Elektron Outbox 8

Will be a much shorter chain & less hassle to set up track routing to external HW FX skipping the DAW and audio interface.

I’m eight times more excited about this box than I was when the Tonverk was announced.

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This is the Point. You need a Mixer. But lots of us live in very small apartments these days and cannot (or do not want to) use a real Mixer for Dawless Setups anymore. Space is limited, Budget is limited anyways - and the Idea of an Elektron Box as a center Hub for all your stuff is as old as the Machinedrum. It just makes total sense. Trust me.

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Honestly, I still don’t see the advantage. If it’s about connecting stuff to the computer and you are using Overbridge, I don’t see why it would be preferable to connect a hypothetical ā€œbreakinā€-box (for lack of a better word) to the Digi Box instead of an audio interface to the computer. And apart from that: You couldn’t even connect an Elektron box to such a device and a computer at the same time as there’s only a single USB port :wink:

And for DAW-less usage, a proper (small) mixer (and there’s a plethora being released right now) still seems a better option to me. Having the mixer channels distributed over several pages is somewhat clunky already, given the amount of internal channels. Adding more makes things worse, rather than better. I can see some value in FX shennanigans with Tonverk and Rytm as @dragonaut suggested, but lack experience with those devices, so my imagination is somewhat limited in that regard.

If you have 3 analog synths and a digital synth, and you want to use your Digibox or Tonverk I am counting several devices already for the small apartment. So what happens when Elektron makes the mythical mixer, it doesn’t have a sequencer, it doesn’t produce any onboard audio, etc. You are still buying a mixer, but an Elektron mixer. Not a big difference.

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I kinda figured that would indeed be it’s use. Me on the other hand, my environment isn’t that big, I would have more use for simultaneous input to Ableton via USB :slight_smile:

There are two USB-C Ports on that Device. Is the second USB-Port really just for powering the Unit? If thats the case, it wouldnt make sense. Of course.

Delete this, I think I misunderstood @umonox

Edit: But the icons next to the USB ports on the Outbox do seem to indicate that one is for power, while the other one is for connection.

I mean the Second USB-C Port of the Outbox. Not the Tonverk.

Yes one port is for power. It’s a dedicated port because it’s not good practice (potential of ground noise) when you mix power and audio.

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I don’t know why the value of this thing is so hard to understand - it gives you more outs… lol

I think it was the Akai MPC 2000, you had to buy an extra card to get outs. I’m sure if you looked up the price with inflation it cost more than what this will.

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It creates that Mixer inside the already existing Elektron Machine that you use to hook up and sequence all that Stuff. There is no need for another Mixer then.

But if the second USB-C Port of the Device is for Power only, it wont work like that. Since you have no Computer Connection left in that case and you would then only be able to record via the Physical Outputs of the Elektron machine. Which leads to the necessity of a Audio Interface on the Computer again. Yeah - thats not great actually.

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While cool to get extra mileage out of existing devices, it would be a pretty half-baked mixer for all intents and purposes. You have encoders and buttons for control, no faders or knob per function, hidden under more menus that you would need to switch between every instance you want to do parameter based controls or mixing. In practice unless you use one or the other when using both it’d be like crippling the device the way I see it. The different devices would also have to account for different configs based on what is available etc. It’d be better if a mixer attempt was it’s own dedicated thing.

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ā€œMixerā€ can mean a lot of different things to different people and situations. I think when people talk about wanting an Elektron mixer they’re not talking about wanting to simply combine several tracks into a stereo pair and adjust the level. They’re talking about wanting individual fx per channel with everything able to be sequenced and automated and saved, which is totally different than a simple analog mixer.

Multi-fader hands-on control is less important in that scenario. But more interesting and complex performance control can be done through macro approaches like scenes and performances. Just like how people use OT.

I think this Outbox is pretty compelling just as a usb interface for non-elektron devices too. Something like a motu m6 is $450 with only 4 outs. 8 outs for $300 is great if you want to do something like take 8 tracks out of an MPC and mix them on an analog mixer.

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I’m more excited about the Powerhub than anything else right now. I can’t wait to tidy up my desk space with that

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Expecting per track independent fx is , I think , beyond the streaming of any device as rheyre ā€˜send’ fx , not per track
Tonverk has busses which may be sent as individual audio but I’m not on the beta … details are scarce atm

Eg
To have per track fx , you’d need 12 stereo delay, reverb , chorus audio streams on Syntakt … instead each has a stereo stream to cater for all fx … and can be routed to main .
Similarly many tracks are actually streamed as mono but to get panning you need to send them to main out .

The limits of each device can be found in the stand alone apps on mac / pc … they run without any device plugged to the see how many channels etc

Anyway … I think the info for this box is pretty substantial atm … i suggest many people mute this thread as it’s obviously not doing everything that some might want … it’s just a configurable set of 8 outputs … handy - yes or no .

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TV has 2 insert effects per track and per bus if I’m not mistaken.

Maybe , but that doesn’t mean each will have a Unique overbridge stereo stream … buss 1 ( whatever machines are on it ) might be combined to a single stereo stream … will have to wait for details on how many unique stereo streams Tonverk sends out and in

I’d guess there’s a better Tonverk overbridge thread for detailed questions … maybe . It still in beta

I’m talking about a hypothetical Inbox 8 combined with Elektron hypothetically giving the TV something like the OT’s thru track. You would have an 8 channel sequencable mixer/fx box.

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Depending on the configuration capabilities you could do something like… route 8 tracks of a digitakt 2 to one stereo bus and the other 8 tracks to another stereo bus… plug those into the Octatrack and now you can mix between the two and it would basically be like having two Digitakts plugged into the octatrack.

Really intrigued by this.

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