Could the Digitone be everything?

Elektron Gear Digitone/Digitone Keys
#1

I was just playing around with the Digi boxes and reading the descriptions on the machines. Digitakt: “8 Voice Digital Drum Computer & Sampler” etc.
And on the Digitone “Polyphonic Digital Synthesizer” I thought to myself “ok, it doesn’t say anything about the device is FM”.
Would it be possible to turn it into a completely different digital synthesizer?
Something like a virtual analog synthesizer or wavetable?

Elektron could sell us different firmwares …

Don’t get me wrong. I love the FM sounds … But something like a virtual Analog Eight would be great too :slight_smile:

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#2

In theory this should be possible, sure.
But they wouldn’t do that, obviously.

In the same vein, I would assume that M:S and M:C are 1:1 identical hardware… (perhaps a bit more storage on M:S ?)

Good point about the descriptions, though.
Perhaps they did have something like that in mind when they did the initial design…

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#3

It’s probably because the Digitone is not purely an FM synth? It has subtractive and additive elements as well.

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#4

Dr. Steve Brule actually married his digitone!

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#5

In a way it already can be a virtual analog synth. It’s already got the filters, envelopes and LFO’s. And someone was selling a soundpack that had the FM section dialed into basic waveforms like saw, square, etc.

#6

True, but the main “selling point” is FM. Maybe FM + :slight_smile:
On the website every second word is FM (https://www.elektron.se/de/digitone-explorer).

#7

In the manual, 2. The Digitone, first words :

“FM synthesis is a very powerful synthesis method, discovered and pioneered by John Chowning in the late 1960’s. (…)”

Then :

“FM synthesis is known for being difficult to program, and we wanted to make it more accessible. When we began designing Digitone, (…) our ambition was to offer the full depth of FM synthesis but modernize it, streamline it, make it more elegant. In a sense, we wanted to expand the notion of what FM synthesis could be and mean. And so our work began.”

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#8

…fm synthesis, in it’s basic universal concept, is capable to “mock” any kind and sort of sonic signature…from synthetic all the way to accoustic flavours…

and the dn, with it’s very own take on fm, can tell for sure…

#9

Man, I never really paid attention to these introductions in the manuals but they are great. The Syntakt one is very poetic for example :

“Rain is like the sound of trains outside your window. Looking out, you see reflections of the passing aboveground subway and crimson tail lights. Refractions in the lingering water droplet trigger memories. Off-world colonies and the rhythm of life, on our world and others, imagined or actual, exist at the edge of our grasp in a blur of light-speed relativistic reality. (…)”

lowl

#10

zzzzz…

#11

He’s got a thing for snithisizer hunks.

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#12

How’s your assembler knowledge and embedded platforms, CPU knowledge and FPGA apparently?

Do you have access to whatever proprietary DSP libraries?

Theoretically sure, the Digitone could be rewritten within the bounds of resource availability and optimization but the effort would be pretty huge for a non-expert in the designs Elektron uses.

#13

Sure, but let me paraphrase Ess (the actual instigator/designer of the instrument) here: ‘The FM bit in Digitone is more like a complex tone generator with the rest of the signal path being more akin to a traditional subtractive synth’.

All that to say: I wouldn’t look too much into the wording on the actual machine :stuck_out_tongue:

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#14

i wish they’d do this. we need more elektron synths

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#15

I’m liking the AH and Digitone combo for a portable techno house setup.

#16

Agree would like to see them add more sequencer options as well like random, probability and ping pong modes.

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