Ableton Forum

I just picked up one & wanted to share my thoughts & see how other user's experiences are.

1. It sounds really good, not as warm & fat as a vintage synth, but still much better than the soft-synths I've tried.

2. The unit itself is extremely buggy. Editing patches is a nightmare. There is some company called Soundtower that makes an editing app, I tried the free version & it doesn't even communicate with the device. I thought about getting the paid version in hopes it would work, but after reading the reviews from other customers I would not even consider giving the company a dime. An Ableton user was so kind & wrote a pretty good M4L patch to control it, it is not perfect yet but definitely in the right direction. In fact any flaws with it are probably more attributed the the bugginess of the Tetra. I just spent a few hour working on a patch, saved it & when recalled it was a mess. I do have its OS to the most recent too.

Wondering if anyone else had these issues. I'm on the fence as to whether to return it or accept it with its flaws in hopes the DSI actually gets on the ball with it. So much potential in it, but horribly executed in the OS.

If I'd paid that much for a synth that didn't work, I'd return it.

Hi its a finicky beast but worth persevering. It can be used many ways but I found it best to find one way that works well for you and work around its faults.

I'm also in the process of writing a Max editor too......

Also I found the beta firmware that Pym has been developing in his spare time to be a good advance.


http://dsiforum.com/viewforum.php?f=19


I think its a "case" of too many feature

And a lack of support from Dave they seem to have lost interest in it. ......the tetra could have been awesome ....as is its just good.

the problems with the tetra a mostly on the multi part. just use the tetra as a 4 voice polymath. forget the soundtower editor there is already a max4live editor even for the sequencer tracks. it is a stunning synth...

Thanks guys. At least I'm not alone here. After fiddling with it more, it is def useful to know what its faults are to work around them. I think I will keep it because it does sound nice & has a lot of sonic potential. Using M4L with it does make it better.

I've also found that when it's connected via USB, it can be a bit more fidgety with editing patches.

All Soundtower editors are known to be buggy. Why DSI and Moog contracted them is beyond me. Their Evolver editor "saved" a bank of my patches into a zero KB file. I only found out when I tried to reload them

I do not trust the editor, period...every time I save a bank I always check the size and do a sysex dump as a safety. I mainly use it for naming patches and building up custom banks. I can't imagine using it as an actual editor on a regular basis.

I had similar strange experiences with their Moog editors, although I never lost any patches.

Use codeKnobs editor for DSI Tetra
http://codeknobs.com/products.php?id=2

Hello there.
Either I´m not using the right search words or this has´t been covered. How do you make a Midi clip in Ableton send the Tetra that the sound it has to use is a Combo, not a program from any of the 4 banks? I can easily select the bank and program, but haven´t found a way to send that the sound is a combo. Any hints? Thanks!!

Have you read the manual, specifically the section on MIDI?

To change to combo mode, you have to send an NRPN message. See p.52 of the manual.

Once in combo mode, you can use program change msgs to select which combo.

PS I don't own a Tetra I just dl'ed the manual and read it myself.