I am sacrificing my Analog Four for a Digitone (again). This is the 3rd time I will be buying another Digitone and I wont have any purely analog gear aside from the Rytm to mix in my recordings now. I did have a Prophet Rev 2 , so I thought a Digitone would be better suited for sequencing 8 voices via midi, but i realized i wasnt using the synth engine at all because it was so opposite the raw analog (dco) sound of the Rev2. So i sold that for my second A4.
I have since replaced the Rev2 with a Peak, and itās not nearly as harsh/bright/analog. I am also finding that I use the A4 much less for synthesis now, almost not at all, so I decided Iāll get the Digitone again for sequencing the Peak and using the 4 digitone synth engines to compose full polyphonic tracks like I used to.
I have used effects with my synths in the past, but they always seem to be more of a distraction than an aid. I had a Ventris for reverb, which was beautiful, but too big for my live stereo recordings from the Octa (via thru tracks) to stereo track in Ableton and redundant with the amazing digi reverb. I had a small eurorack setup for synth fx processing with granular (nebulae) and other fx processing (analog mmf, mi warps, mi rings, nlc dispersion delay) for my synths, but that distracted me way too much from making actual music and i just spent all my time doing weird sound design that no one wants to hear. I had Rooms from DBA which was even better than the Ventris, almost āanalogā sounding, and has almost every other effect i could ask for (chorus, bitcrush, delay, resonator, bp filter) and very nice gain for wet and dry independently. At that time, I also had the Earthquaker Plumes because I wanted to make the Digitone sound more gritty and saturated alongside the Rev2. Plumes was nice, and it sounded great with the Rev2, but i didnāt find it very helpful with the Digitone. Iād still have Rooms, but I cant justify holding onto a pedal that has the same effects as most of my other gear, even if they are better quality. it became a distraction as well, and made everything i put it through sound too large for my busy mixes. Also at one point or another had a dd-7, bastl thyme, cooper fx outward. i do also have the ehx platform after my synth sub-mixer and before the octatrack to glue my synths together before summing to the octa thru track.
Now Iām wondering if anyone has any tips that may help me enhance the Digitone. I donāt think it is necessary to put it through anything but Iām curious if anyone has had any particularly nice results with anything in their experience. I am not very familiar with distortion and overdrive but i know that a lot of them are not necessary or just dont sound good at all on synths, especially digital ones, but if there is a certain kind that does, I would be interested. the Plumes was actually good, but not good enough to justify taking up space and money that could be spent elsewhere in my setup. In my experience the only really good saturation for synths have been the overdrives built into them (A4/Circuit Mono Station [BS2]/Moogs)
I am considering the Malekko Downer, the OBNE Alpha Haunt, or just a Portastudio 424 mk1. Would a wavefolder be better than an average distortion pedal designed for guitars? Does the Hauntās odd harmonic fuzz and eq give you enough control to adequately and musically saturate an oscillator signal without just drowning it in dirt? is it worth putting external effects like this after the dn?
Iāve also considered rackmount graphic eqs or eq pedals but im not sure how useful they would be on a synth. The Analog Heat is the obvious answer here but Reverb fucked me over so hard with fees that im gonna have less than $300 to work with after I buy the dn with my a4 money and i would rather not dump more money into my setup (money that does not come from selling existing gear)
Deco, mf drive, analog drive, downer, haunt?
