Issues with included power supply

#1

Hey there,

I seem to be having some odd issues with the power supply. At times, the included power supply wasn’t apparently driving my specific MK2. I don’t have another unit to experiment with but the one I have seems to be having issues with power supplies. At first, I had issues with the included supply not powering it up enough to make the LEDs bright. It was really dim. Then I used a more powerful PSU (my MacBook Pro PSU) and that made it work really well. But now, the MBP PSU makes the MK2 look quite dim, but the included PSU makes it light up pretty bright.

Now that’s just a curiosity, but my biggest issue is that the included PSU is causing my MK2 to have very unstable pitches. It makes me feel like maybe there’s not enough power to drive the Mk2.

I’d love to hear from the Norand team to find a way to isolate this behavior.

#2

I’m commenting here because I’m still having this issue. I’m going to reach out to my dealer to see what they think. This is ridiculous. The included power supply should work. The included PSU isn’t really just unstable, it sounds a lot different across the board. I could make examples for anyone who is curious.

#3

I reached out about something similar to Mathieu.

I wrote:

After using the Mono for a little while, I noticed that I’m getting some interference coming in via the synth. Please take a look at this video. This is a single OSC. I tried: swapping out instrument cables, eliminating MIDI connection to PC, different locations in my audio card. I noticed that just simply switching the page away from A to B, as seen in the video drastically reduces it, but doesn’t eliminate it. One thing I did just try is switch the location where the unit gets its power from. That completely eliminated that feedback. Just wondering if you’ve seen this before?

Response:

Yes we’ve seen that issue before, although never on MK2, this is power supply noise coming in. There are multiple potential reasons for that, I see you have a lot of gear, so maybe the USB power cable of MK2 is picking up something, make sure the power cable is isolated from other power-hungry units, and if possible on another plug.

If that becomes an issue again, I would recommend using a high quality shielded USB-C cable, we don’t provide one because they are quite expensive and totally useless more often than not, but in your case, it looks like it might be necessary.

Thank you for notifying this, if we see other cases we might need to change the included USB cable in the future.

So it does seem like there is an issue with power under certain circumstances. To eliminate the issue I just picked up a shielded / high speed USB C cable and a dedicated USB C block.

I’m using these:
USB C to USB C Cable, 3.2 Gen 2 USB-C Cable 10ft - 4K UHD 20Gbps USB C Cable 100W PD Fast Charging Cable for Thunderbolt 3, Oculus Quest, MacBook Pro, iPad Pro, Galaxy S23, Nylon Braided, Black. Amazon.com

25W USB C Super Fast Charger, 312 Charger, Anker Ace Foldable PPS Fast Charger for Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra/S23+/S23/S22 Ultra/S22+/S22/S21/S20/Note 20 Ultra/Note 10/Z Fold 3, Cable Not Included https://a.co/d/0dBhj2K

So for me this was an extra $25 cost over price of synth. But sounds like if higher quality cable/block is included, everyone’s cost goes up. So I was OK to pay to solve my power interference issue.

#4

I have had to send back my Mk2 to Perfect Circuit because the included power supply was no longer providing enough juice. It is struggling to play pitches. So bizarre. I have two others here at the same studio with no issues. (mk1 and a mk2)