A4 vs AR as standalone groovebox

Elektron Gear
#1

Hey dudes, selling a lot of my studio off since I’ll be traveling. I’m going to be buying a single Elektron box to bring with me as a groovebox mostly for fun jams.

I have some experience with the digitakt and OT so I am fairly familiar with the sequencing and overall potential of these boxes.

Rytm seems like it would lend itself better as a standalone groovebox but the A4 engine appeals more to me. I’m no stranger to making percussive sounds with a standard synth engine and to be honest, that limitation excites me a bit. (https://soundcloud.com/pkmood/grassy this entire track incl drums is with a DSI rev2 )

The one huge advantage I see for the Rytm in my situation is sampling. I’d enjoy making some lofi hiphop / dj shadow kind of stuff and even though the sampling engine seems a little lighter than the DT’s, it should be more than enough for some hiphop vibes.

I’m wondering how good the Rytm is at non-drum sounds. The Dual VCO seems neat but I’m wondering if there is as much serious potential for pads and atmospheric kinds of sounds as the A4 and just how limited it feels for non drum based sound design compared to A4.

E: Alternatively, I just had the idea of syncing the A4 to some other small sampler, like one of the Pocket operators. Going to look into this a bit further but I’d totally give up one of the four voices if I could at the least trigger a sample through the A4 engine. Thoughts here?

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#2

The AR is a desert island synth for me. It can do pads, sure! Both with synth engines, but obviously also with samples loaded in it. I have a lot of chord samples in mine. I actually prefer the samples played back in ar over both Digitakt and Octatrack, something about the effects and filters, and I don’t know, it just sounds nice and dusty.

Its a beautiful piece of kit, and in my opinion the overall best standalone of the elektron boxes. It can do it all, and lots of tracks, useful live modes with the scenes and parameter morphing stuff. It’s fucking great. :slight_smile:

A4 is ace too, but overall just more limited, in my opinion. :slight_smile:

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#3

Dual VCO added a lot to the feature set I’m assuming? Sounds like an awesome piece of kit.

#4

Yeah, something about the filters/compressor and what I’ve heard people say it does to samples has me excited too. I’m not at all opposed to loading some of my own pads or atmospheric stuff ahead of time from other synths and manipulating/sequencing them on the Rytm.

I actually sold my Digitakt because I didn’t like its overall sound. The filters were such a key part of its sound design and I just plain didn’t like their sound. I was also more invested in a full daw setup at that point, so it made it an easy choice to sell. I’d probably haven’t spent more time with it now in my current situation.

My whole thing with the AR is that I feel the whole drum engine would be largely wasted on me as I don’t care all too much about getting deep kicks. I guess I could just ignore the parts I don’t use but I feel like the drum engines are pretty integral to its value.

I’d love to hear a bit more of its engines doing atypical or non drum sounds if anyone has examples.

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#5

Man, that track you did on the Rev 2 sounds fantastic! Really enjoyed that.
My next purchase is most likely an A4mk2 to pair with my OT and DT

#6

Thanks ma dude! I feel like I’d have a lot of fun making this kind of stuff on the A4

#7

AR sounds much better than A4 imo.
Sample playback an obvious bonus also

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#8

Yeah, I think if drum sounds aren’t a part of your sound at all, then definitely don’t get the ar. For purely melodic or pady stuff, the A4 is miles better. But the ar synth engines are definitely not your run of the mill vanilla type shit. I generally couldn’t care less about a deep kick or a tight snare or whatever the fuck people call these things - it’s an ace sound designer for weird rhythmic stuff, I think it really excels when you go weird with it, but yeah, it does have a rhythmic focus to a pretty large extent.

#9

Anyone else have thoughts on this? Maybe examples? I’ve personally heard more sounds I like from A4 demos but I’m having trouble pinpointing what exactly the sound characteristics of the AR are.

Does anyone thing the filter itself sounds better than A4? Or is it mostly that compression tying everything together.

#10

I hear ya. That weird rhythmic stuff sounds cool. I was thinking the same exact thing regarding “deep kicks” / “tight snares”

I’ve never cared about drum sound design in that way but I do love some blippy plocky kind of percussive stuff. Think Microtonic.

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#11

As a stand-alone, I think the RYTM would be ideal. A little bit of synthesis and a little bit of sampling- sounds toasty coming out. Good stuff.

A4 will obviously have deeper synthesis exploration. But the RYTM has a little bit of everything and you can make it sound nice.

Having said that- personally, the RYTM is only preferable if you’re using it on its own. If I had other gear, I would rarely reach for the RYTM. I get more out of the A4(but I have multiple Elektrons)

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#12

Seems like a good summary. Thanks dudes. Got lots of thinking to do.

(But then again I probably don’t. I think the A4 is calling me :smiley:)

See you guys on the otherside when I can post some bloops from whatever box I get.

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#13

When i had my ar i used it as standalone a lot and felt that it was how it really shined. I would import loops and other samples etc. The pads used as performance are great. And more tracks. Combined with other gear it always felt underused, and so too expensive to keep around for “just drums”. The a4 is great but probably not for hip hop.
My vote is ar.

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#14

Cool link I found for the Rytm. I’m diggin pretty deep for examples so I figured maybe some of you haven’t seen this.

Definitely giving me hope for the potential of “weirdness” in this box.

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#15

The AR can get much weirder than the rather vanilla standard subtractive A4
Hence the reason I like it much more

#16

I’ve never played with an A4 but I had an ARMKI for a couple years and the engines can do far more than just drum sounds. Some of the FM percussion engines work really well for melodic stuff. Plus you can always load up a bunch of one shot stabs and chords. They sounds lovely through the filters and distortion.

#17

I think one of the first things I posted on this forum was asking about which Elektron box to buy as a standalone groove box and my first ever hardware. I’ve ended up buying a Digitakt and I’m having a lot of fun with it but I’ve never got rid of the itch to get an AR. So many different sources have said that it’s the best standalone Elektron device and that it’s capable of all kinds of interesting sound design. I spent months researching various options and I never came across anything else that seems to come close. I reckon I’ll probably end up buying one some day…

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#18

weirder than the “Vanilla standard subtractive A4”

Any examples? A4 seems to have quite a bit more to offer in this area on paper with the dual filters, dual assignable envelopes and note tracking audio rate LFO weirdness.

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#19

Digitone you would be better off. Rytm can’t go deep with multiple (digital) oscillators at the same time doing 4 layered strings for example for the same chords, for your melodic needs. Plus, if you allocate one synth track to beats, the digitone gave me full tracks just using that alone. Deep melodic tracks. Deep melodic tracks not really for rytm.
I have the rytm for the amazing, amazing drumworks. With lots and lots and lots of programming a lot is possible on the rytm, but it would be circumventing it’s main workflow instead of instant melodies

#20

Love my Rytm mk2. Ended up selling the A4 for DSI Rev 2…

But I wouldn’t consider the A4 vanilla. Check out this thread on the filter feedback.