The RYTM does more than typical drum sounds.
Here’s a lil mess around from last night using a few RYTM synth voices and nothing else: https://clyp.it/rkuohwpl
I’ve barely touched the sample side of things on the RYTM but there’s plenty of sound shaping possibilities with just the synth engines.
I like both the Analogs equally…depends on what you want. Best advice is to just find somewhere that you can try them both and see which one you get on with best.
Personally I’d go 1st for the A4: Sound locks, CV capabilities, sound pallet, nice reverb, you’ll get good analog percussive sounds by tweeking a bit.
Sample management on AR is quite particular but not a real pain. Check some videos about sample-chains (ex: cabinet of curiosities). Synth engines are fine, and they sound great; even without any sample you can blow out some decent speakers.
Check on 2nd hand market, you could save some cash for your analog Heat 
AR is my favorite sample player. It’s laid out well and the weak spots on the drum synth shine on the samples. Single cycle wave forms bring you to basic synth territory. At this point more lfos would be great but the drum machine side of things won’t justify this update.
A4 is my favorite drum machine. It does not cover the whole drum kit with equal ability but neither does the AR. Plocking sounds on a track does give you more voices but you have to have sounds that are created with the same family of settings - it does not switch that fast. Also, this then limits your live tweak options.
So that all said, your OT is a capable sample player too. Get the a4 and try every feature on every sound to squeeze interest and novelty out of it.
Nicely put.
Yet, being able to hit the beat on pads and get sounds retrigged is features I’d miss
Btw MD+QuNeo is a good combo 
I like to create washes of distorted ambient sauce on the AR. Just using it as through fx box with anything piped in via OB, you’ve got delay, verb, distortion, overdrive, the filter and lfo. add locks and things get very interesting before you even use samples or synthesis. Sound-wise, a 2nd filter like on the A4 would really juice things up for me but you can’t have it all.
I have to say I find Rytm sample uploading rather laborious - that the Rytm does not appear as a USB drive and allow simple drag and drop is almost unforgivable, SDS is fine for the Machinedrum in 2005 but 10 years later I think we should have progressed. Similarly the audio input is next to useless, a real design flaw when compared to every other Elektron machine
I do like the Rytm for some of what it does - the scenes, perf mode, chromatic, trig conditions, filters and fx being the main attractions, and these are very good, but overall it feels the least complete Elektron machine in some ways, but it is also the most recent. The pads are also not very responsive to a wide range of velocities.
I’m very fussy over drum sounds and find that a lot of the machines have very narrow sweet spots for basic workaday drum sounds (although this can also be said of the MD) however for more abstract stuff and non drum sounds the Rytm can do some very nice stuff. itonically the impulse machine and noise are among my favourites for making drum sounds, although I will concede that the ride cymbal machine sounds very nice, and is also one of the few sounds which is difficult to make sound bad.
I find the kick machines for making kick sounds all a bit too similar, sure they can each do interesting unconventional sounds, but for actual kicks very little variation, the silky and FM are probably the best for the smoother type kicks that I like, but I still feel there is room for improvement. Hard style kicks are a bit over represented IMHO which results in some kick machines sounding a bit fatiguing and samey until you go outside of typical kick drum sounds, where they can get interesting but then not very kick like anymore!
No complaints about sample playback, the samples take on a nice character once inside the Rytm, I’d like to see some refinements over sample parameters/features but nothing drastic. I think if the Rytm did not have sample playback I’d probably have lost patience with it, but since the update embracing the analog section for non drum sounds or more unconventional sounds I find that I am warming to it more.
The A4 I have very little to complain about, it delivers more than I anticipated, and has much more synthesis depth than the Rytm, my only slight niggles with it are the fairly awkward performance mode setup, and the low pass filter does not sound as nice as the SV filter. For drum sounds it has plenty of parameters to do virtually any sound, and for synth sounds it can cover a lot of ground as you would expect. The CV outputs are brilliant and can be configured for any reasonable scenario and quite a few unreasonable ones too. The polyphony is only 4 voices, with soundlocks it can sound like more, but something to consider if you want lots of different simultaneous sounds without sampling into your OT.
The MDUW, like the Rytm can take a lot of work to make it sound good, but I think for drum sounds it is more versatile than the Rytm, it does not have the Rytms capability to save an individual sound outside of a kit, but it has a lot more machine types and of course sampling. It can sound somewhat brittle for some sounds, but for kick drums it is among my favourite drum machines. The sequencing is far less sophisticated than the Rytm, especially if wanting to work outside of standard rhythms but perfectly usable otherwise, of course you could sequence some or all of the MD from your OT. The MD does not do as well as the Rytm or A4 for pitched sounds as it does not have a proper chromatic mode, but you can get interesting pitched stuff out of it because/in spite of this. Polyphony outshines the A4 and Rytm put together, with 16 voices, also the input machines mean that it can function as a synced sequenced fx box.
You can’t really go wrong with any of them, they all have +/- but if I had to choose I’d go for the A4. I think it doubles for drums better than the Rytm or MD do for synth sounds, but as always YMMV.
This thread got me into investigating the drum side of A4… Lots of fun, as Dan used to say.
Lots of work too 
Now I recall I bought this very nice A4 drum kits for my OP1
Have to dig, find the sources and analyse how all this is wired…
Beer’s on me @darenager !
Thanks for the detailed review into those 3 units … a forum member has an A4 for a good price so I think i’ll grab that now and see if a 2nd hand rytm pops up sometime soon.
Really looking forward to adding some analog goodness to the OT
You’re most welcome, I do think the Rytm continues to improve and if the MD is anything to go by then updates should be forthcoming for some years, and perhaps some of the points will be addressed.
@LyingDalai Thanks man beers to you too
Brings beers to my eyes
Just remember never drink and +drive
[quote=“Cosmic, post:2, topic:31594, full:true”]
If it was me i would get A4 first. You can cover drums with A4 and OT until such time you get Rytm.[/quote]
I’ve already got an OT, if I get my A4 (it should be soon), can I obtain harder kicks than AR and sample it with OT ? My absolute reference is a JOMOX XBASE 09 !
Maybe the compressor make the difference, but it can be external…
With AH, there are 4 aces, no ?
Your druma soundpack is so good, I use it all the time. I looked at every setting of many sounds you did and learned a lot about drum synthesis this way. If it will ever happen to you that you have too much spare time, please do a tutorial about drum synthesis on the A4
Yes you can sample nice analog drums from A4 to your OT but they are quite hard to make.
Ah ah ! A4 Vendue ?
Soon I guess 
Someone from Brest going often to Nantes may sell it to me ! 
Please explain us how to do what you sell ! 
Drum synthesis on A4 must be similar to other synths and there are tutorials on it.
Im not sure. I like the kicks I get from A4 but rytm is a dedicated drum machine so you would expect it to be refined in that area.