From a business point of view about demand. What will be the best for Elektron???
Analog Machinedrum
Vocoder like EMS or Sennheiser
Additive/Granular sampling aka Axcel resynthesizer
I have a feeling itāll be a heavily modular type of synthesizer (fm primarily?) with an emphasis on performance oriented play.
The funk is in the box. A big medicine ball covered in tits.
The Monomachine already does FM synthesis! If they want to use FM synthesis I hope it will be something like the Synclavier in Elektron format!
Iām not sure about these modular speculations. Considering the size of the unit and the massive display, where would you patch your cables? Unless theyāre done some EMS pin pad or touch screen button routing interface. Leaving patching to the āvirtualā world misses the point of modular to some extent imo. Maybe itās some Sugarbytes-que FX unit.
so it was kinda hard to see anything through the frosted glass.
but imo, it was something similar to a computer screen. high contrast/brightness, and there was no shimmering blacks as you would get if you crank the lighting of an LCD screenā¦ strong colors. so it might be OLED or even something like a hi-res RGB LED matrixā¦ i would guess ca. 17" size.
it looked like circular shapes moving on a screen really.
Iāve made a rough sketch of what I think it looked like, in broad strokes (browser needs JS enabled):
mystery machine
no idea what it could be. Elektron guys were interested to hear guesses, but were absolutely tight lipped about it other than saying itās going to be the shit.
the sound in the vine mini-video was coming from a demo Analog Keys unit i think.
1 Like
Itās called: ites (patois for heights)
It can only produce dubmusic
User must be stoned to use it as itās
All about vibe and colour and flow
Elektronites
Iād never heard of the Axcel. Now I want to see some video of it in action, but it looks like there is nothing on google. Bummer.
Personally, I thought the sound from the box clip sounded like granular synthesis, but if that wasnāt coming from the box then Iām as clueless as everyone else.
If anything, your drawing looks like algorithmic composition tool like a tenori-on but actually cool.
I didnāt have the benefit of being there, but from the pics and the video and having seen heavily frosted glass + leds being used for club lighting effectsā¦ Iām not sure I agree. the refraction is pretty severe depending on how opaque and thick the frosted glass isā¦ with the right glass, an led could easily produce the big round globes like the oneās weāve so far seen. if you watch the video, and take note of the static leds (err, globes), youāll notice theyāre in the same position as the static leds on the other silverfaced elektron desktop boxes. with a large main screen in the middle of the unit, same colour as all the elektron boxes bar the MD.
I donāt think we were looking at circular shapes, I mean we were - that was the effect on the glass - but behind the glass I think it was just standard leds. Likewise Iām not convinced it was a 17 inch screen in the middleā¦
then again, I wasnāt there.
exactly, you werenāt there. By moving around to the side, it very much appeared to me that the circles were on a flat surface inside the box, as they distorted accordingly. Maybe my vision was fooled though. I was quite certain that itās a screen inside, but now Iām second-guessing.
If these were indeed LEDs, they were way too bright to be the usual LEDs from the sequencers though, more like those chunky high-power RGB things. I mean itās certainly possible that high-power LEDs were chosen for dramatic effectā¦
anyway itās more likely that this thing is a metal box like all the others instead of some experimental Lemur/Reactable flashy thingā¦
they couldāve hung a few of these in there to confuse youā¦
well, when you moved to the side, it should look like the lights were coming from a flat surfaceā¦ eerrmm, because the faceplates of all the elektron gear isā¦ wellā¦ flat. I think youāre right to be second-guessing. What we saw was a typical led + frosted glass interaction. i think if we were looking at a large screen that displayed an animation, weād see a more uniform and ambient glow coming from the sections that were black. we donāt. weāre just seeing light refracted from the light sources, i.e leds & an lcd/oled display.
you can google, or youtube, the term āfrosted glass ledā or āfrosted glass lightingā
hereās one of the first results i found, which shows very well how frosted glass presents an ledā¦ also seems like a interesting project btw.
1 Like
An analog drum machine would be very cool. Iām was about THIS close to throwing down my cash for a DS Tempest.
Think Iāll see what the near future brings now, though.
[quote=āā T.Dack""]
Has anyone considered a filter effects processor??? Maybe with an x/y pad, something like a Kaoss pad??
[/quote]
This is what Iām thinking.
Colored lights corresponding to sounds seems gimmicky to me. What does that tell you/how does that help you? And isnāt that limited with a drum machine - I mean there didnāt seem to be a wide variety of colors?Something like lights showing effects/modulation in time with sequence steps seems more useful.
I think an X/Y pad would be great - jealous of the a4kās joystick.
haha, these are great:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtAMYafil2Q
Try reading peopleās posts in this guyās voice. 
And these are what made me guess additive back before the a4 release, whoops:
ā¦round moving lightsā¦
Costs have come down and DSP power gone up enough to make hardware re-synthesis doable and fun. And check out things like cheap arduino LED matrix. I hope someone does it, but in the end it might have to be one of us. 
I dunno, I think itād be cool to see something like alternate firmwares for the machinedrum and monomachine, losing some functionality, but gaining others. Given that they have a lot of encoders and menus, thereās no reason they couldnāt do other stuff. Think JJOS mashed up with old school hacking. As long as I can go back to the old OS, why not? Honestly, sometimes it seems like people just want new stuff, just to have new stuff. Thereās an infinite number of options out there now.
1 Like
The real question is: WHAT DID THE WOOD MEAN?!
And why didnāt anyone do this to the cube? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R706isyDrqI
Well, thereās an idea for the next hector video at least. 
How about a date of announcement from Elektron so we know that anything before is mere speculation.
Some people are too smart for their own good. If there were an announced date the cat would be out of the bag! 
iPad editor?