Hi everyone,
I’ve had my eye on the E1 since launch and just got a good price on a used Mk1. It’s probably a bit late to ask now but… is the mk1 still worth it?!
My use case won’t be too taxing (no SysEx, minimal Lua) so I’m hoping the lower processing power won’t be an issue. From what I’ve read the mk1 will continue to be supported but I’ve seen there are some firmware updates just for the mk2. What sort of stuff am I missing out on?
I’m looking forward to getting started with it!
Hi,
mk1 is a good MIDI controller and it can do a lot. It is fully compatible with mk2 up to firmware v3.5. We originally planned to keep it up to v3.6, but adding v3.6 features (mostly Lua) resulted in consuming too much of (on mk1) valuable memory. The result of that was that some of the larger presets that previously used to work just fine on mk1, could not be loaded any more. Therefore we decided not to release that firmware version for mk1. The current state is that unless we do not find a radical way to improve memory management on mk1, we will keep it in v3.5 line - providing bug fixes and minor features releases only. A major update for mk2 is on the way. Once it is out, we will pay attention to mk1. There has been a few issues reported.
Thank you! That’s useful to know. Should I need it and should my used mk1 hardware be compatible (I believe it’s a 2020 model), are the upgrade PCBs still available? How much are they?
Today I will check an secondhand MkII, I was wondering how can you identify if you have a Mk1 or Mk2? The changes are only inside, the hardware/look is the same right? Meaning i’m not able to see it from the outside.
When powered on, it show the information about version. The MKII text is shown for the mark 2.
Thank you for this answer 
Allright happy to know I have a mkII, very hard to tell because the booting proces only take 3 to 4 seconds
Good find! I’ve only seen used Mk1s for sale. Got mine for a good price though and not hit any memory issues so far (but I’ve not pushed it!)
Yes so far so good, yesterday finally got some time to make it work with the Deluge.
I was stoked!
