And uw🎩🪄and ringmod, and dynamix, and 16 lfos, and CTRL. And the sound.
Sorry to be that purist, but your frankenmd just sounds too clean.
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My MD MKIII+ is a OT+ST combo !
I have all off these with more possibilities with OT, much better control. For UW : 8 additional recorder tracks.
I don’t care about having the possibility to combine 16 lfos I’d lack on other tracks. I prefer at least 2 per track.
I have 72 lfos, up 16 compressors or ring mods. No CTR machines, but 16 scenes and crossfader I can control with midi.
For the sound, I can get closer with LOFI and eq, but of course I wouldn’t get MD character immediately, 12 bit samples…
Sorry not to be an MD but OT purist ! 
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I forgot you OT users are so sensitive about your unlimited power.xx
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Sorry, dark side consequence.
I agree that ST alone lacks some lofi dirt, eq, compressor and heavy distortion (I am not fond of FX TRACK drive).
MD MKII UW+ has much more to offer standalone compare to ST.
Very different workflow, for immediacy and stuff like tuned synths, ST all the way…
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And you can live record the performance of a melody! All the freely assignable LFOs in the MD are cool on paper, but if live recording doesn’t work very well, it’s basically useless to me for making music.
After getting a MD I realized that all of the lusty features it has that the modern devices don’t have (freely assignable LFOs, Ctrl tracks, dynamix, slide trigs, etc) are way less important to me than the quality of life features on the modern devices, like live recording that records note lengths, unquantized recording, LFOs with really good visualization, etc.
Those are features that doesn’t really get anyone excited, but using a device without them really sucks.
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Still possible to assign different pitches on MD tracks, record, sample. Limited of course.
But not by playing keys on a keyboard like a normal musician, gotta get the calculator out and push up the glasses.
Not sure if Elektron users are normal musicians. 
Btw even before OSX I could play MD tuned with a keyboard and a midi processor mapping notes to pitch CCs…
I sold my MDMIIUW+ just after…
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Ahem. Mcl. Chromatic/Poly ext keys with one combo.
I’m loathed to mention it as usual but Mcl does put MD in OT territory. And maybe beyond in some performance cases. Definitely beyond ST…. 
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Yeah, one more box to add to the headache and complexity. A MD with MCL can go “beyond” ST, and if my goal is going “beyond”, then lets just go all the way and use a laptop. If the important thing is features on paper, then we oughta get rid of all of these boxes and just use a midi controller with a daw. Having a box packed with millions of advanced features is actually a detriment to me, because I end up fiddling with all those features instead of actually making music. This is why I have never finished a single song with the MD or MNM, I have finished one with OT, and 2 with Syntakt, and like 4 with the model cycles. What am I trying to go “beyond”? My own patience? My ability to finish a song?
It reminds me a bit of modular, where when I was early I spent more time thinking about what my rack could do than actually doing anything with that massive capability. There are a few people out there who can take that sea of possibilities, discard all the chaff, and distill it into something great. But I have never had the patience to do that, and I think a lot of musicians feel similar.
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I have both, an my answer is yes. Except the hihats 
And I wouldn’t say “no” to more LFOs, but only because the digital machines (except Swarm) all need one LFO to not have the dreadful machinegun effect, which the MD’s machines luckily don’t have.
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um i’m stupid what exactly is the machine gun effect and how do i avoid it
Appreciate the depth of your answer.
My reference has only ever been creation/fun/performance/sound.
Your use of the word “song” will mean different things to different people.
I guess I only record a live performance, I don’t really see this as a song.
To me the song is the pattern(s) and all the potential performative (parameter changes, live muting etc) options within them.
Whatever recording gets captured is one possible version of that song captured at that particular moment in time.
For others a song may be a completely programmed piece from start to end.
Introduce a daw (talking of over complication and a trillion choices of roads to travel down) and then that’s a whole different approach to song writing.
That’s why I love electronic music I think. No rules.
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I’ve made a quick example on the Syntakt: with, without, with, without.
By default, it sounds like a one-shot sample. With adding random LFO(s) to selected parameters, the effect is gone and it sounds like one would a synthesizer or a real snare expect to sound (to sound real, it needs additionally velocity variation).
Ant that’s one of the strengths of Machinedrum and Nord Drum - although digital, the sounds are lifely.
Syntakt’s Swarm engine, which came in a later update does sound lifely, which made me even more hopeful for the future
Edit - I shall make a Syntakt feature request: a Random Phase option, via the Setup pages
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Yeah, for me a “song” is one recorded performance of a series of patterns. I don’t perform live, but I record my “songs” in one take as a performance, but then I don’t go back to them really. So for me it is always a balance between the flow of tweaking sounds, creating patterns, and figuring out transitions between the patterns. I have limited ability to have the discipline to focus on one specific part of that music making process, and find myself getting easily distracted from writing patterns and will start just tweaking sounds, or messing with LFOs or something. The deeper the interface, the more ability I have to just mess with stuff, maybe making a single pattern, but not making something I am all that happy with. And by the time I am tired of using the device, where am I? I have tweaked a bunch of stuff, but it wasn’t that satisfying, because it feels like it didn’t really lead anywhere.
In this way it can almost be more satisfying for me to use a “boring” device that is simpler and does less on paper. Because I end up actually focusing on writing music, instead of just fucking with sound design endlessly. Experimentation is great, but it is very prone to failure, and requires a whole ton of patience and dedication to really hone all of the good stuff and get rid of the bad. And I just rarely actually have that patience.
Quick test. I realized it was still too clean after recording
(I added OT slight lofi and compressor).
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Very cool.
Are you just using tiny amounts of the lfo here? You think a random phase would be enough to vary the sound this much?
I definitely hear the liveness difference.
That gives me an idea for a feature request across all boxes with retirg. Random Retrig Velocity.
As you lay a retrig you can scroll past the -127 to 127 and enter a new region of 0% - 100% randomization of the velocity for those trigs. Instead of simply ramping up or down, you could add in a bit of variety to velocity here.
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Precisely the same for me. I know MCL solves some of those problems but spending an extra $300+ to add features to an already very expensive thing is just not something I wanted to do.
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This is why I’ve never been “truly” tempted to grab the MD. And having to add a side kick for it just doesn’t vibe with me. I could just pilot it through Bitwig if I wanted to do that.
But then I hear the thing and I’m like “oh, yeah that exact sound I want automatically.”
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