Cirklon V2

I feel like the results speak for themselves, YMMV.

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I’ve been loving my Cirklon after a few months of use. i’ve owned the Hapax, Oxi One, Pyramid, and many Elektron boxes, and I find finishing ideas and having fun comes most naturally with the Cirklon. partially (as someone said upthread) because it’s thoughtful UX around rapidly being able to arrange and iterate on your patterns.

for the programmers, a friend described it well: using a Hapax (my previous favorite sequencer) is like working in VS Code whereas using the Cirklon is like working in Vim. much less hand holding - you need to build up your own MIDI Effects with Aux events, but you have a ton more flexibility because of that. my brain specifically likes building these kinds of MIDI Effect type workflows up and I find I get much more unique results because of the malleability.

tldr I do not find the Cirklon overhyped but instead a profound creative tool after 10+ years of trying other sequencers.

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:pray:

Just got notified that it’s my turn after waiting like two years!

Totally forgot, bought other gear a few months ago, so i won’t be purchasing this time.

Perhaps in two years… lol

If it helps any of those ‘on the fence’ when their waiting list spot came up… I got on the list June 2019, my email finally came in October 2023 and I didn’t hesitate to place the order the same day. I had the advantage of having a v1 on long-term loan for a couple of years before that, and it’s fair to say (even with having a full complement of Elektron gear already) the Cirklon has become the absolute essential hub that runs my whole studio.

I wouldn’t be without it now, and in fact I’ve now built a separate little ‘B’ rig for my office with the v1 and a small eurorack frame which I usually populate with a Poly Hector and a couple of eurorack samplers (bitbox micro and V2) for jams and live use.


(the final version I settled on is a wider frame, 106hp wide)

You’d have to pry my Cirklons from my cold, dead, hands…

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two Cirklons? you’re a madman.

what’s your approach to sequencing all of those Elektron boxes? what about your other machines with internal sequencers? do you just use the Cirklon, do you do a combination of it and their internal sequencers, or do some machines get sequenced from the Cirklon and others use their internal sequencer?

I always struggle with this with the Elektron machines. with simple sequencers (even like X0X boxes), I think it’s best to use the Cirklon because it’s so much more powerful and they lack CC’s or parameter locking, etc. with the Elektron boxes, it just kinda feels wrong because they’re so powerful on their own. but I hate juggling multiple sequencers at once too…

and I know we’ve discussed this before in this thread, but always good to hear more users’ approaches… I stopped using my Cirklon for a bit in favor of a slimmed-down approach, and I’m looking to move it back into the setup.

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Depends on the context / type of track really.

Often I’ll do everything from the Cirklon, including drums, and will end up just using a couple of the Elektron boxes (usually A4 and Digitone) as multi-timbral modules.

But, for other things, in particular if I’m doing more generative type stuff I’ll use the Elektron sequencers for all the lovely conditional stuff, and then just sequence the pattern changes from the Cirklon.

Also, if I’ve got friends round for a jam, it’s likely one of them will want to jump on the drum machines and hence use the internal sequencers stand-alone, but it’s more likely if I’m doing someone solo I’ll use the CK pattern mode in the Cirklon and sequence my drums from that too (sometimes split across multiple channels to separate out kick, hats, percussion into separate tracks for ease of muting etc.

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Ugh, passing on the Cirklon after my name came up. Wrung my hands for several days. Realized a few things:

  • Some people say “This item will complete my setup!” By contrast, the Cirklon is begging to have more stuff plugged into it. Not sure that is the road I want to take.

  • I realized that FOMO (fear of missing out) wasn’t a good enough reason to buy the thing.

  • I haven’t really identified anything musically I want to do with a different sequencer that I’m unable to do on my Digitone. I also own a Digitakt, which I’ve only used on a handful of projects, and that even without the sampler, increases my sequencing ability on other gear.

  • I mistakenly interpreted the price of the Cirklon as Euros, rather that British Pounds. Duh. Then I realized that it was significantly more expensive.

  • The scope of electronic music I make is, by necessity, limited by the fact that it is used as accompaniments for students. My goal is to make the melody, played by the students, seem like the most important thing, rather than burying them.

  • There are a few, smaller priced items I am thinking about.

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It sounds like you’ve made the right decision for you. I agree, there’s no point buying based on FOMO…

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they should be in euros they are based in Berlin now.

The service they are using for the billing listed the price in British Pounds. I was initially confused, assuming the price was in Euros.

Hmm, maybe thats some kind of localization, because I see € in their shop for years now,

From https://cirklon.rubadub.co.uk/

Screenshot from 2024-07-20 11-50-48

Given the exchange rate, would make my price $2002.13

For the 1750 Euro price, by contrast, that’d make my cost $1906.01

Only $100 different, right? Except that, if I use PayPal, they give me a shitty exchange rate, tacking on an extra ~$80 to the purchase.

Also, the CVIO version is the only one available, right now. Tack on another couple hundred for that.

Given the fact that I was already on the fence, this just helped prevent me from succumbing to GAS.

Great product! Happy music making to all you using it!

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Ive had the non CVIO in and out of the basket for a while now. Good to hear.

You have to manually select for your credit card to do the conversion to avoid this. I always do this to save $ since my credit card gives me great exchange rates.

I tried doing this recently for a different purchase and it seemed like it was no longer possible. Lost about 50 USD. I’d like to know if I just missed something though for next time.

(The last time this worked for me I was only able to figure it out by checking out as a guest and using my credit card, but that didn’t seem to work either)

PayPal defaults to them doing the conversion so they can charge you more. All you have to do is click on the option near your credit card info that selects for the conversion to be done by the credit card company instead (right before confirming the transaction). Nothing has changed.

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Hmm I’ll definitely look for this again next time. I spent like an hour trying to work around this with no success, but hopefully I’m just daft :stuck_out_tongue:

If you buy something in euros/pounds using PayPal, the amount will be shown in USD (which reflects PayPal doing the conversion with their additional fee). When you select the option for your credit card to do the conversion instead, the amount will be shown in the original euro/pound amount.