as of today i’m another proud owner of the Analog Rytm I fiddled around quite alot already and slowly get used to it. And from what i have experienced so far i’m very excited to do more with this thing!
However … I have noticed that especially the Bassdrums lacks of some nice low end that can be heard on a rather “usual” audio system. I havent heard the Rytm on my Monitoring System yet but i also dont want to because i wanna hear it like the people hear it that may probably buy my music someday They surely have no Monitor Boxes connected to their computers …
So - is it only me or is the low end really missing to some degree on the analog machines? I tested the Rytm for around 5 hours now and i only get a nice low end with a Bassdrum if i use the Filter in Peak Mode with a lot of Resonance and the Cutoff sitting at a value of around 23. But this cant be it right?
Love to hear some opinions from you - and especially some tipps how to get more beef out of the machines.
I’ve owned a lot of drum machines in the last 8 years: TR-909, Jomox 888, Jomox MBase 11, Acidlabs Miami, Vermona DRM MK3, Jomox 09, TR-707, MachineDrum, MonoMachine, Korg groove boxes, Analog 4, Analog Rytm….
I’ve learned that it’s important not to let the character of a machine dictate your music… gotta shape everything that sounds good to you in your own way….
on that same wavelength, the Rytm, in my opinion, is lacking no bass whatsoever? The A4? Hell yes. The A4 is completely weak on low end… The rytm isn’t. The rytm can go very low & it’s well-defined in my opinion… The only kick drum I like more than AR is TR-909 & Jomox 888 / 09…. However, and that’s a big however, the AR kick has many more options available…
I honestly actually love the AR kick…. the machine itself lends itself to techno incredibly well… its a very good sounding box… the kick hits for sure… but you have to tailor it… but even the presets sound dope to me… i was honestly shocked at how /good/ the ar sounded at first… beyond expectations… i felt differently about a4…
thats the beauty of electron machines, tailoring the sound always gets you into uncharted territory…
creative factor heavily outweighs the technical low-end specifics… if you can’t make a proper techno jam on this box then it’s not because of the bass lacking… its something else…
and again… honestly… i love the vibe of the kick on the AR… use insert cables to send the drums out individually & then just use the stereo as the FX return into the audio interface… its important to separate your drums in my opinion
thanks for your opinion. Thats interesting what you say about the A4 because: I definitely experience it the other way around When i hook up the A4 and play the basses i get a low end on this thing that blows the speakers - even on that rather cheap audio system i use for pre listening before the Mastering stage And on that same “cheap” system i cant hear anything from the AR’s Kicks - and thats no lie they just dont come close to what the A4 does. I mean: You can hear the bass coming from that Kicks thats true - but it just isnt as much as i already heard from the Youtube Videos of the Rytm.
Can it be that my machine has some sort of a problem? Does it need a calibration?
The first one is “BD Hard”, the Second is “BD Classic”, the third is “BD Classic” tuned down a lot there i already hear no bass anymore … and the last one is a modified BD Hard with exactly those filter edits i mentioned before - and only this one creates a bass for me that sound sufficient. The rest is Bassless on my audio system. And i can tweak the Kicks to hell, tune them and what not but i just dont get Bass out of them if i dont do this Filter trick. That cant be it! Really, there must be something wrong here
Do you now get what i mean? Is my machine ill?? :-/
that honestly doesn’t make much sense to me? what speakers are you using? the recording of those kicks sounds fine… that first rytm kick is extremely similar to a tr909… no loss in quality at all.
i honestly don’t know how anyone could say the a4 is better on low freq bass?
not sure how you can make this diagnosis on speakers that can not even reproduce the sub bass frequencies that you are trying to analyse.
why not listen on the monitors?
I have always used my car stereo as the normalization speakers. the bass from the AR has been stoopid low (in the best way possible)… I find it strange you are not getting low enough. if it is not tickling your fancy enough, add the bass tom in.
agree w/ all the comments.
i too find the A4 a little lacking on lo-end (not too much).
and the AR might almost have too much? it’s controllable but it can get downright unruly.
my assumption is that there is something off in your signal chain.
Those kicks are pretty bassy to me… Set a longer decay time maybe? Not sure what the problem is. I can get some sweet growling bass out of the FM Kick that I use for bass hits…
Yeah the AR has an enourmous lowend if you’d ask me. The default saw wave on the a4 is lacking lowend because it gets a thinner pulsewidth in the lower registers, but can be fixed by using overdrive/feedback/unison to bring back the bass.
For the AR, all the frequencies are there, so it’s all relative. If you want more lowend, cut out the highs a bit so you can increase the volume. Also check if the compressor is off. Compressed sounds can loose alot of lowend.
