Hits (most will be modules)
Vhikk X: it’s like someone got into my head, took all the sounds I can’t really translate perfectly onto my machines, made them 10000x more evil and stuck them in an incredibly deep, playable module. It’s what I imagine the end of the world sounds like (not to be dramatic or anything).
Digitone II: it’s only been a couple of days to be fair, but it’s already one of the best things I have ever used. One of the things I love the most is that it has hit this elusive balance of being an all in one box without leaning towards “limitations and workarounds” to get what you want, nor is it a DAW in a box. The sounds are great and all, and it’s a hell of a sound design machine, but really there’s these little additions/upgrades they’ve done to the Elektron workflow that makes it so much better, but also still familiar.
Xaoc Leibniz System: if I start with this one, I won’t stop. I’m still wrapping my head around them all even though I got them incrementally, but there is nothing like them. I’m already a massive Xaoc fanboy which probably makes me slightly biased but these are on another planet. Genuinely the most fun I’ve had with anything musical in years. I still have no idea what binary numbers are or how it fits into anything, but it really doesn’t matter.
Woovebox: in what I thought was my never ending search for the perfect portable little machine, I stumbled across this one. I was initially sceptical because it looked like something I would 100% be stopped by airport security for, and the workflow seemed be an immediate “nope” but after being told so much about how you really need to just have it in your hand to see how straightforward it is, I caved. And my god is it simple to use. Like it somehow downloads muscle memory regarding how to do everything within 5 minutes. And it is deeeeeeep, sounds very very good, does absolutely everything and the kitchen sink and it is tiny. And super affordable too. Honestly I cannot fault it. I’ve not tried the M8 and I have 0 interest in paying “I actually got it for £900 after import” prices, but for an on the go machine I’m very very happy with this one.
Disting NT: another one I won’t shut up about it I start, but if I were to sum it up: take everything you disliked about the older Distings, bin them, then grab a bunch of Distings without said dislikes, and stick them into one module. You could record an album with just the NT, including multitracking your sounds to your DAW if you wanted to via usb. 10/10.
Misses
Polyend Tracker Mini: I tried to love it. I really did. But clicking around to fine tune samples with no pots is just not fun. The synths sound like an afterthought. And 3 max at a time? Like it’s a favour not a feature. I don’t know much about granular nor do I use it, but in my very limited experience - whatever is on the tracker mini is not it.
I said before about the whole not a daw, not a “limitations breed creativity” balance, and this one has somehow spectacularly hit both in all the wrong ways. I’ve heard people do a lot of cool stuff with it though, so it’s most likely a me problem, but yeah it was a quick sell.
I think that may actually be it for misses this year which I hope is a step in the right direction of not buying crap for the sake of it. The years before that though…
It’s my end chain live mastering and performance effect unit, skipback rocks for capturing ideas and happy accidents, I even used it as an audio interface/effector to remix a bunch of my old hiphop demo tracks - with a bit of SP magic and some EQ-ing they now sound pretty cool. It’s also only device in my setup capable of playing long stems. It’s a swiss army knife and pretty easy to use for such basic tasks.