Arturia BeatStep Pro

[TubularCorporation]

If it could send sysex in controller mode it would be great as a programmer for other synths, even with the bugs.

 

I wish companies like Arturia would open-source their firmware, I really can't see how it could do anything but boost sales and give their products longer market life.

[tokn]

yeah i really want to get this thing to sequence my volca and brute and old electribe but it still seems to be so buggy... good job arturia :)

[TubularCorporation]

It's definitely usable and fun, the bugs are there but you can adjust your workflow to compensate for a lot o them. The one that's realy getting m is the gate out thing but if the Arturia forums are any indicator I'm the only one who has that problem (it's very consistent and definitely the BSP though, I've actually measured the voltage coming out of it to confirm that it wasn't an issue somewhere else in my setup). The hardware seems reasonably solid for the price, though, so used might be a good option if you're on the fence. I'd be worried about all the 1/8" jacks and especially the microUSB since they're easy to break, but the pads and encoders all seem as good as you're likely to get in that price range.

[TechDiff]

I seem to get a new bug every time I turn mine on.

 

Regular occurrences are:

 

Complete MIDI crash. If using as main sequencer/clock source, turning it off/on resolves. If using as MIDI to CV converter from DAW to synth, it crashes my entire system and I have to reboot everything.

 

Double triggering when manually playing drum pads. Fortunately I'm not much of a finger drummer.

 

Timing issues when using drum pads for MIDI. Sometimes triggers are late, sometimes missed completely.

 

Roller/Looper remains a complete POS, even after most recent FW update.

 

Unresponsive encoders. They do not always show correct values when touched.

 

The 'Wait to Load Pattern' which was a big part of the new FW is poo. Next pattern is loaded only after the 1st step of the previous! Means you end up with 1 step of the old pattern....

 

The saving workflow is also kinda lame. Makes it all too easy to accidentally save the wrong stuff into a channel's pattern slots. Say you're working on Sequencer 2, and want to save something you'd done on Sequencer 1. Pressing 'Sequencer 1' + 'Save' + Slot number will instead save the contents of sequencer 2 into 1. The sequencer seems to be only correctly selected on button release. I guess this is to allow you to copy from one sequencer to the other, but meh... I find it causes more harm than good, especially since (as far as I know) there is no 'undo'.

 

There are a few other things that bug me too, maybe more personal stuff though.

 

All that said, I hold hope that some of this will be addressed with updates. Should also say that I still have a lot of fun working with it. It's fast to use, reasonably intuitive, and is a super useful bit of gear. I'd no way use it live atm because of the MIDI issues, but again, hopes for updates. It really would be a cracking bit of kit once they get the bugs fixed

 

 

 

[TubularCorporation]

I didn't notice the bug you're having with the "wait to next pattern", I'll have to check it out and see if mine does that too.

 

The thing with the controller values is something I've noticed on mine since the most recent update, but I don't know for sure if it's a software bug or just my hand getting too close to other encoders near the one I'm actually touching and confusing it.

 

 

 

If you have a chance, would you mind checking to see if you're getting any trigger voltage out on the first step when you play a sequence? It's more obvious if you tie the first step to the next few since it skips all of the tied notes, too. Mine does this consistently but I've never heard of anyone else having an issue.

[TubularCorporation]

Necromancing this thread to warn people that the BSP may have damaged one of my synths.  I sold it a while back so I can't do any tests and say for sure, but ever since I had it hooded up to the DIN midi out of the BSP for a year or so, it's become really dodgy, the only way to get it to respond to MIDI notes at all is to run them through the MidiPAL, although it still responds to clock OK.  Most likely the optoisolator o the MIDI input was damaged, and the BSP is a likely culprit, especially since the voltages I measured from the CV outputs were way out of spec sometimes.  Waiting on some replacement parts so see what happens, but just know that there might be at least some BSP's out there that are dangerously defective.  The CV was low when it went wrong, not high, so at least that wasn't dangerous even though it made it not work right.

 

Really wanted to like this thing.

