Going from v0.25 to 0.26 I noticed many of my patches sounded differently. I soon realized it was mostly due to the fact that in the later version ENV2 now also reacts to the key tracking setting previously exclusive to ENV1.
I notified UDO about it and got the response this was decided upon to now be standard behavior and not a bug.
I’m personally not a fan -
First, It doesn’t make sense visually, as panel wise key tracking looks part of ENV1 only, just like the looping feature, and somewhat throws off at least my visual and muscle memory. I never reached for that parameter to change ENV2, and it just made me confused to why the notes didn’t decay the same.
Second, to me it creates a worse workflow, as I usually set desired ENV2 behavior first, and then work on other modulation. Now, if/when I change ENV1 tracking, I constantly have to compensate for the change in response in ENV2 back and forth. This becomes even more frustrating when doing arpeggios or sequencing. Not a fan.
I’ve asked the devs to at least provide an option to let us select the desired default behavior via some menu setting.
But wanted to ask, what do the rest of you think? Esp. if you went from an earlier version to v0.26.
What would be the benefit of coupling the switch to both envelopes, am I missing something?
Well, you can imagine it’s quite cumbersome to switch between two firmware versions just to demo a few patches, plus it’s also subjective what “version” is preferred. Obviously, for me, I prefer the one I originally saved.
Or did you simply want to hear that the ENV2 time constants (D and R) actually change with ENV key track setting? If you have the synth at hand you can test that easily.
In essence, any patch saved in v0.25, that uses key tracking on ENV1 and i.e has long ENV2 release time will sound different in v0.26. Plus the lower notes will have longer release time than the higher ones. This broke many of my older patches, certainly half of patches I played in my Super 6 YT demo.
Not saying any behavior is 100% right or wrong, and there’s no law against sub-optimal design, just that it to me personally doesn’t make sense and is confusing panel wise - that parameter is visually framed to ENV1, as is the invert and loop switch, so logically then, why does key track affect ENV2, but the invert/loop switch does not?
I agree it should be a switchable option. Hopefully, one day, when a really nice editor/programmer/librarian is released, it will open up a whole page of these kind of optional switches that the user can set, a bit like all the crazy options on the Moog GM and Matriarch, that you need to set with key presses.
To me it would make sense if key tracking was only for ENV1 as default, to reflect the panel layout, but could be enabled for both envelopes with shift+switch.
I just got mine and so I only know firmware 0.26, so without having that reference I like the way it currently works and wouldn’t change it. Maybe it’s a matter of you having designed patches for it working that way and just needing to tweak a little bit to get the same results as before?? As Hermetech said, maybe a switchable option in the future would be cool