Elektron Machinedrum reissue in black, Elektron pls

That it’s just annoying contrarianism, and taking people out of context, throwing cold water on people’s tastes for your own pleasure

I don’t even think my post was aimed at you, I was trying to make the point that the MD isn’t better than the AR because it has more LFOs, it’s just different, and different people like different things.

I wasn’t doing that.

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Okay, I understand your clarification now. I agree, one feature, taken out of context like that, is not very special unless it is combined with others.

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Yes, these are valid questions…

I’m just trying to understand how much such desires would cost. Let’s say, for Elektron themselves.
People say - give us a reissue. Ok. How much would it cost?

(Let’s skip the programming part - it’s difficult to estimate, you are right. And probably it the most expensive part. But standard hardware units can be calculated and assemblage costs as well. Shipping rates… Raspberry PI’s, buttons, LCD screens. I think this could be a funny excercise. Or I have problems with definition of ‘funny’)

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Never had a MD … but I wish the AR would get some more machines. I know this won’t happen … sadly. But still I wish Elektron would get a tiny bit back to its roots and implementing again crazy machine ideas. If you asked me … I would also like some playful UIs with them like the OP-1 has.

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Ah, BOM fanfic :wink: Thanks for clarifying.

I’m not sure if I’ll be able to get my hands on an MnM or MD ever and the discussion in this thread is kind of relevant…. Where’s the next best place to look for weird naughts digital sounding synth/drum machine engines… reaktor user lib?

I’d probably be fine if I got to design similar sounds and loaded up into the OT

Low end: A financially independent engineer with all of the necessary skills takes on this project and delivers a complete Open Source MD/MNM in a decade or so. Cost: $0. Odds: fairly low.

High end: Ten senior engineers at an all-in cost of $250k/year/ea (this is very very low for software engineers but might be OK for hardware) = $2.5m / year. Assume they can complete the project in three years, that’s $7.5m, and that doesn’t consider test equipment, hardware prototyping, outsourced design work, etc. Odds: medium, this team is probably too big and will bog down and take 5 years instead of 3 due to feature creep.

A better way to estimate would be to lock a senior hardware product manager and a senior hardware engineer in a (virtual) room for a week or a month and ask them to produce various design sketches and associated cost models. That will give you a very rough idea of costs, but will probably cost a good chunk of change. The last time I talked to a boutique hardware shop about a small project was in 2003 or so, and they wanted a $100k deposit to move beyond the chit-chat stage. That project was a very basic set top box, much simpler than an Elektron clone.

TL;DR: even estimating a project like this is a task that requires a great deal of expensive skill, and the answer will only be approximate.

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Yep… the proper task estimation is already a task.

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I suppose even “how much would this cost” needs bounds on how much you want it to cost, how much seed you have to throw at it/how immediately you’d need to pay your debts, how much is to be put into your own development, well beyond reinvesting any “profit”.

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Sigh… This nonsense again.

One or two units selling for silly money every month does not mean there is enough of a market to sustain a business. You cannot look are a few eBay and reverb sales and assume that will translate to a profitable business. That isn’t how it works.

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Looking at all those Juno-60s going for $2500+ when I thought $1200 was expensive 7 years ago…:open_mouth:‍:dash:

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The elephant in the room, is that both MD and MM look so much better than subsequent Elektrons, it’s almost unbeliveable. What the f… happened…? :exploding_head:

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In Europe that’s almost top level pay I’d say, it’s very different in terms of pay scales compared to the US

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(not sure if I followed a joke/irony/whatever it was…)

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Had to edit the audiobook of Francis Rossi’s* autobiography a year or two ago. Was actually a fairly enjoyable read/listen, even if the only sentiment i took away from it was “needless to say we took loads of cocaine”.

*or the other one. Whichever one is still alive

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BOM = Bill Order of Materials for a product, just covers the direct parts required to produce a device (wouldn’t account for labor, custom circuit or component design, case fabrication, etc.)

The joke was that assuming we could design the device from the ground up, we’d still be only accounting for the literal cost of the components which I’m sure you understand are a fraction of the total cost of development and bringing the product to market, one that scales poorly for a “boutique” device and tiny releases.

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Nah, it sounds awesome. What sounds not so good are the filters and effects. But those can be skipped and added afterwards. A dubby MnM chord with a nice space echo from the vst´s released is really awsome sounding.

MD sounds… special. Not fantastic, but it can if you really work it. Just tweak it.

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I agree, I loved the MD, even the filters and effects :slight_smile:

This jam I did after about the 4:45 mark the SRR and filter sounds like robots talking :laughing:

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Md in black?! That’d be the worst! It was perfect the first time imo