Hello everyone!
Does anyone know of an alternative to the Elektron Model:Cycles? I’m looking for a groovebox that’s heavily focused on synths. It doesn’t necessarily have to be portable, I’ll do with the powerbank I guess
It would be great if it included sampling capabilities, but the primary focus should be on the synth part. Despite the impressive portability of the OP-Z, I’m excluding it because I found it too fragile to use and carry around without worrying.
Now that I have the Novation Circuit Tracks, I’ve realized that not having synths readily accessible and having to connect to Components is a bit of a hassle. Although I didn’t love the Model:Cycles for the time I had it, I did appreciate the convenience of having all the controls and the percussion synthesis.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
Bit more expensive but the new polyend tracker plus might fit the bill? Synths, sequencing and sampling in a small package. Or the mini if portability is really important (I think it’s getting the synths in firmware soon)
Or the MPC One Plus. It’s not that big, easy to fit in a laptop bag and runs off a power supply. Plenty of onboard synths, drum machine, and obv a hugely powerful sampling brain. Might be too big, but for less than £600 it’s a bargain.
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Syntakt, digitone or analog 4?
The modern MPCs also come bundled with lots of synth content, they’re not as deep as the Elektron machines but also have sampling.
The MPCs are a bit generic / bread and butter, like decent VSTs, but offer loads of effects and resampling. You should be able to get where you want to go.
Lots of others: Electribe, Roland MCs, Deluge, Yamaha
Some say the Syntakt isn’t deep enough, but that isn’t an issue for me. There are some great , classic, shallow synths like the 101 or 303 and some rubbish deep synths.
I’ve found the Syntakt to be fun and inspiring and sounds good. That’s my recommendation if you can live without sampling.
If you want sampling, then an Akai MPC.
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What didn’t you like about it?
(I had one, but found the screen too small and found I had to use it more often than I hoped)
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Roland MC101 or 707 have a big variety of synths.
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Roland boxes scare me. Looked at many videos, too many thing, very few buttons, shitty screen imo.
Will pass, thank you anyway for the suggestion
That’s good info. You may want to include that and any other hard no’s in your original post.
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