Edited August 31, 2016 by RSP

[th555]

Every time I read this thread it just reminds me to never buy anything by Arturia lol

[TubularCorporation]

If it was damaged by a piece of gear, the only other possible culprit would be the Korg i30 I got at a thrift shop a few months ago and am using as a master controller now, but that has played well with everything else I own and is in excellent shape inside and out (had to replace a key and tighten up the pitch bender, so there's not much in there I haven't seen).  Again there's no way to know for sure but it seems really suspicious that it worked perfectly for two years, then worked with the Arturia for a few months and now only kind of works.  It's almost definite that the optoisolator has been damaged and is now really picky about the MIDI signal it gets (in which case, good on Mutable for the MIDIpal putting out a rock solid signal!), I'll know when my Mouser order gets here.  My working theory is the voltage on the MIDI output on the Beatstep was over spec or had spikes and stressed the optoisolator, but the problem didn't show up until I went back to using stuff that was in spec.  No way to prove it without the BSP though.  At least I can still use it as long as I buffer the incoming MIDI with the MIDIpal but fucking hell.  I've only bought two Arturia products (this and a Minibrute) but both were defective out of the box.  At least the Brute was so defective I caught it instantly and sent it back.  Ironically, the Anushri kit is what I got with the refund.

 

/Livejournal

[b born droid]

Soooooo..... did this thing ever get a decent non-buggy update?

[YangYing]

dammit I bought this a while ago out of vids/price havent had time to test it on synths properly, but reading this thread is scaring me a little :(

[psn]

I think it was updated quite recently. Should be good now.

Edited July 20, 2017 by psn

[TubularCorporation]

For what it's worth, the person who I sold mine to is OK with it.  I enjoyed it, it was the problem I was having with it dropping the gate on the first step after you pressed play that killed it for me but sometimes I miss it.  The grounding issues were kind of a hassle but you could work around them.  It was definitely fun.

[Lada Laika]

Every time I read this thread it just reminds me to never buy anything by Arturia lol

?

 

i've had a minibrute for 2 years now, no issues

[TubularCorporation]

 

Every time I read this thread it just reminds me to never buy anything by Arturia lol

?

 

i've had a minibrute for 2 years now, no issues

 

 

A friend of mine just recently got a minibrute and it seems pretty solid for the money.  I got a micro and out of the box the digital section was completely broken and the pitch wheel was at the very least spectacularly miscalibrated (no change at all across most of its range, then jumped to maximum bend in the last 10% or so) so I just returned it and used the money to buy an Anushri kit.  I liked the sound of it, though, and I may have just had bad luck.

[DevilDust]

Yup the Beatstep pro recently had an update that sorted some bugs and added more functionality to it. Grounding issues are annoying as shiz, but other than that' it's pretty good.
I've had a few Arturia products and some suffer from crap keybeds but the Minibrute so far seems to be fine, although I am selling it, when I get around to it.

[Lada Laika]

 

 

Every time I read this thread it just reminds me to never buy anything by Arturia lol

?

 

i've had a minibrute for 2 years now, no issues

A friend of mine just recently got a minibrute and it seems pretty solid for the money. I got a micro and out of the box the digital section was completely broken and the pitch wheel was at the very least spectacularly miscalibrated (no change at all across most of its range, then jumped to maximum bend in the last 10% or so) so I just returned it and used the money to buy an Anushri kit. I liked the sound of it, though, and I may have just had bad luck.

ahh that sucks, sorry to hear. i did hear the first run of the micro had some ootb issues but nothing that drastic, usually just a sticky key or loose knob

[sweepstakes]

I dropped my microbrute once and managed to break the attack pot. I asked Arturia for a fader, ordered it from recommended supplier and it took them like 4 months to ship it lol. Finally soldered it in and it worked great but the envelope output has been broken (although it works fine for the internally patched VCA/VCF) and also the mod wheel seems to transmit completely random insane values, but again works fine for its internal functions like modulating the filter. The mod wheel may have always been that way; I never bothered using it as a MIDI controller until a few months after I fixed it. Anyway I think the thing sounds great, if I managed to drop it again (lol) I would buy a replacement, and I don't really mind the aforementioned issues which is surprising because most synths have something that really pisses me off about them even when they're working properly, lol. 

[b born droid]

Thanks for the feedback on the BSP, very helpful.

