Bless this human… a list of instruments and which “type” of 3.5mm wiring they use. I hate all these MIDI dongles XD
Devices by 3.5mm TRS MIDI type
Thankfully “A” is now the standard, and despite Novation being listed as B, Launchkey Mini mk3 is an A connection, now, according to Novation… (and that site, apparently)
Thankfully the Elektron Model line is configurable.
edit speaking of… this guy took a Cycles apart and then played with it…
I was all about the MIDI dongles until I realized there were different kinds. Good to know “they” are moving toward one kind being standard!
Just another way to piss people off. I avoid any hardware that doesn’t have DIN midi. The other thing is power supplies. Can they not just be like guitar pedal manufactures and have one basic size and type (Korg! who then doesn’t supply one with all there gear and rips you off on the price of one), then you could have something like a ’ pedal tank ’ to run them with, instead of 15 wall warts.
Spent a few days troubleshooting my midi setup not understanding why the same cable + dongle combo would work with some bits and not with others…
I ended up using a box of these to stave off wall wart hell:
Screw paying “Dr. Ferd” $15+ for one XD Still, inline transformers really need to be more of a thing than they are. The various barrel sizes are definitely annoying, though, and sometimes the dimensions aren’t exactly the easiest to come by.
Some companies are inconsistent, like Arturia. Wall wart on the Minibrute 2S, inline on the Rack Brute. Iirc Elektron uses inline on everything but the Models line. At least that one is oriented sideways, but the sin is in the weird/unusual barrel size compared to everything else I own, something like 3.5mm x 1.5mm which they also use on Overhub.
I think these days a lot of it has to do with cost, especially since I seem to get a lot of universal power supplies I have to attach the correct plug to when I open something. A small plastic plate to attach to a wall wart vs a bunch of different cables or having to, gasp, just supply the cable for the country it’s being shipped to…
I’ve been tagging all my power supplies, now, so I know exactly what goes to what. Just cheap little rectangular labels folded in half over the end and a Sharpie. It was frustrating having to peer at everything in the right light/angle to figure out what goes to what.
Meanwhile NI still has yet to sell an official replacement power supply for the Maschine+ with its lock ring. Not sure I like that ring anyway, what’s it supposed to do, prevent it being unplugged when someone trips over it while sending your $1400 box crashing to the gd ground instead? I’d rather lose power 
I’ve starting to notice that some gear automatically detects on the input whether it’s A or B, and the Output can be set to A or B. I try to keep all my MIDI dongles with the gear it came with all the same. I should tag them like my power cables, but atm all I have are the 0 Coast and SQ-1; the Elektron ones from the Cycles are nice and braided and branded to what they go to.
I ordered some of these:
Screw you and your f’ing $50 carry handle Elektron lol… idk why, humid af in the mornings and very warm, and then the midday heat that burns it off makes for really hot days this time of year.
I should be asleep right now anyway, not awake…
Unfortunately only the Prophecy has a cable like that as it’s transformer is internal. The Micron has inline, but for the rest: SU200, QY700, DD55, JV1010 need one of these
The SE70 and VF-1 need the same but center negative. The MS20 mini and Volca FM need this special type
What would be good is something like this, but with higher adjustable ma out and center +/- adjustment
:
A box like that with adjustable voltages at the outputs would be very useful. Iirc guitar pedals got built to a -9V standard due to Boss pedals running on 9V batteries or something, and it kept going, though we do see a few 12, 15, and 18V guitar pedals out and about. I actually have a Zoom BT-100 floating around that runs off 4 AAs or something but it still uses 9V on the DC input…
I think the biggest issue with something like this for synthesizers would be the amps required? I have battery banks/packs that adjust voltage pretty easily, one does 9V, 12, 15, 16, and 20V while the other is 12V, 15V, 19V, 20, and 24V. I don’t know the circuitry behind them, but if myVolts can cram a DC voltage converter into a USB cable surely something like what you want would be possible and relatively inexpensively. But it would probably need a ton of barrel adapters
After turning down the volume on a track of the cycles to use it to sequence an external synth, it dawned on me that for $300 new one can buy a 6 track Elektron sequencer if they’re into that sort of thing.
I have… too many drum machines. The Cycles is a really fun one. 8/12-bit though and it samples?? Oh my…
I don’t have that sort of drum machine… at least until Isla sends me my damned S2400 lol… that will make the LmDrum a little redundant for me, I think. I did almost buy the Deton8 8-bit drum machine before they were seemingly discontinued and sell for too much used…
What if Behringer gets there first?
Nice look on that drum machine, but not something I will need.
LOL I thought of that. My order is either going to ship on the current batch Isla is working on, now, or it is very early in the second batch of 500 they should get next week. Either way my 2400 should be shipping Soon 
I will probably never take it out of 12-bit 26kHz sampling. 16-bit 48kHz seems a little odd and I have absolutely no need for another “high fidelity” sampler. And after the orders are fulfilled, they’re working on a DSP card that has me a little excited but I doubt it’s something I’d preorder unless the price of preorder is significantly cheaper (as was the S2400 itself).
That LmDrum looks rather large, too. I dunno, depending on price, an 8-bit sampling drum machine could be cool, but tbh I have so many chiptune and super lofi drum samples I really just do not need it. I even have a ton of old machines that a guy ran through the NES 4-bit sampler channel. And 8-bit samples aren’t super different from 12-bit, the sample rate has so much more to do with it.
I hadn’t considered that before. I’m probably going to pick up a pedal PSU in a few months, I have two pedals right now, and am considering a 3rd (and I only have one power supply right now). Probably going to go with a little Eventide Cioks:
If I had to guess why this isn’t a thing for synths, I think it would be down to size. A fancy schmancy pedal PSU like this has adjustable voltages and provides up to 2.6A total among all the outputs, but from what I gather these are special features - Eventide specifically specced higher current for this because a lot of their pedals draw more power than standard.
