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.