I've read the other post on the difficult of later group challenges, but how long should I be trying the group challenges before I give up with the hint button? At this point it feels like random stumbling with various settings until I somehow make it to something close. I am spending almost an hour on each group challenge, yet I still feel like I don't really know what I am doing.
With an hour, I get maybe 80% of the way there, but again when I watch Joe solve the thing it seems like he has some kind of direction on where to go next. However, at this point, there's just so much to notice that I kind of get paralyzed and keep changing the same 5 knobs to no avail. Any advice on how to actually get my ears to detect certain things?
some things that have tripped me up are detecting where the pulsations are coming from, OSC sync, FM, distortion, the type of filter, and the envelopes that manage all these things. I am usually able to do well in the normal (non group) challenges, but that is because I can scan and listen for a match, but as the number of knobs grows, then number of options increases exponentially so it is hard to "scan" for a match.
Amp and Filter Envelopes, chorus, delay, reverb usually do not trip me up.
The type of oscilator, distortion, the type of filter (cutoff + res + env), mod envelopes, LFOs can get me sometimes. The tricky portions are both figuring out the initial stages of how the sound is so strange, then I can sort of guesswork(trial/error) my way to an 80% seemingly sounding solution within about 20 minutes, but that last 20% is difficult. Not sure if its supposed to take this long per patch.
I find myself kind of getting stuck and not knowing how to keep moving in a group challenge. I know I can use the hint button but I feel like I'm relying too much on it towards the more difficult ones.