Regarding distortion, the newer 'smooth' factory library is distortion free. The issue arises from the wavetable 'sampled' sounds having low frequency artifacts embedded in them. Depending on the settings, particularly high Morph Speed and Overdrive, crackling can be heard as Pianophonic jumps between waveforms that contain differing DC offsets. I hope that helps.

Calibration can be done over midi CC, I'll update the manual if it isnt already in there.

Are there any CV connections to the module? This sounds like the knob recorder has bad data in the persistent memory (power off memory). Try resetting to factory default by holding down Tap button while powering up.

the error message is normal, the pianophonic ejects itself after a succesful firmware update.

Oh no. Not good. That needs to come back for a closer look. I really appreciate the trouble you've gone to to test this out with the video and everything, it really helps. There is only one thing you might want to try before returning it, since you have done such a thorough job of testing it so far - try deleting the Settings.dat file on the SD card, once this gets corrupted it can cause disk load problems. If that doesnt help then contact your dealer and we'll get you another one.

Not all SD cards are equal and it might be worth trying a larger and branded card just to rule it out. Whilst Pianophonic doesnt need the 32Gb storage space of a larger card we have found them to be faster and more reliable. One of the changes in 1.1.2 was made to make it less vulnerable to slower SD card performance, but like you have experienced it is difficult to replicate on demand as a bug. Never-the-less, any information you share with us from out in the field is helpful.

Hi There, Sorry to hear youre having issues with the SD card loading. It sounds like you've tried all the right things only the symptoms you describe don't match the behaviour we've seen with 1.12. Can you describe a specific situation that reproduces this bug, what midi controller, what SD card. Did you definitely drag the firmare file onto the Pianophonic drive to update it (flashing the bootloader is a different process). Hopefully we can get to the bottom of this and find a solution quickly.

I'm happy to repair it here in London if you can send it. We've not had this fault before but its probably a simple fix.

New firmware and sd card now available to download

This is something I’ve been looking into recently, including separating the kick decay from the sidechain decay, also presets. If I have enough time I should have an update soon.

You can use Waveslicer, our online wavetable maker , to create custom presets. There are no licensing issues so long as you have personal clearance to use the samples.

If users are willing to pay, then yes we can license content into more sound cards.

We've found that some sd cards are slower than others and can't keep up with Pianophonic load times so the quick fix is to create your own SD card using a a larger (=faster) 8-16 Gb card. A copy of the card is in the Download section of our website. In the meantime we will soon be relasing a firmware update that is more robust so it doesnt crash when this happens.

sorry about that , we were aware of this and already changed the default midi channel to all but there's a load of legacy files out there that still show chan 1.

Both CV inputs are now fully assignable with the latest firmware. The Vox Humana can be heard here: https://www.instagram.com/p/CyT3TY_N6k3/ The startpoint only affects the wavetable startpoint, the hammer sample isnt affected. In the case of Vox Humana the hammer sound is the "breath" of the choir. Hope that helps!

The current hardware for poly cinematic v/oct input is unipolar so you are correct that it does not track negative volts.

have you tried with another SD card?

Best to get in touch with me at jason@knobula.com

The click level can be changed slightly in the current configuration in a couple of ways. 1. As you turn the Click knob the sound changes but so does the volume, each zone of each click sound has a range of levels if you listen carefully. 2. The Attack control reduces the click level significantly. If it doesnt then you might be using older firmware. The attack doesnt fade in the sound like on a synth but it emphasises the body of the sound and reduces the transient at the start. I hope that helps.

If there is a DC or sub octave component in the source sound this can create artefacts in the resulting wavetable. Or if the pitch has not been correctly estimated, which can often be the case on lower frequency sounds. If you havent already, you could try explicity typing the note values into the source file name and changing the pitch detection method to "From Filename". Also you could try setting the Preset template to "Synth" in Step 2. Let me know how you get on.