I never liked how they implemented the LFO rates tbh. It would make way more sense if it had rates like 1/4, 1/8 etc. like on most synths. Or at least give that as an option as well.
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Or… please just show the length of 1 wavelength in steps somewhere on the screen.
Bars. No thanks. It’s 2023.
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LFO timing explained:
I’ve been spending few days trying to wrap my head around LFO speed and multiplier as I’ve always found it confusing, then found this thread.
Don’t really fully understand some of the points on here and sorry if I’m repeating anyone’s points but here is what I worked out. There’s also the table in the LFO section of the manual which is helpful.
So the slowest LFO speed is ‘speed 1, multiplier 1’ which is a total of 128 bars (although technically can go as slow as 12800 bars with the speed set to 0.01)
I think the logic behind the 128 bars is its the longest amount of time you can sequence on the Digitakt.
The sequencer is 4 bars long but with the PROB parameter you can choose ‘1 of 8, 2 of 8, 3 of 8’ etc.
So 4 bars x 8 is 32 bars.
Then in the scale menu (func and page) you can slow the sequence down to 1/4.
So 32 x 4 is 128 bars.
Then in terms of setting the speed and multiplier to musical lengths I think it’s easiest setting multiplier on 128 and then changing speed to following (think this helps make it easier as you’re staring at 16 steps or 1 bar when you look at the digitakt and you just have to picture how that’s divided).
1= 1 bar (or 16 steps)
2= half a bar (or 8 steps, or a minim)
4= 1/4 notes (or 4 steps, or a crotchet)
8= 1/8 notes (or 2 steps, or a quaver)
16= 1/16 notes (or 1 step, or a semi quaver)
32= 1/32 notes (or 1/2 step, or a demi semi quaver)
If you want timings outside of this then you can use the multiplier. So if you want 2 bars then you set speed to 1 (1 bar) but change multiplier to 64 to get 2 bars, or change multiplier to 32 to get 4 bars etc.
The delay effect on Digitakt does dotted notes but there’s unfortunately not an easy way to set LFO to dotted notes. But you can work it out by doing 16 divided by the amount.
So for 3 steps (dotted 1/8 note or dotted quaver) you do 16 steps divided by 3 steps= 5.33.
So you set speed to 5.33 (with multiplier 128)
And for 5 steps (dotted 1/4 note or dotted crotchet) you do 16 steps divided by 5 steps= 3.2
So you set speed to 3.2 (with multiplier 128)
Hope that’s not too waffly and helps!
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Worth to watch.
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Yeah I’ve watched that but found his way a bit confusing. Or I basically wanted to know what I was setting speed and multiplier to without having to listen to it or work it out.
Hi, I’ve noted from a different thread, so not my insight:
LFO length in bars = 128 / (multiplier * speed)
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Actually, the slowest is speed 0,01 with a mult of 1.
The formula is handy for slow speeds mostly. When working with faster LFO’s <a bar it’s less useful imho. Not unusable though 
Here’s what I’ve added to my cheat sheets for Elektron:
Not perfectly non-abstract either but might help.
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Dammit I didn’t think about decimal points for the slowest speed! So guess they technically go as slow as 12,800 bars.
Your cheet sheet is excellent cheers Dave…I have it saved to my phone!
I still wanted a quick method of setting LFOs to divisions, so I think setting multiplier to 128 and then using speed for the divisions was a good way to get my head around it and memorise it.
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That was the bit I was looking for. Thank you!
WHY the heck can’t they put such simple though key information in the manual?
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Btw for me the manual is simpler ! Reading this I don’t understand lfos anymore…
For me Phase is an offset in waveform, it changes how the lfo starts when triggered, end of the story. I count cycles, not phase chunks that are interpolated anyway.
I probably miss something…
But nevermind, if it helps some people to understand lfos…
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This has nothing to do with understanding LFOs in general. The manual says “Speed sets the speed of the LFO.” Well…who would have thought! 
But what are the numbers related to? Bananas, miles per hour…? Without any visual representation of what the LFO is doing it’s even harder to understand what I’m setting there. LFOs in hardware synths typicallly have an associated LED for good reasons.
Lfo means low frequency oscillation. It is a frequency, you can count in hertz, cycle per second.
With Elektron machines synced lfos, you’d rather choose another unit, like cycle per beat, bar, 4 bars. I’d choose 1 bar.
You need a reference setting to calculate it on Digis.
Phase is another parameter, I don’t get the interest to create a related formula with Speed and Phase values. Speed would be the same if phase setting had a 1024 steps resolution…
I don’t care about what has been said about the phase at all. But without the above explanation I would have never known that a speed setting of n represents n/128 LFO cyles per bar. To me it’s that simple now.
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Thanks for the hint. I posted a request.
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Multiply is missing in the formula. 
For slow lfos I’d rather need a duration in bars, and cycles per bar for faster lfos. I agree that there should be another table in the manual showing speed as cycles per bar, not duration. Invert below values to get cycles per bar. My usual reference is Speed 32* Multiply 4 , which correspond to 1 cycle per bar.
*Btw I wish positive speed could snap to 64 instead of 63.99…
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Not really, as I was only referring to the definition of the Speed parameter. The Multiplier is just a factor that is applied to the Speed setting and needs no further explanation than is already included in the manual. A factor is a factor is a factor. But Speed should be defined properly.
Absolutely! Also, I agree that a table would come quite handy in the manual.
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That table is from the manual 
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Ooops! 
I mostly navigate the manual by searching for keywords and clicking links in the PDF. And I’m pretty shure, regarding the LFOs, I never read beyond the sentence “LFO page 2 page contains the same parameters as LFO page 1.” My bad! But good to know it’s there.
So we have all the explanation that’s needed right there at hand!? I suspect I’m not the only one who missed it. Maybe this table is a little misplaced and should live somewhere more closely to the SPD/MULT paragraphs, or there should be some hint like “see table below”, at least.
I think it always sounds much better at 63.99
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