Digitakt 2 transfer speeds

diatessaron · 2024-07-05T10:32:27.777Z

DreamXcape:

If you find one of these 20 years down the road, the chance of you having a device that supports an ancient sample transfer protocol is basically zero.

I’m actually really happy that my Rytm MKII supports the MIDI Sample Dump Standard which is, I think, almost 30 years old. I can use it to transfer samples directly from my SU10. The transfer speed is veeeeeery slooooooow though.

I don’t have a DTII but can understand the frustration with slow sample transfer speeds. I think it would be a good solution to have both a legacy compatible transfer protocol and a more ”2024”-like protocol you could choose from. I have no idea how easy/difficult it would be to implement.

nanowave · 2024-07-05T11:14:10.506Z

I agree that online communities can get toxic when people start piling up unnecessarily. But gaslighting people by telling them that it’s, in fact, a good thing that Elektron is using an archaic transfer protocol is almost as toxic imho.

That’s not directed at you, and I won’t start pointing my finger at certain individuals, but some, if not most of the „reasons“ I’ve read here are borderline bizarre and completely made up.

In any case, as a new DT2 owner I was — and still am — shocked by the anachronistic transfer speed. Taken together with the drive corruption issues it has led to a lot of uncertainty, which is no fun at all.

Is it a show stopper? Not for me, fortunately, even if it’s frustrating. But shooting down people who expect to transfer their sample libraries flawlessly and within a reasonable timeframe is just wrong, imho. It’s 2024, and they’re selling a device with a 20 GB drive.

Ok, I’ve said my piece, carry on

avantronica · 2024-07-05T12:33:50.968Z

That’s imho still completely misrepresenting my post and it’s disingenuous to pretend otherwise, which for „2024“ is sadly not that surprising …

feel free to enlighten the thread with your observed ‘list’ of bizarre and completely made up reasons though … just out of curiosity, don’t be afraid of drawing attention to those people gaslighting or being toxic or shooting down anyone on this matter - i can assure you it’s unlikely to be attributed to me

like i said … “shooting the messenger”

by definition, if you can’t bring reality, positivity or reason to a discussion, it’s already toxic

JoyrexJ9 · 2024-07-05T16:08:14.380Z

The argument that using a legacy MIDI protocol is a better choice for future proofing, over USB storage - doesn’t hold up to even the merest scrutiny.

There’s nothing toxic about pointing out the obvious

avantronica · 2024-07-05T16:57:56.841Z

JoyrexJ9:

is a better choice

again, this misrepresents my contribution - everybody was flailing to come up with a reason - i offered one (not by way of any comparison), that chimes with the actual reality - go figure where the scrutiny is shy

there’s plenty toxic about complaining about an explanation offered in good faith - like i keep saying, try not to shoot the messenger - we could have continued randomly date quoting 2024 etc - but now you have a part of Elektron’s thought process to consider it’s my problem because it doesn’t reiterate your frustration - there’s no point in debating what isn’t up for debate, seems obvious … is it better to be in the dark to maximise the frustration or is it better to understand where and why you possibly are where you start

misquoting me doesn’t fix anything, it’s not like i didn’t ask to avoid this …

avantronica:

don’t y’all be pestering me with complainin’

like it or not, what you have in front of you is entirely a reflection of Elektron’s choices/compromises, there’s no point berating me like they were mine … or even though i don’t particularly care; there’s no denying it’s a heard legitimate concern

it’s two way though, people also have to reflect that they will have legitimate reasons for prioritisation of their choices/wishes and everything can’t happen at once, especially if it marks an evolution and doubly so if it’s built upon a significant change (like their development platform) … there’s no OB yet, arguably more of an obligation, there’s clearly a way to go imho before finessing already ‘working’ features, irrespective how legitimate the usability complaints about speed are

fyi. - i haven’t read anywhere that it’s even a viable option to have USB storage possibilities on this board, so it’s not even something that can be ‘compared’ meaningfully afaict

so with respect, i’m getting nothing from all this haranguing about a simple shared truth, but i’m not interested in an irrelevant discussion on something that will surely be in hand (if and whenever it’s feasible) and as i said, i’m not bothered either way but i certainly wouldn’t complain if it was made quicker … i’m therefore muting this topic, fill your boots …

Uija · 2024-07-07T04:51:40.246Z

Most of the posts in this thread that might match you description (including mine) are not defending Elektrons choices in any way, but showing up “the reason” for the slow speed.
Doesn’t help anyone to rant about people showing up informations, because you interpret something into words that is not there.
People writing “Was no issue for me” maybe with giving a reason why, are also not defending anything but showing up, that it doesn’t seem to be an issue for everyone. That doesn’t make the points from people struggling with that less valuable or them wrong. It just shows up other peoples perspective. Thats what communities are for.
Everything is way more easy, if we try to not be offended by other people having other experiences.