[Guest Chesney]

I have the matrixbrute and the beatstep pro, both are great and solid. Beatstep was buggy as hell for ages but I bought it mainly for the drum gates which are amazing so I still have not updated the OS.

[BCM]

i've been looking at these for a while but just bought a korg sq-1 instead as way cheaper...very impressed with it so far, i'd recommend one to anyone and for £99 you can't go fucking wrong really.

[acid1]

I want one! Even if its just to jam out some ideas before I expand via A4.

[TubularCorporation]

 

 

 

Every time I read this thread it just reminds me to never buy anything by Arturia lol

?

 

i've had a minibrute for 2 years now, no issues

A friend of mine just recently got a minibrute and it seems pretty solid for the money. I got a micro and out of the box the digital section was completely broken and the pitch wheel was at the very least spectacularly miscalibrated (no change at all across most of its range, then jumped to maximum bend in the last 10% or so) so I just returned it and used the money to buy an Anushri kit. I liked the sound of it, though, and I may have just had bad luck.

ahh that sucks, sorry to hear. i did hear the first run of the micro had some ootb issues but nothing that drastic, usually just a sticky key or loose knob

 

 

 

It's fine, the Anushri kit was like $35 less and I love it.

[b born droid]

Is it possible to set which step a sequence starts playback from? I have got into a rather annoying habit of sometimes making loops where my '1' is actually step 9 or whatever and it's annoying as fuck when I'm trying to record stuff that I'm starting my loop early so to speak.

[TubularCorporation]

I've got to take back some of my complaints about the Beatstep Pro and transfer them onto MOTU, who in their wisdom decided that their interfaces would always send clock from a USB host to all ports no matter what your filter and routing settings are and then never even hinting at that in any of their documentation.  So for years my interface was sending two identical clock streams whenever the DAW was running, but most of my hardware wasn't bothered by it so it only caused noticeable problems with the CV outputs on the BSP (the first trigger pulse would always be less than 1v instead of the proper 5v, amonth other things)  and a couple of MIDI to DINsync converters.

 

So it was MOTU's fault not Arturia's, and the only way  eventually figured it out was by accident when I was looking for an unrelated MIDI feedback loop after I changed some stuff a couple years ago.

 

I still don't really miss the BSP because it took up a lot of desk space relative to how much it can control, but it was definitely a good piece of hardware (other than the well known USB ground problems).

[user]

On 3/27/2021 at 12:39 PM, b born droid said:

Is it possible to set which step a sequence starts playback from? I have got into a rather annoying habit of sometimes making loops where my '1' is actually step 9 or whatever and it's annoying as fuck when I'm trying to record stuff that I'm starting my loop early so to speak.

Don't have a bsp myself but beyond using the arturia midi control center sotware to manually edit the pattern I can't think of any straight out of the tin way to do it. I've never used the control center to edit sequences though, maybe there's a slider there or something that shifts the whole pattern.

Must be something more people would like to be able to do easily, wonder if it's possible to spy on the sysex that's sent from the mcc and hack together some simple bit of software that will get the pattern from the bsp or whatever and lets you enter how many steps to offset and then send it back. Orrr try to get arturia to implement this, not sure if there are any shift combo's left that would allow you to do it from the device, never used a bsp though.             

 

  

2 hours ago, TubularCorporation said:

I've got to take back some of my complaints about the Beatstep Pro and transfer them onto MOTU, who in their wisdom decided that their interfaces would always send clock from a USB host to all ports no matter what your filter and routing settings are and then never even hinting at that in any of their documentation.  So for years my interface was sending two identical clock streams whenever the DAW was running, but most of my hardware wasn't bothered by it so it only caused noticeable problems with the CV outputs on the BSP (the first trigger pulse would always be less than 1v instead of the proper 5v, amonth other things)  and a couple of MIDI to DINsync converters.

 

So it was MOTU's fault not Arturia's, and the only way  eventually figured it out was by accident when I was looking for an unrelated MIDI feedback loop after I changed some stuff a couple years ago.

 

I still don't really miss the BSP because it took up a lot of desk space relative to how much it can control, but it was definitely a good piece of hardware (other than the well known USB ground problems).

Damn. I hate it when manufacturers do shit like that. Wouldn't expect something like that from MOTU tbh.

Edited March 29, 2021 by user