Auto saving in Intellijel modules

Eurorack
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#1

Hi Intellijel!

Sorry for bringing up an old topic, but after one year in modular this is my first encounter with this dilemma and I have some doubts on what path I want to take…

I just purchased the Steppy 1U, already having the Metropolix and Planar2. With the addition of Steppy, I started feeling like my wonderful anti-computer music machine now has a lot of file-saving that needs to be done.

Personally, I feel the case for a patch booting up like you left it and not having to autosave is very clear if you think about it like this:
Imagine having to go through every single module in your case to manually save the state of them every time you shut off.
Now compare that against everything just saving by itself. If you want to save / recall something specific or a clean slate, you still can, so to me the downside is of autosaving is not so evident either.

I read in this thread (Steppy autosave - #2 by slowwild) that this was mainly done to reduce wear on the EEPROM, but there is also a reply with a technical suggestion that makes me feel one might be able to balance these two concerns better. Even if the auto-save feature only saved every 30 minutes, we could at least just leave our systems alone for a while before powering off and not have to remember what modules I have to save states on. If you consider 30 modules with this feature or not the difference becomes quite stark.

Rainmaker, Tetrapad, Tete, Quadrax and Plonk are high on my next to buy list right now, but this is causing some doubts about whether the instrument will feel as immediate and playful if more and more modules require manual saving.
As far as I know Quadrax saves everything, but will Plonk, Tetrapad, Tete and Rainmaker be modules that I will have to go through and save if I want to continue where I left off later?

So I am humbly asking, Is there any chance you could give users the choice to enable a not so frequent auto-save feature? Or are there other technical limitations that make this unrealistic?

Alex

#2

Planar 2 saves its state (but not the Loop).
Tete saves its states and loops across reboots (SD Card).
Tetrapad on its own saves its state.
Quadrax saves its state.
Scales saves its state.
Plonk and Rainmaker will load their last preset, knob positions will be live.

I will add wish list items for Plonk and Rainmaker, but wouldn’t have any guarantee or eta. Steppy has been covered, won’t be changing there for technical reasons. Many prefer their systems to reboot to known state (aka last saved preset). So there is benefits to both modes, and even having it work differently on different modules.

I would expect any forthcoming modules to save their state as you’d expect, unless there is a conscious choice not too.

#3

Hi slowwild,

Looks like most of your modules actually work like I hoped, and I see my fears might have been exaggerated :sweat_smile: Thank you for clarifying!

Embarrisingly I believed neither Planar or Metropolix saved their state when posting.
Planar because I had forgotten about the 30 second save interval, and Metropolix because the screen reverts to C MAJOR on the screen after a reboot (even though it will update when you hit run)… . sorry for my horrible research!

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#4

I will log this as a bug and look into it, thanks!

#5

So wait, if I save my current settings as a preset, Rainmaker will boot back up into that preset? This is my biggest pet peeve of Rainmaker, that it zeros out everything I had going. TBH, even saving a preset is a pain, I’d love for it to just boot up in the last state it was in.

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#6

Since 1.09 (2019)

  • The preset load/save changed so that now the last preset to be saved or loaded is
    loaded on power up
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#7

I need to upgrade my box, gotta figure out how to do that :slight_smile:

#8

I can’t confirm this behaviour. What screen is showing C Major? and are you on 1.3.5?

#9

Screen number 2 is showing C MAJOR in the top left corner, as soon as I hit run it changes to the saved scale.
I’m on 1.3.1 still however… Guess I should update :slight_smile:

#10

Plonk manual saving is a must! It’s actually a great feature. There have been so many times when I want to play with one of the presets, and then I can save to overwrite it with my changes, or just hit load and go back to where I was. It’s not a module that I find I worry about saving after a session, because I’m either designing a sound, and I’m only menu-diving on the plonk, or I’ve loaded up a preset (whatever that might be) and I’m jamming with it. Saving a preset is super easy, and barely takes 5 seconds on the plonk. Unless you feel the need to rename it, which again only really needs to happen once.

Quadrax just works. It auto saves frequently enough that I’ve never noticed something off. It’s one of the ones where you forget it even needs to save things, and you can just jam on it. Planar works pretty much the same way, but I’ve noticed the 30-second interval can occasionally not save something if you change a button and then power it off. That’s happened to me once in six months, and there’s only four buttons, so it’s not hard to change states on the fly. It doesn’t save the recording, which can be a bother, but I actually find it a fun feature, now that I’ve gotten used to it. I’ve never seen anything about Tetrapad (on its own) ever having issues, and in all the videos I’ve seen it just works.

I don’t know about the other modules, as I don’t have them and haven’t specifically looked for too many videos on them. But in general, Intellijel stuff just works.