u/ADHDebackle

This is something I have struggled with over the last few years of owning both the NTS-1 MKII and the NTS-3, and it's been difficult to find all the relevant information about how Mono inputs are handled by these devices. I spent the last half hour or so meticulously testing how these work so I decided to make a post here laying it all out for posterity.

The NTS-1 MKII and NTS-3 both have stereo (TRS) inputs. If you feed them a mono signal with a TS cable, you will get audio only out of the left channel. That's kinda par for the course.

You can fix that, though, by going into the global settings menu of either device (Boot + EDIT on NTS-3, boot+Reverb on NTS1), then scrolling over to the monoaural settings (MoNoFF on the NTS3, MoN0 on the NTS1), enabling that setting (MoN oN / MoN1), and then saving those settings (press fx4 on the NTS3, arp on the NTS-1 MKII)

For the NTS-3 this will work fine but will revert after a reboot forcing you to go in and toggle it again every time you boot the device.

For the NTS-1 in mono mode the device listens to the RIGHT audio channel (ring) instead of the industry standard LEFT channel (tip). That means a standard TS cable feeding mono audio into the NTS-1 MKII with the Mono setting enabled will be dead silent. You need to somehow feed your mono signal into the right channel either using an adapter or half-plugging in the TS cable to get this to work.

Oh and of course, on a reboot, the NTS-1 MKII will lose the setting as well.

On a reboot into the settings, both devices will show mono mode turned on, but you need to toggle it off and on again to make it actually work on subsequent boots.

The ultimate conclusion here is basically that it's a pain in the ass to get mono inputs working on these devices (especially the NTS1). The best way to use mono inputs with these is to use a mono-to-stereo converter to make your mono signals into stereo signals before they reach the NTS devices.

I hope this helps someone or saves someone some frustration moving forward, and I hope someday Korg puts out a firmware update that addresses these issues.

I have a friend who came to me recently because they're trying to learn keys for the purpose of self expression, but just want something more interesting and more immediately good sounding than, say, a piano.

We went over the few extra synths I have - monologue, minilogue, roland synth plus 10 - but the one that stuck out to them was the korg wavestate. Tons of presets, wide variety of lots of interesting sounds. Some basic control with the little joystick and mod wheel and all that, and the biggest thing: you don't really have to learn sound design and you don't have to make patches of your own to get lots of useful and professional musical... stuff.

I sent them home with the wavestate for now because I think that fits the bill, but in a few weeks they're probably going to be making a purchase decision and therein lies my query:

I'm probably going to recommend they get the software version of the wavestate plus a midi keyboard, but are there other good options that fit those parameters well? I'm not as familiar with that whole realm of music gear / VSTs.

I have no clue what their budget might be but lets say strictly under 800 bucks with cheaper being better.

I am very new to all this and picked up a very simple troubleshooting task: a box fan that will not go. Best I can tell there are basically three parts, the switch, the capacitor, and the motor.

The switch has continuity when turned on, and not when turned off. It's a three way switch but thats good enough for me - I don't think it's the switch.

The motor is a solid hunk of clean, but otherwise inscrutable metal and I feel like the only thing that could kill it is a lightning strike.

The capacitor is a nondescript gray box labeled as 6.5uF (+/- 10/5%). I don't think I'd be likely to visually see damage to it just because of the way it is, so I decided to remove it and test it with my multimeter. Resistance wise I see it slowly climb from 5Mohms to like 10 before I get bored of watching. That seems normal! I have read online that that indicates a good capacitor. I'm not so sure though.

Capacitance wise my multimeter is reading 0L uF. I took another known capacitor (1uF) and it measured 1.26 uF.

I think that means that the capacitor is dead / faulty, right? The capacitor itself is probably more expensive to buy new than another box fan from a thrift store, so replacing it wasn't really my plan, just kinda wondering if my diagnosis sounds right.

Thank you!