Brand New BeatBuddy Mini - Drifting tempo?!

BeatBuddy Help, Questions and Bugs
#1

Hi!

I love the idea of the BeatBuddy Mini, and it’s great fun to jam along with. However, I noticed that if I play with a metronome the BeatBuddy Mini’s tempo drifts… the problem is, if I want to play it with a fixed-tempo looper (e.g set the looper to 100bpm and the BeatBuddy Mini to 100bpm)… it goes out of sync fast. It seems like the BeatBuddy Mini doesn’t quite hold tempo properly!

Here’s a video to show what I mean:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/app0vrizl0h38hw/IMG_3266.mov?dl=0

And another to show that when set at 96bpm it’s playing very close to (but maybe not quite) 100bpm:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/2ofcsj59atrk3mk/IMG_3267.mov?dl=0

Is there anything I can do? Unfortunately the tempo drift in the BeatBuddy Mini makes it a little unusable for my purposes :frowning:

Thanks, hopefully there’s something silly I’m doing wrong!

#2
#3

Hi, I’m new to the beatbuddy mini, but I don’t think that it’s you as I found the same thing, it does not keep perfect time, it maybe something to do with the fact that these are real sounds and there may be some latency? we’ll have to put that question to the technical staff here.

#4

So I got a bit antsy and bought the ‘full’ BeatBuddy. It doesn’t have the same problem - in fact, the full BeatBuddy is ‘bang on’ in terms of timing, tempo, everything. If I set the full BeatBuddy to ‘trigger on press’ (an option the BeatBuddy Mini also lacks), I can also get a perfectly timed loop with my JamMan Solo XT super easily by just hitting the buttons at the same time.

Here’s a video of the BeatBuddy AND BeatBuddy Midi running at the same time, same beat, same tempo to illustrate the problem further:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/k025hantx99w2kl/IMG_3276.m4v?dl=0

I did contact the Singular Sound team by email and on facebook, haven’t heard anything back yet regarding the issue. I’m hoping it’s just a bad batch or something and they can get it sorted now that they’re aware of the problem.

Personally, I have returned my BeatBuddy Mini to Amazon and used some gift vouchers to take the sting out of the cost of the full BeatBuddy I’ve now got (that said, now that I have it I think it’s absolutely worth every penny)!

#5

Official response:

[INDENT][I]That is a bug we recently found in the Mini. It has been fixed and will be completely resolved in the next batch of Minis coming out.

There are two options here:

  1. Return the current one for a refund if you got it from our website.

  2. Wait and exchange it for a fixed Mini in the next batch (about a 2 month waiting period)

[/I][/INDENT]

I already returned mine to Amazon but thought I’d post here for others’ reference.

#6

Hey thank you very much for the information and thanks for your thoughts on your exchange for the full on beatbuddy, I can still exchange mine and this is what I shall probably do - many thanks for taking the time to post your findings :slight_smile:

#7

Yeah, I definitely think it’s worth it! Some of the ‘premium kits’ you can buy extra for the full BeatBuddy for $5-10 each are amazing too - the Ludwig Vintage one and the Standard Pro especially :slight_smile:

#8

Hey Support … Is have the full beat buddy (got it Aug 2019) and it seems to be drifting. I’ve tried nearly all of the default beats. When I go to the metronome that doesn’t quite right either, but it is easier to deal with. Is it a bug? Should I update firmware and try again or what?
Thanks

#9

Hey Billy,

This issue never affected the full ones as far I could tell. It’s worth sending an email to their support.

However one thing I can think of - double check in the settings that you don’t have ‘drunken’ mode on. It’s a silly setting that they added, maybe it has somehow turned itself on on your unit.

#10

If by “drifting” you mean that the tempo is not constant, you can try downloading, unzipping and copying the firmware to the SD card. Use your computer’s SD card slot reader instead of the USB cable method.

#11

I just bought the aeros which seems really great. I use it with a beatbuddy mini 2 that I bought in August from Amazon. But when I tried to do quantized loops using the beatbuddy as a metronome, the timing was off. I tried multiple times and multiple songs – always the same problem. Thought I was going nuts. So I tried a couple of other metronomes and recorded with the aeros. Now everything is in time. So then I compared the beatbuddy to the other metronomes and the beatbuddy was of after a few bars. That’s disappointing as the one thing the beatbuddy is supposed to do perfectly is keep time.