Troubleshooting
Quick fixes for the surprises new owners hit most often, plus a careful walkthrough of the destructive reset ladder.
"I expected X but got Y"
The matrix is half-dark — only the top or bottom half lights up.
You have one LED board, but the firmware is set to two-board geometry (or vice-versa). Open PLAY → LEDS and try 1, 1B, 2, 2B in turn — one will match your hardware. The "B" variants flip the image for boards mounted upside down.
No sound on headphones.
Check three places in order: VOL → MAIN (level above 0), VOL → SPKR (sometimes the speaker is overriding routing), and the headphone jack is fully seated. If line-out works but phones don't, you have a hardware fault — open the unit to inspect the TRS jack.
Samples I copied to the card don't show up.
The firmware caches the browse list. Run ETC → RSET → SD: it rescans the card without touching your patterns. If they still don't appear, confirm the files are placed under samples/ and are 16-bit mono WAV at 44.1 kHz.
External MIDI is in sync but kicks click off by a few ms.
Use MIDI → SYNC. SNC1 delays your outgoing path; SNC2 delays your incoming path. Loopback a metronome and adjust in ±2 ms steps until both kicks land as one. Save by leaving the page — settings persist.
BPM number is red and won't settle.
You are on EXT clock and the incoming MIDI clock is unstable or absent. Either fix the master (cable, source clock setting) or flip BPM → encoder 3 back to INT to use TŒRN's own clock.
I switched packs and now my pattern sounds wrong.
Packs change what each voice row plays. The pattern still references the same rows, but they now contain different samples. Either reload the previous pack (encoder 1 short on the PACK screen with the right number), or — for next time — save a FILE pattern per pack and use the sidecar text file to associate them.
I cleared the wrong page.
There is no undo in RAM. If you previously saved to FILE, reload that slot. Otherwise, it's gone. The handbook's golden rule: save to FILE when an idea matters.
Battery percentage seems to lie.
The reading is a fuel-gauge estimate from the charger IC. It is good faith but not lab-grade. Charge for at least one full cycle (USB until full, run until shutdown) before trusting the curve.
Touch pads trigger by themselves.
Capacitive pads detect skin contact. If your palms rest on the chassis while turning encoders, you may register phantom touches. Lift your grip; if it persists in dry conditions, a power cycle re-calibrates the pad baseline.
Encoder feels jumpy — values fly when I turn slowly.
The hardware encoders are I²C and can occasionally desync. Power-cycle the unit; on rare occasions, also re-seat the SD card. Persistent issues are a hardware fault.
Long-press encoder 4 on a note doesn't open the editor.
You are in paint mode (PLAY → DRAW = L+R) and encoder 4 long is reserved differently. Switch DRAW to the default or use a single tap on encoder 1 to enter single mode first.
I see a moving dot when I'm not playing — what is it?
If you see a bright dot with a short trail bouncing around your pattern in draw mode while PLAY → PONG is ON, that is PONG: each time the ball lands on a step that already holds a note, that note fires again. Turn PONG off from the same menu page, or open it to change speed (encoder 2, 1–99). If you see a pair of cartoon eyes after long inactivity when not playing, that is the separate idle matrix animation, not PONG.
Sample browser won't open — the touch combo seems to do nothing.
The sample browser only opens on sample voices 1–8, with the left pad pressed first. If your cursor is on a synth row, the combo opens the filter editor instead. Move encoder 1 to a sample row and retry.
Note-shift exited without saving my moves.
Note-shift saves continuously — once you exit with a short press on encoder 4, the new positions are committed. If a particular nudge looked unsaved, you may have moved a note off the visible page range; check adjacent pages.
Auto-preview is too loud.
Drop VOL → PREV, or switch PLAY → PREV from ON to PRSS so previews only fire on explicit gesture.
The reset ladder (ETC → RSET)
Three destructive levels live behind one encoder dial. Encoder 3 rotates resetMenuOption through 0 → 1 → 2; a confirmation gesture executes the matching branch. Read each row before confirming.
| Mode | What runs | What survives |
|---|
| SD | Invalidates the dynamic sample browser cache, flashes SCAN/DONE, returns to draw. | Everything except the stale browse index. Use after editing the card on a computer. |
| EFX | Resets every tone control — filters, envelopes, synth parameters, octave helpers, audio effects — back to factory values across all voices. | Patterns and sample assignments survive. Every tone control snaps back to factory. |
| FULL | Wipes the entire session: clears all notes, velocities, probabilities, sets BPM to 100, resets volumes and filter data, and rescans the SD card. | Almost nothing in RAM. Equivalent to a blank session. Only FILE-saved patterns can come back. |
There is no undo beyond reloading saved pattern files. If you choose FULL with unsaved work in RAM, that work is gone.
Last-resort recovery
- Soft restart — slide the power switch off, wait five seconds, slide on. Most freezes resolve here.
- SD re-seat — power off, push to eject, reinsert firmly, power on. Fixes most "samples missing" cases that SD rescan didn't.
- Re-flash the firmware — over USB C, using the Teensy 4.1 boot procedure. Pattern files on the card are not affected by a firmware reflash unless you also reformat the card.
- If touch pads stay stuck — make sure the chassis is clean and dry; cap-touch baselines re-calibrate on boot.
For deeper hardware issues (encoder gone, LED out, jack scratchy), inspect the unit; the schematic and KiCad sources are in PCB/toern_revG/.
You finished the handbook.
That's everything. From here on you are the most experienced TŒRN owner you know. If a feature still surprises you, jump back to the Screen index — recognising a display is the fastest way to find the chapter that explains it. And always: save to FILE before powering off.