Erm… digitone is bad gear

He never fails to make me laugh and some of his Jams have been really really good. The concept is getting a bit old though, too much repetition. Still watch every episode but only if there s nothing I’m more interested in at the time.

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Yeah I feel the same but to be fair, he’s somewhat boxed-in to a very specific area and he’s probably done most of the worst well-known bits of gear already.
I can think of a few pieces that stank to high heaven IMO but they were’t big sellers and aren’t show worthy or relevant to the synth world… e.g, Digitech XP200 modulator… DOD Buzz Box, EH Poly Phase. He’s got a lot of talent and produces good tracks nearly every week, some of them blindingly good.

People should stop being offended because people have and communicate different opinions about gear they like!
Most of his videos are way more than trolling, and his jams on the machines he „reviews“ are often better than a lot of the jams on those machines on YouTube by people who do it as main content.
If you listen carefully: lots of gear he makes videos about, is not his own. With making a video every week. There is not much preparation per device, and the results are far from bad.

I am way too old to be friends with that amount of cuts and memes, but I think it is hell a lot entertaining.

So many people in this thread see stuff like that way too serious. If you don’t like, don‘t watch. Your fun and love to your gear will not be effected by the opinion and videos other people do. If it does, you might want to think about that a little bit :slight_smile:

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I’m a strong follower of this channel. Bad Gear episodes are story tellers. Each episode contains always aspects that make the device a bad gear for many people, and yes, the most of the devices can be really bad if you want to go in details. However at the end something that he never tells, but he demonstrates through his jams and studio extracts, is that a good and critical musician can always take the best from bad gear and find its context (give a look at other episodes about really bad gear)…the point is that we have to know and explore our instruments, their limitations especially, and the only reason to change a piece of gear is when we don’t find it breathing in our music. (And we are also more ‘sustainable’ if we do this :wink:)

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I think his channel is very silly, I liked the first episodes but it became really repetitive and then he started picking gear that isn’t even ‘‘hated by the community’’ because there isn’t anything else to pick.

Like him I also think that criticizing gear and acting like a snob because you have this or that is idiot, but at the same time exploring that same criticism over and over again is very tiresome. I just don’t open his videos anymore when they pop-up.

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You are correct on both counts, location and wildness. It was a great era to have lived there and been a part of that.
He seemed like a good guy. I didn’t know him too well but our little crews collaborated now and then when we were willing to make the drive (socal/ Bay Area).

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Couple of random comments:

  • I like his videos! And he found something that works, how often does that happen?

  • Although I don’t like all the jams, more often than not he’s using chord progressions most people don’t know are possible, even though anything is possible.

  • One comment of the collage said DN sounds like an Amiga 500. This person confused Amiga and MS-DOS computers (see Adlib soundcard). Respectively, 8-Bit samples with FM synths.

  • This was the first time I felt offended :stuck_out_tongue: , and I think it was the intro song that triggered that. Because yes, it sounded pretty bad. The DN can easily sound “fat” like a “fat analog synth” … or whatever.

  • Or like I use it, a noise machine from hell that kicks all your modular in the butt.

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oh yeah the comment section made me lose, I’d say, my whole brain cause it was too dense to even process.

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He has explained that “bad gear” is based on internet comments criticizing the instruments he reviews. Hence the comment crowded screen in his intros.

In some reviews he agrees with that the equipment is not “good” but he seems to focus on real world issues like UI issues or sound engine limitations. He rarely trashes a product.

Case in point was his review of the Beat Thang. It was, from all accounts, a disaster both in PR and marketing. Yet he also notes where he found the machine to have strengths.

Plus, I love that he re-records his theme song using the reviewed equipment. He is of the school that you can make music with anything so long as you understand the limitations.

That’s a much fairer assessment that many less bizarre review sites.

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Off-topic whining

To avoid any confusion with the Digitakt we prefer to use “DN” as abbreviation on elektronauts. :man_teacher::wink:

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Whoopsie, corrected! Actually, a few weeks ago I uploaded a video and put “Digitakt” instead of “Digitone” in the title :stuck_out_tongue:

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Can’t blame the bad gear guy for not wanting to ditch a winning formula, but I totally agree with some of the above that the concept is really played out by now. Hope he takes his many talents and branches out a bit.

I think there’s some reverse psychology going on. Most reviewers are de facto very positive and get shit on if they dare to criticise anything. Whereas if you start from the premise that ‘everyone thinks this is garbage’ you can actually give a realistic appraisal of its strengths and weaknesses without getting a pile-on.

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Also being funny helps a lot.

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I’m a big fan of the show and I’m glad it’s still going strong. His rundowns of the important features/flaws are straight to the point and more informative than many other videos on YouTube. And he clearly works his ass off to make these videos

If he features an instrument I like, it usually makes me have a good laugh. I was stoked when he did one in the Digitakt, for example. I really hope he does the OT one day

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BRILLIANT!
That video made me literally dustoff my long neglected dear DN. I forgot how amazingly overpowered and great it is for sound design of any kind. In 2018 Without the individual operator offsets it was very much like just another ambient-dj-plinkyplonky-suburbanbassmonster-lofihifiretro-chiptunewave-disco-HERO™.

Digitone is by all means the most versatile and intuitive synth i have ever played.:ok_hand:

Song mode opens up another dimension to the sound design chaos. (damn i didnt even update it yet)
The hype is real!!

Thank you all for bringing this forgotten diamond of a god back to life :exploding_head::brain::no_mouth:‍:fog::v::call_me_hand:

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Well I found this video while looking at videos and considering whether to buy one, and now I have one in the way :joy:

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The format still thrives too, I think it’s softened across the board. A long standing one is Cinemasins ‘Everything wrong with’ reviews - which remind me of Bad Gear in that they’re not intended to be earnest criticism. And same with Bad Gear I enjoy the ones the most that feature movies I enjoy.

Example for the masses: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZqRnWO9IQw

Bad gear is just name of the show? For entertainment purpose. So far my Digitone doing fine but maybe lacking more tracks and finesse.

I think you’re right about a general softening.

I wish I could get into cinemasins, but I don’t like the way they flatten genuinely critical jokes and Comic Book Guy-satire. I don’t need to be spoonfed, but it feels like they’re trying to have it both ways. Whereas Bad Gear draws cleaner lines, so I appreciate the jokes more. Setup makes all the difference to me :man_shrugging:

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