Long time no post. Long story short I liquidated my studio all except my trusty A4. I have kinda been wanting an AKs for a varity of reasons, but mostly the keys (duh!). I have a chance to swap with a friend, no charge except to handle all the shipping.
My main concern are if there are any major, general workflow differences and if the keys get in the way of jamming, muting patterns, twisting knobs etc. Specifically curious to hear from people who own or have owned both…but love to hear from AK owners as well.
Moving towards some more ambient type work where Ill want to play some things live. But am afraid of lopsing that elektron groove box feel. Im loving the A4 as a drum machine right now and dont want to sacrifice that for a key bed.
I have both. I tend to gravitate to the a4 as I can sit in bed with it easier and learn it. I enjoy the keys more when at a table / desk. Both work great together especially if you want multi drum tracks, mono tracks and poly all at the same time. I couldnt tell you which one I would take over the other. Maybe a4 purely for portability reasons.
I finally played around with the poly features of the A4 last night with a few of the Codex patches(beautiful soundpack, imo) and I’m seeing the suitability for both. A4 really does work best for a programmed approach utilizing as four mono-synths. AK utilizing 3 voice poly and one voice for live-performing seems like a a perfect match, and a feature you can’t get from any synth I know about.
Some great stuff for me to think on there, scanned through about half those threads and Im not feeling like they directly answered my specific questions. Mostly, will I loose that groove box jamming feel if I go w the AK.
I suppose I can always sell it and down grade if I dont like the AK.