Raw Sound of the M:S / headroom

Hey guys. I’m most likely grabbing one of these with the current sale but I still can’t shake the fact that I haven’t really enjoyed the sound of any of the demos.

There aren’t many demos out there and most tend to use the stock samples so its really hard to tell. To me it sounds like a dullness or blanket over everything. Like everything is low-passed slightly to avoid aliasing.

Wondering if any of you guys felt the same but were proven right or wrong upon purchase.

This box is right up my alley feature wise. I am looking for an EK sequencer with all its goodness, I don’t need to sample onboard and I’m looking for something simple that I can use to come up with interesting rhythms that I will then record into a daw.

Nothing else compares at this price-point but just for shits and giggles I looked into the Volca Sample and it just sounds so much better in every example I heard. No dull blanket. Low fidelity, sure but it had that high end bite and air I like. Can this be coaxed out of the M:S?

…listen to the soundpack demos…

if u can’t enjoy that, well, than this machine is not for u…
and yes, of course those examples have a little sum treatment…but this machine sounds great right out of the box…but on the other hand, u sound that unsure while hard to convince, that i hardly recommend some roland groove box …they sound sooo nice and cheasy, treated already full on untreated, also right out of the box, even no matter what u do with it, end of the day…that might be better choice for u…

If you like the volca, get that.

Seems pretty straight forward to me.

Not at all straight forward. I’m not looking for the feature set of a volca. I just happened to notice its raw sound which made me re-listen to the M:S more critically.

I also like the sound of a minimoog. That doesn’t mean it comes with the feature set I am looking for.

But boxes do have inherent characters and sound, even samplers. I am just trying to sus out the M:S’s before buying.

Ooh I haven’t gone through all the soundpack demos. Good advice!

E: I’m not so sure the soundpacks are actually played through on their respective devices as there are several that work as packs for multiple EK units.

I’m not looking for anything treated or mix ready by the way. That wasn’t my issue at all. I am also specifically looking for plocks/conditionals/other Elektron quirks so the Roland/Korg stuff isn’t going to cut it.

My concern is that I hear the same intrinsic sonic quality in most of the M:S demos. Its hard to tell how much of that is the device and how much is the stock samples and/or lack of deeper manipulation without actually having my hands on the unit.

I’m somewhat surprised that you find the sound of the Volca Sample clearer than the Model:Samples. The sample rate of the Volca is 31.5 kHz with a 16 bit depth output and a considerable noisefloor. When you want to give it some gain or drive, it becomes really noticeable.

I got a Digitakt partly because of those reasons – it has 48 kHz with 24 bit depth output and a lower noisefloor – and I’m much happier with the fidelity of the sound. Apparently the Model:Samples and the Digitakt both use the same output stages, so I guess my opinion is somewhat valid haha. Like you said, there’s no dull blanket on the Volca Sample, but to me the sound of the Elektrons is still way more transparent.

VS has tons of character and while technically worse sound quality, the lower sample rate and the analog isolator at the end of the signal sound better than DT to my ears. Low end is just immense!

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Not so much more clear. Just better. It just has a high end thing going on that sounds really nice. Hell, it might even be the noise floor that I like about the Volca.

I’m hoping to load my M:S full of strange noisy plops and squeals from my synths and retain some of that hairy vibe.

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Yeah man I love my ESQ-1 for the same reason.

Different strokes and not every device can have it all. I’m just wondering if the M:S is capable of playing back those kinds of sounds with the same authenticity or if the engine itself is what is glazing over and dulling the sounds.

…well, no worries then…

the m:s sampling engine is eye to eye with the from all sides beloved takt…
takt has little bit better converters and some more headroom…but ah, not really…

no crappy aliasing all over the place…whishing to be called lofi charme…and no…the soundpax demos made for the decicated ms soundpax are made with ms…only plus final treatment on master…and don’t get irritated by the flood of utube examples…in most cases u hear other stuff along with it while u never know the signal, converter chain ur listening to…and in most cases they got no or at least not really good final treatments for some lame online codecs…

live and out of the box, straight to speakers the m:s rox and shines…no worries…it’s a truu killer realtime performance box…and a no brainer for the actual price tag…

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I would try both of them out at a shop if I were you. Recordings don’t show the raw sound so clearly.

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Nice man. Yeah I pretty much can’t turn it down at the current price.

I’m sure I’m just fussing over nothing. Once I get my own samples in it I’m sure I’ll get along with it.

…transfer will be ur friend as much as m:s will be, though…and whatever u gonna drop there will be normalized and turned into 48k mono wav for full sonic satisfaction and simplicity…dig it…drop it…rock it…

Yeah, although I’ve found the digitakt is great at retaining character from other samplers. So if you already have character samplers you can really capture that sound and play and enhance it. VS does seem to sort of ride a middle ground nicely imo, but I wouldn’t likely use it in the studio like a microgranny granny or old akai to really get some crunch on the sounds. Model samples should be pretty capable of playing back character from its sources

Wonder if anyone would be happy to put some of your files on the M:S and play them out. I’d be perversely curious to hear the Volca Sample Presets (:heart:) coming out the model samples

Totally on point. Microgranny though is just plain shit sounding without external filter. Maybe it’s just me but I got pissed on bastl who are shipping 500 eur worth of gear (thyme) which has noisy gain pot and noise bleed all over, same as the cheap granny. What I do is resample the DT with bitcrush through the analog filters of my heat and resample back into DT.

This may be common knowledge, but I’ve noticed that if I don’t adjust global velocity to around 70 and utilize varying velocity levels- the mix of the 6 tracks has zero headroom and causes great ear fatigue, even with panning, like everything is compressed or limited to the max. It’s especially noticeable on synth parts, they sit much better in the mix with varying low velocity levels. Just thinking out loud in case somebody finds this informative…

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Will try that :ok_hand: