That I don’t already own one is the bane of my existence!
so annoying!!
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I have the DT/DN/ST as well as the AK, and I can say that the A4 engine is more challenging to quickly dial in a sound than it is in the semi-comparable ST analog machines.
So, if quickness is your goal, then the A4 engine isn’t for you.
And this is where I bite my thumb, because you are asking me to help you not to GAS.
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I don’t have any of the digi boxes, but I had a Mk1 A4 and now have an AK. I would compare the A4/AK to the OT in the sense that both boxes are relatively unfriendly to the casual user, but reward the deep contemplative noodler.
If you want instant gratification, the A4 series isn’t for you - unless you plan to buy some patch banks. If you have a month-long staycation coming up, or are between relationships/jobs or otherwise have some time and a bit of money on your hands, then an A4 could be the right device for you.
There is a risk of this backfiring, but you could also spend some time comparing the A4 to the DSI Tempest. Temptests are more expensive and harder to come by, but they have pads and touch controls and probably synthesis options not present on the A4s.
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100% agree. I so love my AK, and know I am not even scratching the surface of its capability.
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A4 is a lot better than the tempest, the parameter and sound locks win everytime. I even want a second A4, and many feel the same. Its a lot of work to make it sound cool, but after some time you fly with it. I have a tempest too, and while its a cool and deep engine, the sequencer feels dated compared to A4. FX are good aswell on the A4, CV out, line in to process external sounds… etc
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Stay as far away as possible from the DANGER thread:
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I’ve owned both both the A4 and the AR, and while I did get a whole lot of joy out of them, they also brought me quite a bit of frustration, and when I bought the Syntakt, I finally saw the light and sold both of them.
My main gripe with the A4 was that whenever I wanted to make music with it, I ended up doing sound deign for half an hour and then giving up because it ended up sounding like everything else I’ve done before anyway (mainly because after trying to get something going for a while, I often went back to just using pure waves and not much else since that always sounded good). And I didn’t want to use presets since that removed the satisfaction of actually dialing in the sound yourself. And most of the time, I really didn’t vibe with the numerous presets that I downloaded anyway.
Now, I’m fully aware that in the hands of someone else, the outcome could probably have been very different. But for me, using my Syntakt and my Super 6 are, in comparison, extremely rewarding experiences. You turn some random knobs and even if you don’t know what you’re doing, more often than not you come up with something that sounds both good and unique.
So, if you don’t like the idea of having to solve a multi-dimensional puzzle in your head every time you want to record a phat baseline that you’ve come up with, stay away from the A4.
There, that’s my speech.
Bonus tip: Don’t watch any of @jayhosking videos using the A4, especially if you’re in to prog rock, because then you’ll talk yourself into buying one whether you want it or not.
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Huge pain to program, very narrow sweet spots, awful screen (mk1). If you’re needing a CV sequencer there are probably better options out there
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MkII is probably my favorite synth, you can do so much with it and the more time you spend with it the better it gets imo
Reverb sounds ugly and I hate the kits (coming from the Digis). It is absolutely not inspiring if you turn it on with the init sound.
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My favorite Elektron device. Own the AK and love it. Creating chords with the 2OSCS AND SUB OSCs is cool. Being able to play polyphonic is also nice. I bought some sound packs because I also end up creating similar patches. Amazing what people get out of this thing.
I even like the way it looks.
Does that help?
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I agree with this! Here’s some more stuff that might help you NOT buy an A4:
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The digi-boxes are just a lot faster to work with.
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On the A4 it’s easy to mess up an old pattern by forgetting to switch kit when working on a new pattern.
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The init sound is thin and brittle, and making it sound more “organic” takes a LOT of minor tweaks everywhere.
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It’s big and takes up a lot of desk space. Even if my other gear is on a stand behind it, it’s wide enough that I’m bumping into it when working on the gear on the stand.
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It’s very expensive.
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The voice management isn’t as good as the Digitone’s voice management. There is only one “voice pool”, so you can’t for example set two tracks to play in unison, and the last two tracks play duophonically. It’s either or.
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Direct jump (when switching patterns) doesn’t work if you use length per track and/or x:x trig conditions. It’ll mess up the timing and the pattern doesn’t play right. You have to set all the tracks to the same length for this to work properly.
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Parameter slide ignores x:x conditions, so the parameters will slide to the next trig even if the trig condition says the trig shouldn’t play.
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You can’t mute tracks with one hand, unless you are in performance mode. This sucks if you want to tweak parameters you haven’t made performance macros for and mute/unmute at the same time. Then you’ll have to press the FUNC button all the way to the left and the track buttons all the way to the right.
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When sound designing, it’s too easy to either make very clean and precise patches, or way too crazy and overdriven patches. Finding the sweet spot in between takes a lot of patience and effort.
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To switch patterns on the A4, you have to press one of the A-H buttons, depending on which bank your pattern is in, then the corresponding trig. Because of this I have to be extra careful not to switch to the wrong bank while performing live. As opposed to the digi-boxes (and OT) where there’s a separate “PTN” and “BANK” button.
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When using the A4 as an audio interface and running the A4 through plugins, you will get a feedback loop. All the digi-boxes (including the AH) has an option called “INT TO MAIN” that -when turned off- removes the internal audio (onboard synth and sample audio) from the main outs so you only hear what’s coming in over USB, which removes this feedback loop. The A4 doesn’t have this option.
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Arp is tied to the track, not to the sound. This means you can’t save sounds with different arp values into the sound pool and sound-lock lock them in the sequencer like you can on the Digitone.
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The first filter drastically lowers the volume when turning down the filter cutoff, making it hard to balance the levels when making soft patches.
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While performance macros are amazing, they also take a lot of time to set up, compared to the lightning fast control-all of the digi-boxes. When I make tracks on the A4, I often spend half the time making the patterns themselves, and the other half making the performance macros.
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The track buttons don’t blink when a note is triggered, unlike on the Digitakt, Syntakt, and Octatrack (and Digitone but only when in mute mode). This makes it harder to determine which track is playing which sounds, especially if you use a lot of sound-locks.
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You can’t adjust the sub oscillator level. It’s either on or off, which limits its usefulness (in my experience).
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Changing the pulsewidth on the saw waveform drastically lowers the volume. Doing it on the triangle waveform drastically increases the volume. Both have great sounds, but can be tedious to work with because of this.
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the A4 doesn’t have any sort of master overdrive. Digitakt and Analog Rytm has compressor, Digitone has digital master overdrive, Analog Rytm and Syntakt have master overdrive, Octatrack has master track. This makes it hard to glue the synth tracks together like you can on the other boxes.
All that said, the A4 is on my never sell list!
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I agree on all those points and sound design on this thing is way harder than it should be. It can produce great sounds but like @Eaves pointed out: It’s hit or miss. Something like the Behringer Deepmind or Neutron gave me way less headache and I didn’t know much about synths when I got them.
On the Digitone you get at least interesting sounds while playing around with the knobs, on the A4 they are often just bland and that’s not very encouraging.
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For me the most annoying thing I the A4 is the following :
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I near never create my own patch on it, the possibility are great not endless but really big ! But it’s more time consuming than lots of other synth. Because you menu dive a lot. It’s well made but time consuming and lack of immediacy
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sometimes you want a specific kind of sound, you know how to do it on the A4. But you know this other box would do it in a breeze and it will take you 2min more to make it on the A4.
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the encoder of the mk1 are really slow or too fast. The Digi line on this is really a huge step forward
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the four note polyphony really require lots of care !
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soon you begin to use delay/reverb to hide the four note polyphony
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I never had the feeling that I know it deeply. It’s like a beautiful mystery stranger. Not because it’s too complex, but more because it has lots and lots of parameters. And I have not enough space in my brain to remember everything
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you will spend lots of time noodling with it. And not making any track. Because it’s a time travel machine. You start it at 9pm and you watch the clock and it’s midnight and you have make 3 pattern
And from someone who really love the A4/AK ! And yes it has some similarities with the OT as learning curve, because both require lots of time spent. But I find the A4 more easily rewarding.