It might’ve been to low to register on your generic source. The Rytm is well known for its low end, if nothing else. So yeah, just give it more than half a day to mess with, I’m sure you’ll be satisfied. And i agree with analogback, you need to listen to it on a decent system in order to judge fairly. Whatever speakers little Billy is bumpin is not a accurate barometer. Just use the kicks and toms and you’ll get all the low end you could ever need. Pinky swear. You might have to go back and forth from your monitors and shit speakers in order to dial in your particular target.
AR low end is the greatest advantage in terms of sound of this box imho.
It’s fast, deep and can be very very low. I used to name AR: Analog Bass
Really increadible!
I think your monitoring system is the point. Nothing more.
Cheers
I’ll add to the choir and say that your monitoring is the most likely culprit here. If your speakers have poor low end response/accuracy, any judgement of low end frequencies becomes a nightmare.
Perhaps the reason why you like the A4 sound on your speakers more is the dreaded “one note bass” effect that haunts most consumer speaker systems? Never use a monitoring system like that to analyze low end, that’s just masochism. You can use it as one reference point, sure, but don’t make critical overall judgements with one.
I too had a bit mixed reactions to the low end at first, but after having made new kits with proper monitoring, I take my doubts back. The new kits bang even on the poor speaker setup now <3
hell - many thanks for all your comments! Havent expected that much resonance Thanks guys!!!
Yeah the reason i did not used it on my Alesis Monitor Speakers yet is the fact that i used to “produce” on this cheap Creative System for quite a while now and my ears are more or less calibrated toward it I just know how a bass should sound on this cheap system so that it just sounds right - my car hifi system then reflects this very well. So i know that when bass is missing on my cheap setup here, it is missing in the frequency range that most people can listen to on their setups - headphones - speakers - what not. And i want it to sound right for them since i plan to release some of my tracks in the future. It therefore is useless if the Rytm can produce nice low frequencies that will always get lost when stuff is heard on usual audio systems - for which i want to produce!
It may sound strange but trust me: As of today i can not trust my Monitor System anymore because on this one it always has bass bass bass - i used to crank it down there and ended up with not enough of it in the end. So i tend to use that cheap system here to get it just sound right and the last kick in that example from above does sound right - though i had to tweak it with the filter which makes me a bit sad as i planned to use it in a different way.
But thanks for your confirmation that everything sounds right in my recordings. Now i know that everythings ok with the rytm and i just have to always use an EQ if i dont want to use the filter. The bass Tom is a good tip also - it has alot of bass that i can hear on this cheap system as well
Just as a final question: Would you mind sharing your settings for a nice round 808ish kind of Bassdrum with me? So that i can get an impression how you tweak the Rytm? And as a side question - more or less: Do you guys also experience noise on your main outs when you use the compressor quite heavily? Without a very high makeup gain at all but with a pretty low threshold? Yeah you know - pumping 4tw
if you need to hear your kick more maybe you have to bring more harmonics on the sound, try to add a little overdrive on it, like this you will hear the kick even on monitor that can"t render it
not sure if your room is treated but room acoustics are huge on bass. also a kick reall is about mid and low feq andeven some high for the click. a pounding techno kick is about the mid and low and how they inter act.
your example 2 and 3 are very bassy but lack alot of mid so i dont think they will kick as huge. maybe a longer mid range enevlope.
I’ve made a little demo of the kicks i’m getting out of it using only the hard kick machine. I’ve filtered the highs out a little so the bass is more in the front. Straight out of the machine. Does this give moar bass on your speakers?
thanks alot for all your comments guys. It really is my sound system - it starts to make stuff clear at the beginning of the “upper lows” i would call them (starting at around 80-90 Hz) and below that it lacks of pretty much everthing. It is there but it is too quiet to be noticeable. I did a comparison with my basic AKG Headphones and even those yield more bass than my sound system Maybe i produced with too much bass in the past because of this?? Yay
I’ve listened to your kick examples SB-SIX - thanks alot for this! They do sound the same as the kicks out of my AR on my cheap system here so everythings fine with my AR i think.
In the meantime i already started a first pattern on it - messing around with the BT and the scenes. Its going into the direction i want to produce but its still far away from beeing good as it is too boring at the moment
I also notice some Click Noises when changing the scenes with some rather intense change of parameters. Listen carefully you can hear this in the transition stages quite good. Do you guys experience that too?
Cheers and again thanks for all your help! Its so nice to see that the community of Elektron Users really helps people out that have a problem! Big thumbs up to all of you!