force that helps reduce the noise with these things? It's interesting since no soldering is involved.
The physics behind this are complex but it has the effect of low-pass-filtering weak signals above a certain frequency, which isn’t very far from your typical interference. A clip-on ferrite may not solve a ground loop problem, but could potentially take out digital whine (though it may not, depending on all sorts of things).
You normally wouldn’t want signals well outside your hearing range in your audio chain. When such frequencies hit a digital converter you’re in the hands of the low-pass filters that go with it, or else the ghosts of Nyquist and Shannon turn up ; In analogue land, those extra inaudible frequencies may still cause enough distortion of the audible range you’re after.
It’s a rabbit hole with all high-frequency switching supplies / chargers, CPUs and bus controllers involved, they all bring something to the list of circumstances…
It finally arrived (1 day late). A part from being extremely excited and pleased with it, I’m happy to find no weird noises, or at least nothing as bad as I expected. Even with volume at 10, with or without USB, charging or not, the noise floor seems pretty acceptable, compared to other synths/drum machines. I’ve been testing with a pair of Sennheiser HD380 pro, connected to a MacBook, unplugged from power (I find it’s always better to work and record on batteries).
The effects though, they can produce a lot of noise! After just a few hours of tweaking my impression is they’re quite extreme. I’m curious to see if I can find some gentle settings, especially for reverb effects using Grid and Spring.
By the way, off topic comment from a fresh user.
1) Strange that the push function of each encoder isn’t implemented in the OS… or am I wrong?
2) What a pity that that beautiful LCD is so far deep in the chassis. I’ve seen it’s actually much bigger and needs to fit under the keys.
@Vince_Noir yeah you’re correct push buttons on the encoders are not implemented. And if that beautiful OLED screen heard you call her an LCD she’d be quite offended
@bigbiscuits Haha okay, let’s not offend Miss OLED
Still, after a week of usage I often find myself hunching over to better see the bottom of the graphics, especially on tape, when I want to see the tracks. You know what I mean? The viewing angle is compromised.
Anyway… good fun so far. Very happy with this instrument overall.
@Vince_Noir one more tip to try for more subtle effects is to hold the shift button when you are adjusting the FX parameters. Give a much finer resolution which is much more musical in a lot on instances. Also holding shift when adjusting in/out points of a sample gives you fine control as well.
My workaround will probably not help you , but thought I’d just add it to the thread: I don’t plug anything into the OP-1!
My current workflow is to work on my loops/recordings/sounds entirely within the OP-1. When ready, I connect to laptop via disk mode and copy the tape tracks and album sides onto it.
The AIFF files are pristine and don’t have any noise or whine, even if you had some occurring from headphones or whatever.
I then connect my Octatrack to the laptop via USB and transfer the samples/loops onto there for further arranging/mangling. If you use a DAW the same principle applies.
It’s no use for syncing your OP-1 live or anything, but for working on audio, it’s so nice to just drop files around. I also find this less hassle than sampling via cable inputs on the OT (OT owners will know what I’m talking about). I just used this method for a sound design job and it was a real pleasure to just focus on one thing at a time and not worry about noisy cable connections etc. I also really like that all the computer is used for is file transfer, keeps it very tidy and simple.
After just a few hours of tweaking my impression is they’re quite extreme. I’m curious to see if I can find some gentle settings, especially for reverb effects using Grid and Spring.