u/TurbulentWing3820

I received a used Doepfer A-190-4 from someone and I'm confused by these two blocks.

The manual shows three jumpers across them, and there were 2 to 3 jumpers rolling in the box (I admit, I don't remember how many, I added them to my little baggie of parts before I started to look).

The manual says absolutely nothing about these other than "internal use only."

ChatGPT is telling me "nah, you're good" but ChatGPT is also routinely dumb.

Does anyone know the proper configuration of these points? Should I mimic the manual or not care?

Yes, it's Behringer. Yes, "quirks" are possibly terrible design. No, I don't care. It's what I can afford and I got a screaming deal on a used item.

I am having a hell of a time getting the CV input for play/stop to work, I'm curious if this is just bad implementation or doing something wrong.

If I feed it a trigger from my 2600's clock out, it'll go for abotu six seconds and stop. The LFO seems to do the same thing. Trying to use the "trigger out" of my Behringer 182 sequencer does nothing even though I can see the trigger signal going out on a scope.

I've tried making an envelope based on the trigger, but it goes about 5 seconds before it stops. Gate Out, which is something I absolutely do not want to do, just lasts a second or so. I've tried to slew the trigger from the 182 and while I can make the signal "bigger" it doesn't work there, either. I tried a manual +6v through a VCA being triggered, and that also doesn't work but I was getting experimental there.

So, am I missing something? DOes it just suck that hard?

Thanks for reading.

I am having a hell of a time getting the CV input for play/stop to work, I'm curious if this is just bad implementation or doing something wrong.

If I feed it a trigger from my 2600's clock out, it'll go for abotu six seconds and stop. The LFO seems to do the same thing. Trying to use the "trigger out" of my Behringer 182 sequencer does nothing even though I can see the trigger signal going out on a scope.

I've tried making an envelope based on the trigger, but it goes about 5 seconds before it stops. Gate Out, which is something I absolutely do not want to do, just lasts a second or so. I've tried to slew the trigger from the 182 and while I can make the signal "bigger" it doesn't work there, either. I tried a manual +6v through a VCA being triggered, and that also doesn't work but I was getting experimental there.

So, am I missing something? DOes it just suck that hard?

edit: someone told me that this requires +3.2V CV to run the sequencer, not a trigger to start and a trigger to stop. Voltage in: It's own, voltage off it's not. Still waiting for confirmation but that very obviously explain the behaviour.

I bought a Plaits clone.

I admit, I don't get it.

This isn't some sort of analog puritanism, at least not intentionally although my other voices are all analog VCOs. This isn't some sort of weird hipster shit just to cause a disturbance.

I'm actually afraid to say it outloud because of how people get over it.

But I don't get it.. It sounds really uneven. There's a couple voices that sound great, and a lot that don't and the UX, or lack thereof, is rough. It feels like it was assembled by committee and randomly. Every voice the controls do different things, sometimes you get a second voice sometimes you don't and it god forbid you switch to the wrong model or you might blow out your speakers from the last one.

I know this design is going back to like 2013 for Braids and 2018 for Plaits so it's almost 10 years old and things were different but the way peoiple rave over it I really thought I was going to be blown away.

I'm not.

Am I doing something wrong? Is there some secret add-on module that makes it work?

I've read people complain about the "Rings sound" and I've been leery of chasing that one but with the praise Plaits get I thought it was going to be a no brainer. But it sort of just sits there on top of my VCOs and sounds awkward.