Volume and sound quality disparities when engaging digital effects

[synthwave4ever]

I just got my OB 6 and have encountered two strange issues with the digital effects section. The first one - earlier today I turned on the OB to have a play. Left for a couple hours to run some errands, returned home and found that whenever I turn on the effects section, the sound quality was degraded substantially, like when you drop the sampling rate - very thin and grainy sounding. This was the case in both effects banks and regardless of which effect was selected, with the mix knob all the way dry. I reset the OB6 to the default patch and the issue persisted, but when I turned the unit off and on again, it had disappeared.

That brings me to the second and current issue - though not as problematic as what I described above, there's a volume difference when I engage the effects section, again despite which bank or effect is selected. It's not massive but I checked this behavior against my Prophet 6 and the P6 doesn't do this. In fact, the effects section on the P6 is totally transparent - I only hear a sound difference when actually turning up the mix on a selected effect, as it should be.

Is anyone else experiencing this? Frankly I'm experiencing a couple strange quirks on the new OB that give me pause, especially since it was not a cheap synth and my P6 from 2015 never had any of these issues.

[RobustAmerican]

The reduced sample rate sound that you describe sounds like a bug that the Rev2 had. The FX would randomly produce a ringmod like tone. (sounded very similar to reducing the sample rate) A power cycle would fix it. I've never heard of it happening with the OB-6 though and it's never happened with my OB-6.


For your other issues...
First make sure that the vintage knob is turned off. Press the Bank button + Globals to enter the 3rd page of global parameters. Press button 4 and set the vintage parameter to off. Exit globals by pressing the globals button again.

Then do a google search for something like "OB-6 clear the calibration table". When the OB-6 arrives in a new home, sometimes it helps to clear the calibration table and start fresh. This will erase the stored calibration data (from it's previous environment) and allow you to repopulate the calibration table with fresh data from the new environment. Each time you run the cal routine it will add another entry to the cal table which should make the synth more stable in it's new home.