Lots of good info in this thread, surprised to see so many people so heavily in favor of the AR! Also I wasn’t aware of the depth of the 2vco engine. I was expecting something pretty standard. I expected 2 oscs, amp and filter envelopes, an lfo, done. Stuff I already have in a million other forms already. Sounds more interesting than that though! If anyone has clips of stuff they’ve made on the AR that seems up my alley I’d love to hear em. The sound aesthetic is really the main thing I’m not totally sold on with the rytm, but like others have mentioned, it could just be what people are doing with them and not so much the capability of the unit itself.
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I think where the MD offers some advantages are its 16 LFO’s that can be routed to any of your 16 machines. Also, the CTRL and INP Machines offer dephts that the AR misses. Having dedicated and lockable machines for the EQ, Delay, COMP or whatsoever also makes it a nifty fx-unit.
Live sampling, looping, envelope and filter followers are features that offer tons of spontaneous experimentation.
Furthermore chokes are pre-determined within the AR, on the MD you can route trigs and mutes yourself, as well as general audio routing.
I would consider the MD as more modular in itself in comparison to the AR. Surely the UI of the newer boxes is, without a doubt, superior but there also is a bit more of pre-determinaton. I’d consider that for both machines as a two-edged sword.
If you’re up for a streamlined drummachine I’d go for AR, if you want quirky experimentation then MD.
Also bear in mind that there is a way to mitigate the lacking UI of the MD with the Megacommand, offering polyrhytms, trig-less trigs, trig-conditions, a grid as Song-Mode, chromatic mode, polyphony and a lot of other stuff. The developers behind that also released a new firmware for the MD offering tons of new tonal possibilities, like a sinewave with 4osc’s, a saw with 3osc’s and a pulse also with 3osc’s.
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This is exactly the kind of stuff that makes me want a machinedrum hah, how are the FX on it anyways? Are there more options a la the monomachine or is it similar to the rytm, basically distortion, compression, delay and reverb? Effects are a big part of my sound design process so that’s another thing I’m concerned about, though I hear the rytm has very nice effects in terms of overall quality, my impression is there’s less options.
Also, how do chokes work on the AR? One weird thing I like doing on the Digitone is forcing it to use more voices than it can provide, causing weird cutoffs and interruptions in patterns. Sounds like stuff like that is easier to do on the MD?
The FX do a ‘goodish’ job but you can definitely find more dedicated ones within specialized FX-units. For a drummachine it is considerably good. Monomachine offers a lot more options as in more machines which can easily be chained. Still parameters of MD FX units offer some nice possibilities.
AR has chokes between sounds that do make sense. OH and CH choke each other for example. On the MD you can select Independently for each track If it should ‘trig’ or/and ‘mute’ another machine.
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Ah ok, so pretty standard for a drum machine. Could I turn chokes off on the AR altogether if I want? Something about the idea of automatically having two or more slots linked like that irks me even if it makes sense. It’s a pretty minor annoyance though. Also, INP and CTRL machines seem very cool to me, but realistically I’d probably use INP stuff fairly sparingly, and while I’d use CTRL stuff a lot, the performance features of the AR seem just as appealing unless there’s functionality I’m missing.
No, because it only has 8 analog voices, but shared over 12 pads… so the choke pairs share a voice, I guess it instantly switches to the new parameters when a choke happens.
From what you are saying about your musical leanings maybe the MD does make more sense now I think about it… tricky one. I think the AR is definitely the better overall box, but if you want that specific weirdness of the MD I dunno if there’s much that can compare. Do you have links to the kind of stuff you’d like to do?
Fair, I guess it’s maybe because the AR probably uses specialized circuits for some of its sounds?
And sure, I don’t have a ton out right now, just some remixes and a bunch of old tracks that I recently privated, but I’m working on an EP atm that’s a lot less “DJ oriented” than my older stuff. Here’s a remix I did for my friend recently though that might give you an idea of the kind of textures I go for:
Producers that inspire me a lot lately are people like CFCF, Happa, Doss, Oli XL, and Loto Retina.
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Yes, the analogue voices are different and have different synthesis options available depending on the voice. The bottom three are the most sophisticated (BD, SD and RS/CP - these are the voices you can have the DVCO on).
My two cents on this (owning DN, MD non-UW and AR2): I think the Digitone is an amazing digital-sounding percussion synth. Sampling it into the AR2 is a really nice use case. The Machinedrum is cool - I have one and love it - but it’s missing a lot of quality of life stuff of the newer boxes, in the sequencer especially. Also the 16 LFO thing is true, but they only target one voice each, and only in one direction (the LFO processing cascades along the tracks - so you can’t target a track in the “upstream” direction). You can’t have one track’s LFO affecting multiple tracks.
For what MDUWs go for I think an AR2 is a better bet, given that you have digital synthesis available in the DN and the AR can sample.
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Ahh I missed that you have a DN, in that case I agree with finalform – DN is a great source for those weird percussions you’d get from the MD and I think the overall experience on the AR is so much better, especially if you are coming from modern Elektron boxes there is a lot you’d miss on the MD
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That’s true actually, I hadn’t really considered sampling the DN into the AR. Maybe that would actually be the way to go, as I already have TAL Sampler and an ES-1 mk2, so idk. I don’t really need more “crunchy samplers” in my life which is why I wrote off the UW a little bit.
There are only a couple of things that the MD has over the AR/DN combo - some of the weirder darker corners that arise from cascading multiple LFOs, and the realtime resampling of the UW model. I’m not sure either of those is worth all the other shortcomings to be honest. I do love the MD, and it is a different flavour, but actually the synthesis is a lot more limited than the Digitone, IMO. It’s more locked into a particular sound signature.
