13
TOP PANEL FEATURES
This section is very long. The numbered paragraphs are keyed to the illustration on page 10, so the
information is not presented in a work flow sequence. Depending on what you are trying to find out,
you may want to skip around a bit.
1. POWER ON INDICATOR
This lights up when the power is on. This is a reliable indicator of whether your power supply is working
or not. If you run the Altura MkII from a battery, this light will get considerably dimmer rather suddenly
when the battery is near the end of its life. The device will also go haywire. Time for a new battery.
2. 3-DIGIT DISPLAY
This display shows a variety of information at different times. It shuts off after 60 seconds of inactivity
to spare your battery. To reactivate it, just turn any knob, or wave a hand in front of the left sensor.
Following is a summary of what you might see on the display, and what it means. Each section in
the Manual also has its own explanation of what the display is displaying. For instance, Function 8
(Arpeggiator) uses a host of special symbols not summarized here.
IF YOU
SEE:
FOR
EXAMPLE:
IT MEANS:
A letter and
a number
D 3
KEY (letter) and SCALE (number). See those sections below for
details. In most cases, the display defaults to this after 3 seconds.
Two
separate
numbers
4f5
3
͞
3
OCTAvE NEAR (left number), the octave active NEAR the right
sensor; and OCTAvE FAR (right number), the octave active FAR
from the sensor. The overscore / underscore indicates whether the
scale is ascending or descending. See OCTAvE SELECT below.
A one-,
two- or
three-digit
number
8
67
122
While turning DATA knobs, this is the limiting value of MIDI data
the sensors will transmit. See each FUNCTION for details.
While waving your hands, the changing number is the MIDI data
value that the Altura MkII is transmitting.
A spinning
symbol
0.0a@sdf
fghjk00.
Indicates amount of pitch bend, from “
f
“ (no bend) to “
0.
”
(maximum bend). See PITCH BEND.
Dashes
- - -
X-Y mode Idle: no data transmitting from either sensor.
This thing:
z - x
X-Y mode Active: both sensors transmitting data.
DISTANCE SENSORS - GENERAL
The distance sensors are ultrasonic ranging devices. One of those eyeballs is a speaker, the other is a
microphone. Several times a second, the speaker emits a high-frequency chirp; the microphone listens
for an echo. If it fails to hear an echo before a preset timeout, the sensor returns a null value. The Altura
