What strikes me as most interesting with Elektron’s communication around the DigiTakt, is that they once again remain silent on just about everything but a potential release date, and a basic set of features. You’d think that after Overbridge, they’d learned. Silence is not the option, just more clarity.
So either they don’t know, and the reason we’re not hearing more is that they actually don’t know yet if the unit’s gonna play back stereo or mono samples, if it samples in stereo, if it has synthesis and so on. It’s in the cards, but until it works in beta and seems stable, there’s nothing to tell. And that’s fine.
But if they do know that synthesis was never in the cards, never gonna happen, and of course it’s a mono sampler - then not saying so, is just not a properly thought out communication strategy.
Compare to the MPC Live - there’s a bunch of stuff we know for a fact. What we don’t know, Akai says “We don’t know yet. Or we can’t say.”
It’s not - “Haha, maybe we know, maybe we don’t, you’ll just have to see. One of the reps on the Namm floor might slip something, but officially, we’re just not telling. Hah.”
Given the cycles of development, it’s hard to believe that they haven’t decided by now if it’s a stereo device or if it has synthesis. An April launch would indicate it’s in internal beta, or close to it.
So let’s assume they want to aim for synthesis, but don’t know if it’s going to work, given hardware and software restrictions. You could then communicate:
“At launch, the DigiTakt won’t have any drum synthesis of the kind. We repeat - no drum synthesis. It’s a sample playback instrument.”
Or - “We are looking into options to implement drum synthesis in the future. It will not be available at launch. We can’t say for sure that it’s ever gonna happen, or that it will be part of a release in the future. But we are investigating it. But don’t hold your breath. This is primarily a one shot drum sampling instrument.”
As for stereo sampling:
“Right now, we are aiming for mono sampling only. It’s a focused one shot drum machine, and that’s the way you should look at it. We realise stereo sampling is an attractive option and considered by many to be mandatory today, but for the moment, we believe that this more focused approach allows you to work with the instrument as a singular drum machine, which is what it is. It’s not intended to replace the Octatack, but could very well make for a great companion, if your work is very sample-heavy.”
If you don’t know, that’s fine. If there’s nothing to tell, that’s cool.
But if you do know, just be honest about it.
Haters gonna hate either way, and lovers gonna love you even more.
