Thoughts about MnM vs Digitone?

Question in the title :slight_smile: A friend suggested the Digitone so I wondered was the community thought about that

Digitone will have better DAW compatibility.

Digitone is a very musical device- definitely guides you to making music and musical sounds(partially by restricting sound design freedom).

Between the two- I’d vote Monomachine(I’ve had experience with both).

I’m using both, based on that I would probably go for a Digitone first, but the MnM sounds like nothing else and is most definitely staying in the studio.

can you enlighten me why this is the case?

the last instrument i bought from Elektron (beside the AH, which is not an instrument for me) was the AR in November 2015. Since then i got a Pulse2, a BassStation, a Moog Minitaur and a Radias… the first two left the Room

Now i’m looking at the DT

I’d say the big thing with the digitone is that you can only adjust ratios on the Digitone- you can’t directly adjust the tune of the operators/carrier. So you can’t get atonal sounds- the detune only affects the operators. You’re kinda stuck into a musical territory(especially compared to the Monomachine’s FM engines- which you could get REALLY weird sounds near-immediately. There’s a beast to hone in those.) The Digitone is already a friendly animal, and you can’t really piss it off.

That’s my experience with it.

It’s a pretty sounding box- but I need more capability to make music people won’t like from my equipment.

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had a chance to play with the DN briefly and for the time i did, its sounds reminded me a lot of the MM bbut…the DN is a newer machine compared to the MM, comes with all the new features Elektron has introduced so far and it’s an FM synthesizer (which is not limiting) whilst on the MM you do have FM+ synthesis and more (one post here).
i would still go for a MM though…partially because…well…it’s one of my favourite Elektrons but also because of its endless possibilities in terms of sounds and not to forget the effects that can be used in various ways, making it a nice FX box if one wanted to (sure, they can’t be compared to the new ones but still…)
there’re few things i would like to have on the MM, mostly trig conditions, but for that one could either use a couple of solutions already mentioned here on the forum or maybe an OT?
one other thing to consider about the MM is that it’s been discontinued so…mm…not an easy one…get both? :smile_cat:

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It’s very easy to be musical with the DN, butI find uneven ratios can give you weird sounds pretty easily as well.
Never touched the MnM though

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Monomachine. Monomachine. Monomachine. It’s beautiful and strange and beautiful and strange.

Digitone is growing on me but feels so limited in its sound palette by comparison to Monomachine’s many wonderful bits and oddities. Digitone does sound really nice and can sound a bit dirty as well but still feels a bit limited.

Proper answer may be ‘both!’

But there ain’t much out there like Monomachine.

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my friend, who’s been a huge elektron user for a while now was bluffed by the Digitone capacity to instantly sound “modular like” and the way, like Ryan said, it makes music very quickly. He wasn’t adamant about the MnM but there also a preference in that. He went full modular in the meantime haha.

I’m leaning MnM, I’ve had mostly people telling how unique it is. I can always get a Digitone later I guess. I wish I could have tried the MnM the way I tried all my gear in the past before buying. The plan is to eventually have them all muahahahahaha ! I just love the “glitchiness” of the MnM.

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Your either gonna love the mnm or hate it. There don’t seem to be many middle ground mnm users. I love it, it’s my favorite piece of gear easily

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I’m willing to take the risk, I’m sure I won’t have any problem re-selling it in case I dont like it, which I think is very unlikely :wink:

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Word to the wise- you can keep your parameters when changing engines by pushing Shift + Yes when selecting the new engine

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Monomachine’s also my favorite. It’s the one piece of gear I’d hold on to if I had to sell everything. (If I had to aggressively strip down my setup right now, it’d be Monomachine, Octatrack, Modor NF-1m, and Volcas that I’d keep).

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Agreed. I knew this when I got started into synths but it still took me two years to buy the Monomachine. Style wise I love the silver boxes and sound wise I regret selling my Machinedrum and am glad to finally have the MnM.

The Monomachine is so flexible it’s worth twice it’s weight. My current set up is the Modor NF-1, Monomachine and Digitakt. The Monomachine offers a lot of diversity in sound and can fill any gaps I may percieve in a song.

I had the Digitone too but that didn’t work out for me so I sold it. Both are wonderful machines but you’d have to ask yourself what you’re really after

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Monomachine is my favorite Elektron and i would even say my favorite synth .
Its weird because at first i did not like it :slight_smile:
Its full of character really and i agree its probably a synth you really like or just hate it.

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The Digitone seems more immediately full sounding than the Monomachine, imo. On its own, the DN sounds more 3D, glassy, crystalline, where the MnM sounds more claustrophobic, like an opaque plastic box or something… at least that’s how they sound from my design experiments with both machines.

Both have their uses, of course, and the MnM is obviously capable of much more in terms of sound design (and especially so once you start using the inputs and additional outputs), but I would struggle to choose one over the other, tbh. I feel like I’m much more melodic with the DN though. It’s the first Elektron instrument I’ve owned that I’m content with just playing with a keyboard, after assigning some parameters to velocity sensitivity.

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Another voice here chiming in to say MnM. DN is amazing as well and is IMO the easiest Elektron to get really lush with, but MnM is probably my favorite synth ever. So much depth that you will be learning new tricks with it a decade down the line if you stick with it. Internal gain staging has a HUGE impact on the sound. It can be super clean and clinical or it can be a massive distorted thick slab of beef, or piercing glassy textures, or etc. it just goes on for days in terms of capabilities. I really wish it had the modern Elektron sequencer, but the old school one is still very very good, especially when you get into the 3 LFO’s per track which can p-lock destinations as well as the standard parameters!

MnM is a strange beast, but a beast none the less. Very exotic.

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Yeah, I’m in the “I :heart: the :elmm:” camp. It’s the centre of my setup. I do think the Digitone is a lot more immediate and easier to get “good” sounds out of. That’s definitely intentional on Elektron’s part, but the tradeoff is depth / complexity.

The Monomachine often needs a bit of coaxing and there are endless tricks (especially with routing, effects, parameter slides, LFOs) waiting to be discovered to get the tougher / deeper / weirder sounds out of it. Too much of what you hear on it are people who haven’t really worked it out, doing quite soft techno on it. When you push it it’s got quite a distinctive character.

Definitely get a Mk2 and install the free Immortal Waves and Oxford Overdrive waveforms - they add a lot to the DigiPro synthesis palette.

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All-or-nothing polyphony and FX ‘machines’ were big drawbacks for me.

Song mode, three lfos, SID arp, and Digipro were positives.

Sold the MNM, probably won’t sell the DN. :ok_hand:

Yeah, but the FX machines were so interesting! You could mess with them like individual voices