Hi everyone, first post!
I’m in the lookout for my first hardware synth; plus a sort of tactile, out-of-the-DAW solution I can sketch ideas in, and as such, the Digitone seems to fit the bill pretty well. Mostly!
To provide some background: I’m primarily a guitar player/songwriter, and I’ve been doing home recording for a bit over 10 years. Along the way I’ve made use of a multitude of soft-synths, but it’s never really been the driving force behind my writing, despite my interest in sound design. I figured it’s a good time to learn a new instrument or skill, and synths just made sense.
As preparation to potentially acquiring a Digitone, I’ve been experimenting with some free FM synths like Dexed and PM4 with… little success to be honest. While I understand the basic principles behind FM after reading guides and watching some YouTube tutorials on FM, Dexed’s UI does (IMO) very little in the way of providing enough feedback to understand what’s actually happening, and I bounced out almost immediately out of disinterest in it. I fared a lot better with PM4, but I still can’t say I managed to get particularly inspiring sounds out of it.
After hitting this wall I started having my doubts whether the Digitone would be the right thing for me for this very reason. I’m aware that Elektron has managed to create a different, more user-friendly approach to FM, and from what I’ve seen in countless videos, the UI seems great, and infinitely more clear than something like Dexed. And while fortunately there are return policies in case of the unit and I not understanding each other, I’d definitely love to get into it properly and avoid the hassle.
So what do y’all think? Should I look somewhere else?
Cheers and thanks a lot in advance!