I’ve never used the md, so I can’t speak about it’s details, but for a drum machine 16 voices would seem necessary.
Did the md have monophonic tracks? Did it have p locks?
plocks and monophonic
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I agree 12 or 16 voices would have been lovely. A chord on each track. And hey who knows, since it is digital, who’s to say they don’t increase the polyphony count at some point via some method.
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Yeah I believe so.
I don’t know if it is necessary, actually is a lot for only drums.
Rytm has 8 / 12 tracks and I personally don’t see it as limited, but I do appreciate MD having 16 tracks.
My point is that It doesn’t have to be All or Nothing, there is an intermediate number between 4 tracks and 64
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Sure but how much would a mnm or md cost today vs the 800$ digitone ?
You can get a digi pair for the price of an octatrack too.
A mnm if released now would probably be the same form factor and costs of a digitone.
But if I was to invest in a pair of DTones, I would rather start building a proper modular system. To own two identical Dtones just to have a higher polyphony count only because it’s under powered seems rather redundant and excessive. If I had a deeper wallet, sure.
isn´t it something like:
to take a 50€ more expensive DSP would turn out to be 200€ more on the customers side?
not shure about DSP prices.
To me it seems obvious that these two small elektron boxes have been built with a “first design goal” to be placed in a entry level market…somehow
I understand if their PR and management rated the end price as THE crucial factor.
i “think” thats how it went.
and i think they totally underrated the musical value that these two small Boxes have for seasoned musicians, and that they could have taken another route:
small form factor yes, but full fledged and mature inside, sold for a mature price.
4 FM “synth” tracks with 8 voices will be fine for me ( still waiting for my DN )
but 4 additional FM mono voices for Drums for a total of 8 tracks would have been the thing.
as is they rendered it also a toy. my opinion
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I didn’t want to use the word toy but thats my sentiments exactly.
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Yep it’s genius.
You will also need to purchase Digidrum when it’s released
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it’s as if they’re worried by upping the polyphony and track count they would start to cannibalise their range of future products!
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Great video btw but lets hear you produce some songs on it 
that’s the thing, DSP chips don’t really make a big change cost-wise. With something like 20$ more per machine you could have a few more tracks and voices, development included.
I understand some decisions have to do with more “global” approaches.
But Anyway, if I in 2004 having a Monomachine , with FM Synthesis, Sustractive synthesis, Wave table, Voice Synthesis, SID, drum samples, different Ensemble types , EQ per track + Distortion per track , Sample reducer per track , Delay per track + 36 LFO’s+ Reverb, Chorus, Ringmod, Phaser, Flanger, Compressor , along 12 tracks total (audio +midi) would have I crossed a Time traveller from 15 years later, and when asked what is the latest Elektron synth after all that time of development, he said to me : “An Fm synth! has 4 audio tracks and 4 midi, one reverb, one delay , one chorus and one distortion, but it sounds really nice!” I must say I would be surprised, specially because Monomachine already sounded nice.
EDIT:
I also think the idea of having just one type of synthesis per Elektron machine is pushing towards austerity, I personally don’t want to have 5 different machines synced and connected to a mixer or a usb hub with 5 hub ports to have 5 different synthesis types.
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Hey I was only joking! it’s great I really enjoyed that short video. I was only making a cheeky reference to the lack of a proper song mode on the DT!
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Aww, man i feel bad. I don’t think you suck and continue the werks!
This is my point, I don’t understand how in nearly 14 years they’ve ended up with a 4 track 8 poly machine?
Looks great but a real headache to operate, i’m pretty terrible at multitasking as it is, trying to tame a modular set up isn’t my definition of a fun evening in! lol
Call me cynical but I think Elektron could have quite easily upped the specs of the Digitone to say 8-16 tracks and 32-64 note polyphony for not much more coin, but unfortunately this configuration would cover a little too much ground in one hit. It’s financially better to spread it out over a few boxes
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To anyone complaining about lack of a song mode on DT, I’d refer them to Ehsan Gelsi’s YouTube videos - he kills it. Without a “song mode”. The “austerity” is obviously a design choice.
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Only 10 fingers unfortunately
You can chew through this many voices pretty quickly, when voices are spread out over a few tracks, and considering it also has unison (not sure how many voice unison Digitone has?)
These are pretty standard specs, seen on digital synths from 10-20 years ago.
8 voices for a digital synth is light on, especially when spread out over 4 tracks.
Digitone is what it is, it’s still cool, just agree it could have had a bit more grunt under the hood also.
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