Digitone or Model:Cycles to pair with Polyend Tracker?

Elektron Gear
1

Hi all,
I’ve had the polyend tracker for a few months now, and am really enjoying it as a drum machine + sequencer, but find the synth sounds kind of limiting. It has a wavetable and granular synth engine, which are fine but I find myself fighting with the engines to get softer sounds/to match how ideas sound in my head.

So, I have decided to look into a synth that I can pair easily, either via fully controlling the synth notes with the Tracker’s MIDI channels, or something I can program on the device itself and then sync the synth sequence with the Tracker’s drum sequence.

I’ve kind of narrowed my search down to the Digitone or Model:Cycles. I have owned the M:C in the past, and it was my first synth box, but at the time I wasn’t able to really get into the nitty gritty of the engines or the sequencer, and ended up selling it along with other gear due to financial issues at the time.

Basically my goals are:
-Soft, FM synth sounds (I am primarily using this for video game music, and have a specific “sound profile” in mind already)
-Ability to sequence at least 4 tracks, 64 steps (all of my Tracker patterns are 64 or less)
-Option to control note triggers via Tracker (so, I can essentially build on the Tracker, then plug and play an external synth)
-Way to trigger pattern changes on the synthesizer’s sequencer
-Some sound design depth - drones, tingy sounds, blips/bleeps, and classic chimey pads

Nice to have would be to read incoming MIDI notes and save to a sequence (similar to what Ableton can do). Another nice to have would be a built-in arpeggiator, which I believe the Digitone has but not the M:C

Do you guys think that the added depth of the Digitone is worth it over the M:C? The cycles does seem like it has some depth based on some youtube vids I’ve watched, but overall the sounds are kinda “what you see is what you get” based on my memory of owning one.

Sorry for the long winded post, thanks in advance for any help :slight_smile:

2

Digitone, for many reasons. I love the M:C, but Digitone will fit your needs better.

2 Likes
3

that’s kind of what I was thinking before posting this topic. The main hesitation is the price (and learning curve lol), but all it would be is another few weeks of saving up in order to buy a Digitone versus the M:C
I’m gonna go with Digitone, and keep an eye on the used market in the meantime although I do prefer to buy things new if possible.

Thanks

4

There are loads of presets and sound packs you can get for the DN that you can start from, so even if it takes a while for you to develop intuitions about its synth engine, you’ll be able to get to the sounds you want.

You can also use the DN as a 2-in mixer/interface if you like. The Master Overdrive applied when there’s an external signal coming in works nicely for gluing the DN’s sound together with it.

5

Hey, thats a good and current question. I picked up a polyend tracker a couple of weeks ago and it compliments my old MD mk1 so well. The md midi interacts so well with the tracker with cc’s linking in from almost the get go and sampling the md poly style into the tracker is ace. If I was in your position and it would be a toss up between the syntakt or digitone. Note - given that the tracker reverb was apparently taken from mi clouds I really hope that a clouds-lite version and a kind of braids-lite make it to the next tracker firmware.

6

thanks for the replies everyone, I was going to save up for a new Digitone but I managed to find a used one in very good condition for a little over 500usd.

Super stoked for it to get here :slight_smile:

3 Likes
7

I was wondering if you can sequence the cycles from the polyendTracker, and also let the midi pass through the cycles, maybe to sequence another instrument… Is that possible?

8

Yes, using the MIDI in and MIDI Out/Thru, it’s certainly possible to do that. Keep in mind each step that is routed to a MIDI instrument on the tracker will reduce your voice count by 1.

1 Like
9

Thanks for replying!
I definitely need checking this out soon :wink:

10

yes you can indeed do that. The new update for the pt OG gives you 4 extra midi tracks. I was recently sequencing my MD with the PT OG. Euclidean sequencing is fun and also some random retrigs.

11

Yes.