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I think you should really like the sound of the A4. I think it’s some weird synthesizer that could be so good if it sounded nicer. it’s strange that with a very cheap blofeld, for example, i can immediately conjure up sounds that sound great. Even if you look at the A4 as a mono synthesizer with four tracks and a sequencer (which is actually a dream), the sound is kind of weird in the end.
in other words, you definitely get interesting sounds out of the device, but you have to really love it because it’s special. I’ll never get my hands on the A4 again.
and i never understood this rumor that he would be an excellent drum machine. of course you get drums out of it, like out of every synthesizer, but in my opinion a rytm for your own sound synthesis is much more worthwhile or a north drum etc…
on the other hand, the A4 is almost like a gift on eBay, I don’t think that’s for nothing. really well proven devices always remain expensive.
the screeching iridium (plugin in the box) can now also be thrown afterwards.
here’s a little irony:
So I am actually really curious for people to expand on what they mean by it having a sound that is difficult to find sweet spots of, as that is a bit of my criticism of the digitone, where I have to work to make it not sound toy-like. I am kinda of the perspective that nice sharp waves going into an analog filter is an easy recipe, and I don’t see a whole ton of difference in a saw wave from one synth vs a saw from another. Filters can sound drastically different, but I find that it is mainly the resonance that changes between different filters, and a dry low pass Moog filter doesn’t sound that different from a Roland one to me. So the A4 seems like a classic synth recipe of two analog oscillators into an analog filter. Is it just that there are so many parameters to change, many which do odd or inharmonic things? I will admit that the analog filters on the voices of the Syntakt aren’t my absolute favorite, being a bit too resonant at low settings for my liking, but the FX block filter is pretty good.
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yes, the digitone is also such a strange candidate that i don’t miss anything.
Oooh… can of worms.
When doing a filter sweep, I hear “lumps” in the way the tone-colour changes up/down the range. The different filter types have differently sized and spaced lumps, and in turn the lumps create the flavour of the filter in use.
Moog (Matriarch in my case): very, very fine lumps, like soft sand: smooth sweeps, even, clean like whistling
Kong MS10/20: massive lumps, like ping pong balls; scratchy as steel wool or stiff velcro, “screechy”
Sequential: semi-fine lumps; tickly
80s Rolands: I can’t put my finger on the lumpiness of these ones; they sound overdriven, bright, shouty, but not screechy like the Korgs
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In my experience, the A4 is either really bright, or really low volume. When I turn down the filter cutoff to take the edge off the highs, the volume drops. I have to make up for this by turning the track level up, and lower all the other track levels to make them sound even.
All the oscillators are also very “clean” sounding, even with pulse width modulation. It usually helps to add a bit of noise, but it’s hard to find the perfect balance between oscillator level and noise level. This is even harder to do when factoring in the filter and it’s overdrive. Amplitude modulation and sync can also help dirty up the sound, but it still sounds very clean imo. Even here you have to really search for the right pulse width, oscillator levels, sync amount, and pitch to make it go from bright and happy video game console sound to an evil, growling synth sound.
Another reason it can be tedious to do sound design on is that, while the menus all make perfect sense, a lot of the controls usually used together are spread across several parameter pages. For example, the filter envelope is on a separate page than the filter itself. So to dial in the perfect filter envelope, you have to switch back and forth between the two pages a lot. Even worse if you’re working with the overdrive, where noise level and individual oscillator levels greatly change how the overdrive interacts with the sound. Even more pages to flip back and forth between.
The overdrives are great, but they have the same problem of being either too bright and shrill, or not loud enough. The growly sweet spot is really dependant on oscillator levels and noise levels and filter cutoff, so every time I make a sound from scratch there is a lot of trial and error here. I’m more familiar with it now than back when I first got the A4, but I never find it quickly.
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Especially for bass sounds, something like the Moog Grandmother almost feels like cheating compared to the A4.
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