I’ve saved some money and it’s time to buy Elektron!! I have MnM, MD, A4, Aheat, all in mk2. I had previously an octatrack mk1, which I sold to buy a mk2, but the A4 passed by and I caught it. I have also soma lyra, microwave xt, hydrasynth, xv5080, a diy 5u modular, soma cosmos and other fx in pedal form.
I was thinking about buying some granular toy, then understoog the tonverk was making a bit of granular, then digitakt could mimick it, then I remembered the power of octatrack…
I’m not interested in multisampling.
I could buy the rk002 to make polyphony with digitakt.
I’m interested in timestretching and pitchshifting.
I’m impressed by the fx list, sends and busses and audio quality of the tonverk.
The crossfader was so satisfying to use.
Main use: import pitched sounds, but also field recording, to produce ambient/dark ambient. I’d like to use it mainly for experimental textures.
I would go for the Tonverk.
Theres a very decent pitch-shifting FX.
Now for ambient I find that 8 tracks is not much, but there are workarounds, like using different samples on subtracks, or cheating with the Multi-sample and have very different sounds for each notes…
The granular engine is really cool for ambient, I prefer this to timestretching personally, cause for ambient you’re more likely to stretch beyond reasonable anyway ^^
You can pile FX and modulate them.
Having a sampler + synth + drummachine in the same box, together with FX, is a thing I had dreamed of for a long time!
The cons are there are still some bugs left, but I’ve made several life performances and never encountered one during them…
I just got my TV a week ago today but the thing that personally I find it really really good at is exactly what you want, creating dark ambient sounds/drones from longer samples and field recordings. I’ve even been experimenting with turning a drum loop into some truly wild sounscapes.
I’ve got a DT and it can do everything that you need, but yeah, the TV would be a lot more suitable. I’m probably going to get one myself for the same sort of uses
Digitakt 1 or 2 ?
Hard to compete with the 1 and others imo…except in a budget concern.
No, Digitakt and Octatrack can use slices with monophonic tracks only.
Tonverk can play 8 grains with 8 voices per track (envelopes for grains).
RK002 is cool but if you want to record notes you need as much tracks as polyphony. Would be extremely limited with DT1.
What I really appreciate on the TV is that you can record with overdub polyphonically on 1 track. Probability can be applied for each note, not per trig, which is much more musical if you like to use Probability…
I sold my DT2 because of TV. I like auto sampling, all machines (especially Grainer and Wavefinder), mainly miss slices compared to DT2.
Keeping OT till Alzheimer, winner for realtime audio mangling : 8 recorders, 8 tracks to playback buffers directly with reverse, pitch, micro looping, resampling with feedback, and control of up to 250 parameters with the crossfader. Looper ability.
I’m going to be that guy who says you have a lot of stuff already and is dropping another $€2K on yet another box really going to make that much difference? If you have an iPhone, iPad, or laptop, you can do some experimentation with granular. Or get a 1010 Lemondrop (preferably used). If you had 3U modular there would definitely be some options, but does your 5U offer sample playback? I don’t think you’ve built a solid case for owning a Tonverk besides “I can afford it and it does some things I’m interested in”.
The Tonverk won’t offer you anything more than what you already have. As an ambient musician, nothing beats an effects pedal chain, granular software solutions, or time-stretching tools like the free PaulXstretch.
Elektron headquarters has contacted me, telling me not to take this part of your comment too seriously.
More seriously, of course, I don’t need. But following your comment, I could sell all my stuff and stay with a computer only.
I don’t have the experience to help you with your decision, but I just want to say that the music/sound you make is beautiful! Thank you for introducing it to me. I would love to see what you can do with the Tonverk (it is my first and only Elektron device).
Yes. You’d get microlooping of samples, only one grain per track, without the overlap you can get with granular synths that use several grains with smooth envelopes.
With Octatrack you can cheat using resampling with feedback and get granularesque results, but it is a lot of work, all tracks needed…
tonverk makes sense for your use case, and i’d add one thing that hasn’t come up: the way its modulation works is closer to a modular paradigm than either the DT or OT. you can route LFOs into pitch and time parameters at audio rate, which means the grainer and the pitch engine can be made to behave chaotically in ways the other two boxes just can’t do without external help. for dark ambient textures that feel alive and unpredictable, that matters more than track count or sample memory.
the 3 stereo outputs are also real for this kind of work. routing granular cloud to one bus, dry signal to another, and feeding the Cosmos on the third gives you a live processing chain without a mixer in the middle.
I actually spoke with you through Facebook, initially dissuading you from the Tonverk, then amending that commentary after hearing your work.
That said, I genuinely think the Octatrack might be the best option given your interest in timestretching and pitchshifting. The granular on the Tonverk is ok, but nothing that especially impressed me upon first poke (my Tonverk has only been in the studio a short while, and this “first poke” is all I’ve done, but I found the sound a bit thin and shrill compared to things like Beads or Clouds, Hologran’s Microcosm, etc). It’s a nice extra, but didn’t blow me away.
On the plus side, you cannot go wrong here. Or, looked at another way, you can only go wrong - no box can excel at everything another can, so regardless of which way you turn you’ll find something fantastic, and hit a limitation.
Yes, it looks like simpler. I’ll take it as soon as I can.
You are right! Actually, I don’t need 16 tracks at all! My god…
Thank you!
I was thinking more and more towards octatrack, then I remembered my experience with it. It was like driving a tank with only a driver’s license as a qualification. My progress was too slow for my liking (this was also an argument that made me lean towards the speed of creation on the digitakt 2). Considering the fact I like good sounding effects and the tonverk is in 32 floating bit, I’ve chosen the tonverk!!
But not as soon as I would have wanted it: I’ve found a like new Sherman dual at a crazy price (850€). I couldn’t let it go. It will replace my Sherman compact.
Looking at the current prices, I’d go for the Tonverk unless you do a lot of live performances. It’s definitely the best value out of all three and can take you places the other two won’t. Also, I’ve found the TV to be the best Elektron devices for evolving textures and drones so far, whereas the others seem more geared toward rhythmic applications.
