Have not seen a ton of sound design videos on the FM Drum Synth engine. I’m curious if anyone out there that also owns a Nord Drum can comment on the FM Drum Synth engine, using the comb filter types etc. in the DN an dhow close it is to some of the ND sounds?
They seem to have a fair amount of overlap in terms of modulation and synthesis capabilities, even if they get there in different ways.
Also interested to know about any resemblance…
The FM Drum machine is, in my opinion, the highlight of the DN2, and probably the machine I use the most. It’s a great starting point to quickly dial in drum sounds on its own, AND a fantastic exciter for the comb filters. The ability to mix between body / transient / noise layers is great.
Using the Comb- filter, you can get a lot of woody physical modelling percussion sounds. It sort of reminds me of the SSF Entity Percussion, or Intellijel Plonk in some regards. Comb+ tends to be better for strings, pianos, flutes, etc., but I’ve also gotten some great sounding snare and tom sounds out of it. The combo of FM Drum and Comb Filters is super versatile.
DN2 provides a lot of shortcuts for creating percussion sounds easily with the FM Drum machine, but it’s also a lot more versatile than any of the Nord Drum engines and personally I prefer the way it sounds. I’ve had Nord Drum 2 and 3p and they always seem to have a dullness to their sound I can’t get past.
Thx for your pov!
Don’t sleep on the Wavetone Ring mod and Hard sync options though, lots of interesting timbres to get there, together with LFOs on the oscillators.
Sounds good. Thinking about selling my Nord Drum 2 to fund the Digitone 2. I happen to love the sound of the ND2 but the interface is a little cumbersome and the lack of multiple outputs is not great.
People talking about Digitone II Keys, but maybe we need Digitone II Pads?
(Love my Nord Drum 3P)
You only have to be careful that phase isn‘t reset, and maybe even use random LFOs on certain parameters, to have the same amount of alive and organic sound.
Stay away from the impact samples.
If you want to go the final step, force yourself to use velocity and velocity mod.
I‘m selling my Nord Drump 3p because of DNII 
Nord Drum has multiple models of oscillators and every voice has an oscillator and a noise layer, each with its own envelopes (or just one?). As for the modulation, there is not much going on actually, I remember only amp lfo for gate-like effect. So, emulation is definitely possible, but would require layering of 2 sounds
as has DNII fm drum and wavetone, not counting mod and feedback, which should be counted
Right, though there is no controll for the osc attack, only “Punch”:
Punch can add a short, velocity controlled attack portion to the Wave. L1 to L3 indicates three different levels of this attack.
There are some settings you probably cannot do on the DN2 (please correct me if I’m wrong, I don’t own one), like exponential decay curves. Imho the difference lies on workflow (NDs are made to model real percussive sounds, not to cover a broad sound palette) and the many oscillator modes.
But there are many more modulation options on any Elektron machine, tied to the sequencer too, and a lot of the ND’s dynamic behaviour can be emulated with the often neglected velocity mod.
Not gonna lie though, there is some magic in the ND sound 
Please let me know if you decide to sell your ND; I would be interested.
I think the ND’s response to velocity is really impressive. It doesn’t just make things louder, but makes changes to the character of the sound. I’m sure this can be replicated in other machines, but it’s great how it’s a natural aspect of the ND’s sound.
Not 100% sure about the DNII, but the Nord Drum doesn’t allow a sustain phase, its trigger only. That might be something to consider
I’m clearly among my people here! 
It was indeed the “playability” of the ND series that made it stand out. It’s easily the most expressive percussion synth engine out there out of the box. Yes, you can make pretty much any synth with velocity mod be expressive, but Nord got it right.
I’ve ND2, 3P (several), and the thing that just killed it for me was trying to sequence and perform with it. Nord MIDI implementation on that thing was just weird. If you want to use an external sequencer, and be able to play the pads to record the seqs, you needed to turn off local control, but then you couldn’t change patches or use the devices knobs! It’s insane. So I needed to program a midi router to pass the CC and PC messages, etc. etc.
So far it seems like the DNII is a godsend for my decade long search for the best synth/seq combo for synth drumming, and I’ve literally tried just about everything out there.
Tried Opal from Fors.fm?
Razzmatazz too ?
It seems to have things in common with DN2 FM Drum…
Not in my radar anymore having DN2…
Never heard of that one. I only know them from the other sampler things etc… Kinda ignored them because for SW stuff I just use my iPad and all those types of devices just seem like an ipad with a few knobs, which I have. :). IOS is OK, there’s some pretty awesome drum synths on there, but one integrated machine is really what I’ve wanted. Elektron stuff was closest. By until DNII with the 16 track count, nothing did everything.
This thing, in spite of its price, color and quirks, has been my number one choice for drum design over the last years.
Anyone can compare DN2 drums to DrumSpillage2 soft synth? IMHO, DrumSpillage is the best synth drums I’ve ever heard.
Also, anyone compare the FM Drums in DN2 to those in the TR8s?