Just unpacked mine... (some early feedback)

OWL
#1

Just started playing with it. A wonderful plug & play experience, it only took seconds to get started! Using the USB cable as power source, and now going through the pre-loaded patches with OwlNest. And there’s an amazing range of patches already… well done all.

Just a quick bit of feedback –

I think several of the pre-loaded example patches only affect the first (mono) channel. The second channel stays clean. Among others this happens with: SimpleDelay, Parametric EQ, Phaser, Low Pass Filtered Delay (with/without Phaser), …

While playing with patches I also managed to get the device into a state where turning of knobs wouldn’t affect the sound, and I had to switch to the second patch and back again for the new know positions to register (the sound was immediately different from before when switching back to the first patch.) I imagine this’ll be a bitch to reproduce, so for now it’s just FYI.

Other observations about some of the patches:

I think the ‘Overdrive’ patch doesn’t actually overdrive, only the gain controller has any impact. (Maybe I was feeding in the wrong signal – just music from my laptop.)

Resonant Low Pass Filter has lots of aliasing/high-frequency distortion, even at low resonance levels. Curiously I think it’s stronger on the second audio channel.

#2
While playing with patches I also managed to get the device into a state where turning of knobs wouldn’t affect the sound, and I had to switch to the second patch and back again for the new know positions to register

Turns out this happens consistently with the second (red) patch slot: turning knobs won’t update parameter values until you switch to green and back.

#3

Hi Martin,

great feedback, thank you!

You’ve got the very latest version of the firmware on your device, which hasn’t even been pushed to git yet. This explains the problem with the red patch not getting the right parameter values. I’ll fix it!

Overdrive can be very subtle. It works great on some signals, like synth or drum-machine output, but can be almost unnoticeable on others. Would be good to have a more powerful overdrive in the library… And yes, several patches are mono only, mostly because they date back from before we went stereo.

#4

One precision on the Overdrive Patch, it works with Expression Pedal!!!
Maybe it is not clear enough in the source code.

The Expression Pedal input should be added in the OwlNest soon anyway, so any confusion will disappear.

Thanks for the feedback Martin, it is highly appreciated!

#5

Ah thanks giom, that explains it :slight_smile:

(I wasn’t even looking at the source, simply browsing patches in OwlNest.)