Introducing Digitone

First impression: Fantastic for Industrial. Hard hitting percussion, gritty textures and cold claustrophobic atmospheres are just a tweak away.
Btw, Joey from Blush Response made some factory presets for the Digitone.

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I was sturggling with the DN at first, so just a heads up for anyone who might stumble to the same issues as I didā€¦:

  • Some of the factory project pattns are WEIRD. There was this one pattn that drove me nuts, I couldnā€™t get track 2 to play no matter how hard I triedā€¦ Spent almost an hour back and forth with the manual etcā€¦, only to find that by ditching the factory project and opening a new project, everything worked perfectly! dayum

  • If you DLed the DN manual on the first day it became available online, re-DL! The first version of the manual didnā€™t have all the infoā€¦ Or was I trippin? I couldnā€™t find the section for VOICE MODE from the v1 manual at all, and only after I re-DLed the (feb 2) manual, I found the VOICE MODE bitā€¦

So far I am loving itā€¦ This machine will be heavily used by tech peeps in the near future for sure!

My only complaints areY NO SWING TRIGS?! and the black encodersā€¦ I wish they was grey. I tested with my Ot mk II and it seems you cant even retrofit these with the old grey encoders without them not sitting flush to the enclosureā€¦ And you know what? The DN looks fugly when its off, when its on the lights make it look good. weird design!

Are swing trigs a thing on the OT?

Yes, they are on the OT, A4 and AR. You cannot do ā€negative shuffle/swingā€ without them, a very important feature when you want to program afro/funk rhythmsā€¦ Now one is forced to play unquantized, which is at least workable but not ideal. I could or course offset all my beats by 1/16, but that throws any other syncing method than manual out of the windowā€¦ And pattns wouldnā€™t change on the 1st downbeatā€¦

Also, what feels disappointing to me, coming from the bigger elektron boxes, is the ā€LEā€ feeling of the DNā€¦ I suppose the same goes for the DT? Some bread & butter things are missing, like 4 global slots for the configsā€¦ Things like this wouldnā€™t make the DN any slower to use, but their omission makes the DN feel like a ā€lesserā€ productā€¦ I guess people complaining about the lack of song mode feel the same way? Trig mutes, slide trigs, swing trigs and such are a big appeal for me in the bigger elektron boxes, they would be very welcome on the DT/DN!

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Yeah, swing trigs sound cool. And the DT is an LE-type product. Seems reasonable when considering the large price difference. Pretty cool device still

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No info in the specs about the size of the +Drive the DT says its 1GB I would assume the DN would be the same size since the file structure is similar.

I havenā€™t noticed that particular issue, but I am really starting to notice the gap between the Digi line and the big boxes. All the things that are ā€˜missingā€™ are things that I donā€™t use that often anyways, but I do notice when theyā€™re not there.

I can understand leaving them off and making this an ā€˜LEā€™ series. It still does an awful lot. But Iā€™m having to reset my expectations a little bit. I always felt like Machinedrum and Monomachine (my first encounters with Elektron world, which I just got into a little over two years ago) had all of the fun of a groove box, but the depth of a pro machine (I used to think any device over $1k USD was like a big boring workstation). The Digi series feel much closer to groove boxes to me - still a lot of fun, but lighter on the ā€˜proā€™ features. Then again, if they had launched a new digital synth at A4 pricing, I wouldnā€™t have been able to afford it right now, and itā€™s still good to have something affordable and fun that really makes some lovely sounds.

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3 posts were merged into an existing topic: Korg Volca FM

Should have micro-timing though, correct?

I was just about to be like ā€œwhaaaaat?ā€

Just got mine, really liking it so far! Havenā€™t done much except getting to know the user interface, listening to presets and randomly changing parameters. Very good and varying sounds, I really dig the keyboard scale feature and chord mode as well, and I like Sound Pool thingy.

Only thing Iā€™m really missing coming from the OT is different time scales per trackā€¦ now you have to pretty much choose between percussion or longer chord progressions unless you start chaining a lot of patterns together (which I guess Iā€™ll just have to start doing)

Combine conditions and poly rhythms and you can get close

Received mine today. Spent a bit of time with presets and the manual and nowā€¦hereā€™s my first patternā€¦if it interests anyone :wink:

(the first few bars you hear are just one track with recorded and plocked changes - very cool)

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Iā€™m sure you could get ā€œFront by Frontā€ type FM stabs, quite easily. One of the videos starring Cenk shows him banging out an evil bassline, the likes of which would make Bill Leeb blush. (Shouts out to the old school EBM heads!)

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Do you mean poly metric, or actual poly rhythms?

Different track scalings

This is way dope. Are you processing the signal with anything (post DN) ?

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Cheers. Just some EQ in Reaper but to be honest the MP3 conversion has stripped a lot of loveliness I can hear in the actual recording.

With different track lengths and microtiming you can make both polyrhythms and polymeters.

edit: https://music.stackexchange.com/questions/10488/polymeter-vs-polyrhythm

Hi (d), stabs are niceā€¦ but what about isolationism, how the filter works who knowsā€¦So many questions!
One has to put his hands on the machine to know and calm curiosity I guess. Does not seem a predictable sound source maybe more than the analog series