It’s fairly easy to get up to speed in Drambo. If you get the Elektron workflow, it will feel second nature.
Check out these great tutorial videos from these two great users:
Ben does a great job of showing off the power of Drambo:
Sound For More really helps you get grounded in Drambo:
Jump in…the water is fine 
Thanks. I’m totally comfortable with the Elektron workflow, so this is good news.
Thank you for your help. Fortunately, the Pajen firmware for the Volca Sample handles polyphonic mode beautifully, so I didn’t need to get crazy with MIDI channels
But now it’s time to get crazy…with the Volca! 
Another question, for the samplers among you: is the best way to sample hardware i to Drambo while hosted in AUM to load Drambo as an effect, then record/sample the external signal? Is it possible to sample while Drambo is running as an AUv3 instrument?
Thanks in advance for sharing your techniques!
Drambo is deeper than the Octatrack for sure, as it has a full modular engine. But the beauty of Drambo is that you can pick and choose what aspects you want to dive deep into. I use Drambo a lot and over half of the modules I don’t usually touch, but its amazing to know that if I wanted to try something different and weird there’s a way to do it with all the tools at hand. Octatrack is way more restricted.
If you just want to use Drambo’s sampler/sequencer and run those samples through a few FX (e.g. replicate the Octatrack) its not that complicated.
I find the drambo workflow to be better overall for a few reasons:
Downsides:
Main one for me vs OT is no rec trigs or quantised recordings.
Edit: looked back at when I asked about this before and mostly ppl were ‘no sequencing of recordings’ but someone said this
Which sounds hopeful.
Would appreciate a comparison of ‘sequenced sampling’ between OT and Drambo if anyone has looked into it? 
Yea this is very true, and I forgot about it in my previous list. Drambo rec-trig support is pretty minimal currently. The octatrack is an excellent 8 track looper. And an ok 4-channel fx unit (I only say OK because I don’t think the octatrack fx are very good).
You can lock the record/play button in the recorder module, but once a recording is done you can’t re-record without manually pressing a clear button in the UI (unless I’m missing something). So you can use it to do quantized recording but its more cumbersome.
That being said, Giku is actively working on multiple inputs into Drambo, one of the features needed to achieve octatrack-level record-trig madness. I feel confident that improving recording trigs is something on the roadmap afterwards! He’s mentioned doing work on the samplers so I think its a matter of time.
Compared to the Octatrack for my use its almost there . Just need midi sync and program change in stand alone mode + a good midi controller (must do a template for my Nord Modular G2)
Im not a fan of touch screen and prefer a physical interface TBH but IMO the workflow is so much better in Drambo for me its liberating.
Had my first drambo session yesterday - holy shit, this thing is deeeeeep.
I am going to sell my beatstep pro and the microfreak, also saves me from getting an OT
no other long term elektron user here, that thinks the drambo sequencer is really not intuitive? 
I didn’t read the manual, but I have real problems with basic things like copying/deleting whole bars, deleting a trig plus trig condition in one go etc. Using different step length, amount of bars for different tracks etc.
I‘m sure I‘m just missing simple things that are described in the manual, but I myself don‘t get the feeling that drambo is very intuitive if you know the elektron sequencer.
On the other hand, the modular synth is awesome. I love the way you make connection and how the audio signal flow is handled
I feel the same way. I bought Drambo because of the hype but I find many functions are hard to do without checking the manual. Still waiting for a music app with true intuitive touch interface…
Yeah, I had to watch bcrichards’ video to understand how to use the sequencer. I had to pause and rewind the video a bunch of times too because it’s a fast moving video.
I didn’t find the sequencer that hard to learn, but I learned to create patterns faster on Gadget, Sunvox, NS2, etc. Anyone who is really used to the piano-roll style is going to struggle at first w/ Drambo’s sequencer. I know there was a whole lotta drama about piano roll vs. no piano roll early on, but getting used to not having the piano roll was part of the price of admission to Drambo, and it clearly wasn’t a barrier to its most ardent fans. Granted it’s been months since I played w/ Drambo.
i think those recent posted videos have helped, it wasnt very immediate for me on how to add notes / change them but the videos helped a lot.
the video helped a lot in understanding how to save a preset… that wasnt very intuitive (the video may be old as i know theres a lot of development going on ).
I’ll probably dig in over the weekend.
Before bothering Giku with an email, I wondered if anyone could help me. I am looking for a gate module with a switch element on the front panel, a lot like Layers, but instead of playing all signals simultaneously, only the selected input would be let through.
For example, let’s say I have signals A, B, and C. They would connect to this module and the module would display their names (just like Layers). Touching A, however, would mute all other signals; likewise, touching C would do the same. Is there an existing module that does this? I think it would be incredibly useful for designing Instruments (multimode exclusive switch).
thanks in advance!
(Cross-post from Beepstreet forum)
I also had to refer to the manuals many times when learning my first elektron gear. Drambo has a curve, just like all things.
I’d be interested to hear if this was still a consideration after you’ve really had a chance to get up to speed with Drambo.
I think things some things, particularly complex things like music gear, become intuitive as you get familiar with them.
Being a touch interface makes me think it’ll still ‘feel’ very different. Dunno.
Do you think this app could be a budget OT replacement, or do you think they are too different to compare?
I think like others have mentioned, the touch interface makes it really hard to compare to a physical device like the OT. It’s definitely designed to replicate a lot of OT functionality, but overall for me it feels like a great app for doing two types of activities:
dedicated sound design sessions - making synths or sample-based devices with the modular config is really fantastic
building patterns, creating build-ups and more “song” level composition.
Beyond that, however, it faces some limitations. The biggest one is live performance - I really just don’t feel like I could pick up Drambo and start with one of my loop/pattern templates and make an interesting performance in real-time. The UI for the crossfader would make some of this easier, but I feel beyond doing cross-fader morphs it would be tough to input notes in real time, etc.
Much like other folks here have mentioned it feels like the last thing we need to make Drambo the best thing ever is a good dedicated controller script. @echo_opera’s launchpad template looks like a really good starting point for sure and checks a lot of the boxes I’d want to see in a Drambo controller.
I do believe there are a few people on this thread who posted some level of satisfaction using Drambo as an OT alternative.
i have calluses on my fingertips from playing guitar that cause some problems for me when I interact with apps on a touchscreen. It’s not a critical issue when just playing with ideas for music, sound design, etc. I don’t trust a touchscreen-only instrument though for live performance, because the on-screen controls, keyboards, etc. do not respond in a reliable, repeatable manner to my finger touches and moves. Onscreen knobs, faders, etc. that sometimes respond to my fingers and sometimes do not is just not acceptable to me for playing live. This problem is not unique to Drambo by any means - just about all touchscreen apps have this problem. The usual counter to that argument is of course to go buy hardware controller(s) but the further you go down that road, the more you start to wonder why not just buy the OT in the first place.
I’ve played shows with the OT and I’ve come to rely heavily on the fast and reliably predictable response of the physical knobs, buttons and sliders.
@porkloin and @GovernorSilver have neatly put across points I’d make. But it would also depend on how you use / would use the OT. If it’s for putting together single songs / tracks, it may do everything you need. For me, the lack of program change in standalone mode, even if I had a top controller set-up for it, means I couldn’t begin to consider Drambo as an OT replacement. Also, some aspects of the sequencer are long winded / cluncky compared to the OT, e,g having to go into step edit mode and adding modules to a step for conditional trigs and alternate length seqs.