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Well this thread has gone in a surprising direction. I expected to walk away ready to check reverb and eBay constantly for a machinedrum, but I dunno. Now y’all have me thinking the AR would fill an interesting niche that nothing else in my setup really fills, while still filling the gap I want it to. This guy’s stuff as well definitely makes me feel like it’s capable: https://youtu.be/RxY92SCyxGo
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Yes, really cool sounds in this video, but the guy never answer if he used samples or not.
Yeah, that’s kind of the running theme I’ve noticed with the coolest jams on the AR I’ve seen hah.
I have a MD as well as an AR2. I mostly use samples on the AR2, and in retrospect, if I had known that before buying, I probably would have just bought one of the MPC Live units.
For the OP’s purposes, if you’re not going to use samples, I’d go with the MD, especially if you want more of a digital vibe. It sounds fantastic.
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It’s hard to overstate how flexile the performance and scene modes on the AR, um, are. Because the changes you can make are so wide-ranging, scenes can give you twelve radically different mutations (or even different patterns with the right trigs) you can hop around with ease. But it’s when you set a load of parameters on the performance pads that you start to realise what you’re dealing with. Macros are nothing new in themselves, but tying them to pads is a really interesting way to approach them, allowing for very expressive application of multiple macros simultaneously - something you’d be very, very hard-pressed to replicate on knobs once you get past two. And if you’re organised, keeping the macros on the same pad as the sound you’re mutating can be a big help - but it’s optional.
I’ve got a few criticisms of the AR (Mk1) - I don’t like the pads for actual playing of samples, I wish it had card storage, some of the sounds need close attention to get the best out of them - but I can never stay mad at it because there’s nothing like it in performance mode. I’m a bit baffled that nobody has copied that aspect of it, but then I suppose it blends in nicely with much of the existing Elektron ethos - just a different route into p-locks. But an exciting one.
So if you like to do live tweaking, that’s a vote for the AR. And one less Machinedrum off the market. Wait, forget I said that.
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I use this a LOT especially because my right hand is operating Octatrack mutes and crossfader (yes, at the same time, fight me), it’s really, really nice to cue up my mutes or unmutes by holding function, and then right as we go into a chorus or a bridge i just simply let go of the button. It makes transitions super tight. I keep forgetting to make use of the solo function which I believe is trig+pad. that would be good to remember too.
What type of music do you plan on making with the device you want?
This is my Machinedrum UW. I absolutely love it and it can sound less digital with some good post editing. Plus adding machines behind your kicks, snares, hats, really makes a difference.
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I was in a similar boat a couple months ago- looking for one of these to pair with my OT. Due to not being able to find an MD at a price I felt comfortable paying I ended up with the AR mk2. About a month later, an MD mk2 (non-UW) came up locally for a price I couldn’t pass up so I ended up grabbing it as well.
(This is all my personal opinion and I see a lot of people saying the opposite)
I find the AR way better for bread and butter drum sounds- the kick on the MD comes no where close to the AR in my opinion. For more traditional dance/electronic stuff where the drums are big, up front, in your face and the ethos of the whole track, the AR wins out hands down for me. For more intentional work where I know what sounds I need and exactly what they sound like, I’m going for the Rytm.
However, even without the sampling on the MD, I like it better as a “groovebox”. Especially with the new firmware it makes it an instant IDM machine (I know that’s a reductive term but for lack of better word that’s how’d I’d describe it). I love it for any type of weird percussion, especially bell-ish tonal percussion that’s still rhythmic but ever so slightly vaguely melodic. One thing I found amazing was the fact that the MD gave me a deeper understanding of my OT and it’s ethos. Also reductive and not 100% accurate but sometimes the MD feels like the middle ground between the AR and the OT. However it is “unapologetically digital” as you put it- I have a hard time making it stand out in the mix- the compressor doesn’t come anywhere close to the AR’s. It definitely can sound “weak” or “thin” to me at times; I know those are generally negative describers but honestly in the context of the MD it’s not a bad thing. The MD is more fun to play and experiment with though. I like playing with the CTRL-ALL more than I like programming scenes and perfs on the AR even though I get better results on the latter. To put it bluntly MD is my have-fun drum machine, AR is my let’s get shit done drum machine.
I know it’s a dumb thing to say, but if you can, get both. They play with each other really well- you can run MD audio into AR in order to use it’s amazing distortion and compression. You can use the MDs LFOs on a midimachine to make up for ARs one LFO per track limitation. You can use the AR to sequence tracks on the MD which effectively gives you all the amazing sequencer tricks on the MD, among other things.
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Yep, this kinda breaks down the dilemma I’m having very well. I think the MD would be more a machine for “layers” and textures for me, that I’d then sample and cut up later in my DAW as a quick way of generating lots of interesting sounds and variations on a pattern to make building out tracks a quicker process. Kind of an exploratory way of building my own loop and sample library. The rytm however has utility that I can’t deny, but I’m not really buying a drum machine to be the star of the show or anything. More just something to push my sound in directions I maybe would have to work harder or be more intentional to get to in the box. Based on the impressions in this thread the rytm seems like it COULD be that too, but every time I watch a MD video I find myself falling in love with its sound again, while most of the time I watch an AR video I scratch my head a bit wondering if it couldn’t be pushed further without juggling samples. To be fair though I have this problem with gear a lot. Despite lusting after the MD and MnM for years I wasn’t convinced by newer Elektron stuff till I found a really good price on a Digitone and saw what it could do for myself. I just assumed it was operator with a sequencer slapped on it. Maybe I should see if any music stores nearby sell a rytm and get my own hands on it for a bit.