That sounds like a pair of headphones that are very sensitive (like mobile earbuds). The headphone out seems to have a fixed gain and it just amplifies whatever the sound engine sends it (and the volume knob is before that fixed gain). A headphone amp circuit that is medium or high gain will have that high-pitched white noise with very efficient headphones no matter what you do.
Weirdly, I don’t get that if I plug some old apple earbuds into mine - strange there would be more headphone gain in some units than others, but I don’t need to set the volume that low so they may not be efficient enough.
Running through your interface ought to help match gain. I don’t think I have any of my old ultra high sensitivity earbuds; they’d do that to all sorts of different devices which is one reason I stopped using them.
A lower-sensitivity pair of headphones shouldn’t have that problem (like studio tracking headphones).
Impedance plays a part, too - I’m using (by default right now) a 250 ohm pair of Beyerdynamic DT-250’s. The MDR-MV1 looks much lower, around 24 Ohms. Sensitivity varies by frequency and an impedance mismatch can lead to weird behaviors like this.
I’d try the AKGs to test. They are also low impedance, but higher than the MV1, at least. Actually, I have some k702s somewhere…
Hi @Jeanne, I just gave mine a shot using my Audio Technica ATH-M20x set and I can’t hear any detectable noise when I use the headphone jack on the Opsix itself.
Usually, I have the audio routed through the big balanced jacks to the Syntakt’s inputs and I even tried cranking it up, but I could not discern any noise there either.
For fun I even tried my dinky little earbuds I got from a 7/11 and they too are clear even at max volume.
So far I have had good luck with noise except for on the new little Roland compacts when plugged up to USB.
Any chance you have some effect enabled that might be causing the noise?
Curious if you have USB plugged in?
I had a similar problem with some of my synths and either used Midi cables to control, or plugged them into a hu. Eliminator which seemed to fix my problem.
This one to be precise, but there is a lot of options available.
Thanks everyone for being curious, but @cutlery was right: I just tested with my AKG K702 and there’s not the horrible white noise. So, I’ll use those in future with my Opsie
I wonder if the Korg OPSIX is being discontinued. It’s page has been taken down at Sweetwater and there’s not many new ones available out there anymore. Three Wave Music has one on Reverb for $649. Thinking about jumping on it.
It’s a really fun sandbox to play around in. While it’s not exactly what i would have wished (re the lack of keyboard resistance, the plastic quality of the core sound, and the amount of page diving in the interface), it’s still a very good instrument.
The engine will go a lot of places—musical places. The FM engine is very flexible (build your own algorhythms), plus the Opsix is way more than an FM synth.
I understand why some people will just go for the software version, but to me what’s lovable about the hardware is that it gives you the sophistication of a good software synth, but in a package you can sit on the bed with.
Plus building a patch can be super easy or deep depending on how far you want to push it. The sliders and knobs get me close to where I want to go, but then swapping a carrier to be a new waveform, or a filter, or an FX path (still don’t know what I’m doing there), on top of just hopping to different algorithms to drastically change the sound.
It’s crazy.
I really like the dice button or whatever it’s called to get more random, but also how you can choose just what you want to get shuffled up. Using that is like trimming a plant.
Honestly I think the menu diving is surprisingly minimal all things considered. Off the top of my head I can’t think of another full featured fm synth with such an approachable and streamlined interface.
I agree with you about the keys. Functional but kind of disappointing. Like the ford escort of keybeds.
Fantastic feature. I love to start with that, just hit it a couple times until I hear something with potential and then work away from there. Refreshing after years with a dx7 where you sit down and start with building a saw wave from scratch or whatever.
I’ve had zero bites on mine despite listing within that range in numerous places (not linking to it in this thread b/c seems inappropriate), which makes me wonder if investing in the Tall Dog mod, performing the upgrade, and then listing it for the $200 or so extra that the mod costs would help the sale or hurt it.
I made mine a chopsix – thereby commiting to either ownership or significant market devaluation
I really like the opsix. My biggest gripe (now that I’ve cut off the meh keyboard) is there’s no indication of where the sliders are when you open up a preset. I wish they had a tiny little indicator feature like the BS2 has, for example, to show you where your slider value is relative to the preset.
)