Uija · 2024-07-07T05:03:39.301Z

avantronica:

fyi. - i haven’t read anywhere that it’s even a viable option to have USB storage possibilities on this board, so it’s not even something that can be ‘compared’ meaningfully afaict

I don’t think that the board is not able to (as long as serial data from the usb port reaches the CPU you can teach the CPU to do everything the USB Protocol provides), but there are tons of other reasons not to be able to do that. A simple one might be resources. Elektron just might want to spent the precious developer time on synth features instead of writing storage drivers. Maybe (and I am quite sure about that) the +Drive isn’t using a file system that computers can understand. I can totally see Elektron doing their own storage system for performance as well as reference handling reasons. That makes something like USB mass storage implementation unreasonable more complex and time consuming.
On top of that: When my “measurements” mentioning above are correct (that saving a sample seems to take as long as uploading it via transfer) there seems to be an internal reason for that memory-access-speed. Based on that, adding USB mass storage wouldn’t fix the issue, as that would be as slow as Transfer.

All that said: Would I love to be all that tons faster? Hell yeah! While I don’t really care about the speed from Computer to the Device, that would also speed up loading and saving projects!

Chrisbe77 · 2024-10-16T17:14:06.788Z

I’ve just updated three devices and the Digitakt 2 is an order of magnitude slower at transferring the update file. That shouldn’t be the case with the newer box particularly when transferring samples is a basic function.

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Udoyothing · 2024-10-16T17:15:04.322Z

Noticed that as well, started laughing about it, it’s not only the samples that take long to transfer

JoyrexJ9 · 2024-11-26T22:36:21.533Z

Sample management on this thing is like stepping back in time 15 years, it’s shameful given the care, love and attention put into the rest of the device

L4RS · 2025-06-03T07:22:13.785Z

Is the sample transfer speeds when using the Elektron Transfer application the same when working with a Digitakt 1 and a Digitakt 2?

mlin · 2025-06-03T11:31:07.212Z

Yes.

Chrisbe77 · 2025-06-03T14:39:36.280Z

I didn’t test the 2 side by side but that’s not my experience. Digitakt 2 transfer speeds are horribly slow, as shown by the comparison to the Syntakt and Digitone when transferring an update file.

bibenu · 2025-06-03T15:14:00.712Z

Chrisbe77:

Digitakt 2 transfer speeds […] the comparison to the Syntakt and Digitone

Perhaps I’m misunderstanding but isn’t this comparing apples to ~~oranges~~ peanuts ? DT2 transfers include WAV files, ST and DN1/DN2 do not.

@L4RS was asking for a comparison of DT1 and DT2

christianlukegates · 2025-06-03T19:22:21.114Z

Bad comparison. Syntakt and digitone are transferring very small amounts of data, digitakt is transferring data plus (relatively speaking) much larger audio files.

L4RS · 2025-06-03T19:36:14.027Z

Let’s do some comparisons to get a feel for “speed” and what not.

Say we want to send a 10 megabyte sample file to the Digitakt2:

Using standard midi the speed is 31.25kB/s at most, so out 10 megabytes will take about 40 minutes.
Using Elektron “turbo” midi you get about 10 times the speed of standad Midi so our 10 megabytes will be transfered in slightly over 4 minutes. (This was quite an achievement back in the day.)
Using Elektron Transfer application people here seem to be getting around 280 kB/s since 10 megabytes takes about 35 seconds.

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If you sample on the Digitakt 2 (at 16 bit 48kHz stereo) after 1 minute and about 17 seconds you have yourself a 10 megabyte sample file.
On my Macbook when transfering 10 megabytes to my external SSD-drive it takes aproximately 15 milliseconds.

Everything is relative, but the sample transfer speeds for Digitakt2 does need some love in my humble opinion. Come on Elektron let some wild Swedish engineering loose on the data transfer features!

everbong · 2025-06-03T20:15:47.696Z

Transfer app converts almost any audio on the fly, part of why it takes longer. Better than getting unsupported file errors like I do on my SP-404 mkII and MPC.

Chrisbe77 · 2025-06-03T20:49:31.839Z

It’s not a bad comparison. All 3 boxes were transferring update files of similar sizes with the digitakt running 10x slower than the other two.

Transferring audio files to the digitakt 2 is a tediously slow process by modern standards.

L4RS · 2025-06-04T05:12:50.154Z

Yes, that’s true, the sample transfer app does more things than just data transfer. And stability is also something that is very important, even more so when the transfer speeds are slow.

JoyrexJ9 · 2025-06-07T22:01:54.465Z

While I agree, there is absolutely nothing stable about the Transfer app, sample transfers fail constantly, especially downloads. I’ve had to switch to Elkherd just to get basic samples in & out