An Arturia Minbrute 2S comes with a 12v 2.5A PSU. So with this Eventide PSU, you have .1A left over, and that’s assuming it can actually deliver 2.5A to a single plug. The only way around that is to make the PSU bigger, a lot bigger if you’re going to power 4-5 synths off of this. My guess is 5-6 times bigger to get the power you need without compromising on noise/crosstalk. I think most people come out ahead by just using extension cables and living with all the transformers under their desk.
that’s what I was trying to say earlier. Most of my synths are in the 1-2A range, a few are in hundreds of mA, and I’ve seen a few in the 3A range. Even a MicroBrute or Pulse 2 are 1A, and my RackBrute is 3A, the K2 is 1A
Granted this is all DC and likely some of that is “extra” to keep the power supply reliable, ie not running maxed out all the time and getting warm. I don’t know the actual current draw on any of them. maths edit I know my Maschine+ uses 10W at 60% CPU and at 15V DC that’s 1.5A; it ships with a 2.6A power supply. That said, it that does give it reserve power for two USB devices up to 500mA each…
And then I look at something like an Electribe EMX that uses a step down transformer to 24V AC on a funky DIN-style connector. RNLA is barrel, but 9V AC. That said these could be outliers, but still, I think the biggest thing holding it back is the power requirements. I think visualizing a box that would hold all the transformers is a decent way to get an idea of just how large such a box would need to be.
Not hardware, but Bram Bos Hammerhead app came out yesterday and if you are my age you should get it. It’s like the original software, but modern and better. Plus there is some magic that add variations to even the simplest beat.
I have no idea what this is But to be fair, in the 90s I didn’t even know what a TR-909 was. It looks like a fun app and especially for only $8.
Holy sweet lord I found it:
http://www.threechords.com/hammerhead/
the demo tracks use Real Player lol.
Thats Digitakt updated to 1.30, I thought it was only logical to put it at the back as Digitone will probably get the next upgrade out of the two 
If Elektron adds poly MIDI out to tracks with Chord Machine on it in a Cycles update I’ll buy a second one… not sure if they can or not, though. It was definitely a great purchase and might be my favorite drum machine atm. I cannot wait to sample it with a S2400. The Chord Machine is great sounding, and just gives instant House music vibes. Its “character sheet” has a 5 for the Magic stat lol… iirc it’s wavetable and not FM (but I can’t remember or find where I read that so ignore… maybe…)
Propped up on one of these atm on my project table:
The mini version of the laptop stand, meant for tablets and half the price.
I’d love to see another in the Models line, though, and more digital. Please, please please, Elektron, do not do a Model:Analogs. Do a Model:Digitals and get a little crazy with it. Until I find out if I can use single cycle waveforms on a Samples, then I’ll get probably get one of those (edit F my wallet it can… )
Maschine’s sampler feels like weaksauce coming from an Akai, and trying to get sample presets to load on the Plus in standalone is a nightmare of sample pathing that I know has a solution because Samples From Mars drum Groups load right up for me and they were made before the Plus was a thing… I tried to mimic what they did and no dice 
Sometimes the Plus is such a pita and it’s usually things that are not a big deal on a computer because you can just search the missing files with a click or three. I love how Akai lets you install third party expansions and access them alongside their own…
Re: Synth power sizes
Complicated stuff, further complicated by the fact that it’s often an afterthought. Engineering as the science of compromise is on full display.
Basically, it’s about trying to pack features into a small package. Pedals are almost always limited scope, don’t have a ton of powered parts and just do a thing. Synths have lots of chips that require power (as opposed to the 1-2 in a lot of pedals), and it varies the requirements quite a lot. Also, you almost always design for constant voltage and then adjust the amps to fit resulting in a wide range of supplies depending on what you’re using.
To keep size down, everyone uses switch-mode supplies which are inherently noisy, which is terrible for the analog oscillators that everyone packs in. Not an issue with big synths (older analog or newer workstations) because they have the room to pack linear transformers and lots of filter caps in there and just use AC power. The small ones just size a bit over whatever the features demand to keep the power cleaner while not bloating the unit.
And a lot of it revolves around parts availability - it’s easier to find a Chinese plant that’ll churn out a wall wart to your specs than it is to work around getting lower draw components or limiting features or just engineering things more efficiently (often to the tune of more expensive parts which cuts into the bottom line).
Eurorack is interesting because, like pedals, there’s a power standard to design around. And if you can’t fit it in the unit you’re designing, you just make another unit to add on.
tl;dr - synth folks will never standardize power because it’s cheaper and thus more profitable not to.
I should have bought a Cycles sooner. Had my hands on it every break from work today (finally). Time to pair it again with something, or maybe two somethings…
It would just be like TRS MIDI A and B (and ‘C’ or TS) anyway, with a 5.5mm x 2.5mm barrel instead XD
Or I can waste over an hour faffing with two MIDI controllers and the Cycles to get anything to work at all lol. MIDI channels, software on the computer for the Korg Nanokey Studio failing, Launchpad X not working at all despite following the Cycles guide…
Still, got in some nice time with the K-2 and Cycles. K-2 makes a nice “analog clap” (among other things…). Thicc f’ing sound for ‘just’ two oscillators. Zoom H6 is fine for small jamming, really not feeling GAS for a Bluebox anymore for now.
edit I poked around with my Soma Ether and picked up some crazy noises off both synths, even when powered off. Didn’t go away until I completely shut off power at the strip, and picked up some other sounds in the area. One pulsed between two pitches which I’d never heard before from radio interference/spectrum/radiation stuff. Too tired to record any and run it through samplers and stretchers and pitch shifting, but Soon
