“After a brief stint in erotica, he had a change of career and went on to become a vicar”
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Really enjoyed reading this thread! Just checked and it looks like I came along early 2016 (just before the change to the new forum design). I’d just bought an octatrack after a few years hiatus from making music and had a question or two. I mostly lurk but I do enjoy it here and feel part of the community in my own limited way. A quick visit somewhere like kvr quickly reminds me what a special place this is.
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I remember your username because it is unique!
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I came up with it just because an older username was already taken on some forum. I didn’t want that to happen again 
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neilbaldwin’s antlers are throwing me for a loop today.
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All the more impressive we are well into rutting season.
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oh deer…
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Not at all, I was kinda hoping for something like this to happen and it really warms my heart how some names I’ve never encountered here are sharing nostalgic stories, please keep doing it 
! Except the guy in bed photo stuff maybe 
.
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I think there was a time slot before the official launch where E-U users could pre-register an account. I didn’t remember that it was that long before though. Almost a year? 
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I joined this year 
so I’m definitely a new guy.
In 2023, after several difficult life events, I finally made the decision to get sober. I really decided to rip the bandage off, because I decided that I might as well quit most all forms of social media at the same time. I even told myself I would quit reading or watching the news as much as I could. This was all in combination with therapy of course. I needed to reset my priorities.
People who have been deep into addiction and alcoholism may understand that after quitting, I really had no clue what to do with my time. Until a few accidental Youtube clicks led me to synthesizers. You know, the thing I was obsessed with in my teenage years but could never afford a real one. Well, I got re-obsessed with electronic music production and ended up buying some gear. (Maybe I’m guilty of trading one addiction for another, but I have been pretty careful not to let myself get crazy with purchasing. I don’t like spending money and prefer to try and work with what I already have. And I’d rather be addicted to keyboards and drum machines than pills and booze.)
Among my few gear acquisitions were (eventually) a Model:Cycles and a Syntakt. Which sort of naturally led me to this forum as I had plenty of questions. I decided Elektronauts was not exactly the kind of social media I’d like to avoid. In fact, this reminds me a bit of the Internet I grew up on. A lot of friendly people sharing information, music, and whatever else, in a mostly constructive manner.
So yeah, I’ve been quite happy to spend a bit of time here. I’m over 1 year sober and I haven’t been back to any of the “big bad” social media spots, I don’t miss them much either.
It’s very nice to have a place like this to browse and listen to people’s music, or see what people have to say about music / production. And aside from a few little spots, the place is politics-free and respectful. Thankful to the community here for being open to new members, kind and encouraging 
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As far as I remember, yep, there was such a period, as @papertiger said.
I was an “Elektron-user” too, probably joined around 2007 which is the year I got my first MD. I only knew as a fellow forumer and was thankfull for him driving the board. I remember being a bit reluctant to novelty but wanted this story to continue as this it felt really good to be part of this community.
I must have stopped coming here when my experimental/ambient/improv period came to an end, I then got back to rock bands… but the MD was taking care of the drum duties of one of those bands.
Last year or so, I came back to get some information about… MegaCommand? AnalogRytm? Can’t remember. What I remember is that I stumbled accross a @papertiger’s topic about a release. It reminded me those happy times when I had bought a CD (yup!) of hers, mastered by @Tarekith. I then read some other good ol’ nicknames like @Nils, @darenager, @tIB, now @glaive, @neilbaldwin … @chapelierfou who I also sometimes cross on a more local forum 
… and I must be forgetting many (Oh! Look at the Actuel Memories album for names, see there : Actual Memories)
It brought me good memories. I feel like this community is very different from what I’ve known 15+ years ago. I guess it reflects what Elektron has become. More instruments, more users, more forumers, a lesser proportion of known faces. I don’t meant different in a bad way, by the way.
One thing I can say for sure is that Elektron-users.com and this forum haven’t been matched in term of mood and respect. That’s very valuable to me.
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Not gonna lie, this thread title goes pretty hard.
“Narrated by Ken Burns”
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There’s a story behind the avatar. It involves psychedelics. A lot of psychedelics.
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You been crying again Neil?
I ended up here almost by mistake, last year.
Spent 20+ years working as a pro musician and got tired of my efficient workflow. For 20+ years, I basically never stepped over the « Creative Hardware » line. I was happy with my MIDI keyboards, my guitars and my outboard gear.
Then, I bought an op1 Field. And it got me into writing songs again. But I was curious about how others were using it. And I first ended up on the OP-Forum. That’s where I heard about this place first.
And once I stepped through the forum’s proverbial door, I found what I was looking for at GearSpace and FB groups (but never really found there) : respectful, dedicated, passionate people.
Since my daughter was born last year, I sold the op1f and got back to my old habits (they just work for me, turns out I was just getting bored and needed me some creative strange). But this place is where I get fresh news, fresh ideas, fresh point of views.
One of the rare places out there that makes you feel part of a community.
Users forums are a strange place, usually. But here, I found a place with its equilibrium, with its harmony.
Love it. Long live this place.
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feels like internet circa 2005 in this place all the time. I love it. tip your mods. they work hard.
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i hope part of the history to be written is that people stop posting fake ‘funny’ photoshops of potential elektron products…
it was barely amusing the first time, and now many years later i actively hate these posts
Daily but that’s unconnected 
Oof long time back all this… I saw the very beginnings of elektron-users. It was on a message board somewhere, possibly the Yahoo one mentioned up here, and a few people were like “Why don’t we have a proper Elektron community place? Lets make it!”
I started on a design for it but someone else was way better at it and set up the web hosting etc. I guess that was @glaive, but my memory is really hazy here…
I became a mod. My username was divi. Greetings to the old timers here
2 events I vividly remember are the tragic passing of Daniel Hanson and a whole situation about MD supposedly having bad sync. People were throwing measurements, proofs and debunks at each other. The mods had a hard time keeping things civilized and were then accused of colluding with Elektron to cover things up. It went so far that someone created a fake account to send me “proof” by PM as a way of testing whether I would try covering it up. So no, that kinda BS didn’t appear first here at Elektronauts 
At some point I abruptly left when personal/professional shit hit the fan. I only reappeared here quite a while after the shift to E’nauts was made. Quietly with a new username, as I felt ashamed that I had jumped ship on EU (my sense of responsibility for collectives is rather big).
I’ve been pretty involved on 'nauts for quite a few years but I have to say that has plummeted sharply in the last few months. I’m still peaking in to check for interesting news etc but I don’t get involved in conversations anymore. Time and energy got limited and I feel don’t need to spend it on conversations about gear anymore. As @cuckoomusic mentioned earlier, I’ve also found it tedious to catch up with long threads, and the longer the threads become the lower the quality tends to drop.
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Divi! Great to see you here and yes, the timing wars! Iirc some guy was taking measurements in order to sell his ‘clock tightening’ product or something, telling everyone what they couldn’t really hear was a massive problem that absolutely needed to be solved because in his mind it rendered the machine unusable? Or something like that? He was angry about clocks.
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