I’m done with Elektron

I don’t think there is one. I’m still playing the piano since I was seven. So I’m not done with that.

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That bloke is done with Elektron too :joy:

Strong opinions…

Quite a lot of Elektron bashing these days… I guess the higher you climb, the harder you fall.

I hope the bashing won’t mask the real customers concerns.

Wasn’t he the guy with an AH that had a broken volume knob?

Yes, last time i had my mental breakdown.

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I don’t own an A4 any more; but just out of professional curiosity; what is it? This one?

The very one.

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I feel bad about starting this thread.

I was only voicing my thoughts on why I’d left Elektron gear, cause in the end I always come back to the point that I’m old school with my gear and that’s just the way it is, and I was curious to see if anyone else had found heart over matter and come to the same conclusion. Cause that’s what it is.

Their stuff should make total sense to me, given my circumstances with space, time and stuff. But they just don’t and I’m fine with that. But that’s a me thing, not an Elektron thing. I can totally see why people love their stuff and I can see myself reconsidering in the future, but for now, I’m just gonna accept that I’m a Mooger with a Dave Smith moustasche much more than a cool, cold Swede.

Which is quite ironic, since I am a Swede, we’ve got winter here now (and how! the snow! the ice! the polar bears on the street! no, really, that’s thing, tell all your friends), and I live close to Elektron HQ.

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Thanks. Like I said, no kitten in that race, just curious.

Sorry @andreasroman, in hindsight my earlier post was off topic with regards to your original post. To answer your question: no I haven’t been there. The Elektron way of doing things keeps growing on me and there’s hardly a day without me learning something new. Also I love that “happy accident” way of making music. Just handling those machines makes me happy. Their design language appeals to me and it inspires me to keep experimenting. I don’t think I shall part with any of them. I’m not so sure about future purchases, though.

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That is a good place to be in, all the same. I feel the same with what I’ve got going now. All that’s missing is a proper recording solution, of which I’ll look for elsewhere now.

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A little off topic again, but that Zoom L12 portastudio kind of thingie has been calling me for a while now. Might just be the right kind of cannon to point at the little bird I’m trying to kill aka recording my humble meanderings around repetitive patterns.

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You know what I dislike about Elektron? The fact that they release half baked, incomplete, overpriced products and only a couple of months later they lose like 20% of their value. The hype dies, everyone realises that the product is in beta state and boom, prices drop like crazy.

Look at the A4 MK2 and OT MK2 prices. 1450 euros on release, 1150 euros today. And it’s been only what, 2-3 months? That’s saying alot. I’m sure the early adopters are not pleased.

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“I feel bad about starting this thread.”

Don’t, I was thinking of starting a similar thread.
Personally I’ve become increasingly frustrated with Elektron.
As it’s been mentioned already numerous times the amount of bugs that have plagued their boxes of late is very disturbing. It’s a huge confidence crusher that a product like the Digitakt thats been out a year and had 6 updates still has so many user reported issues. That they keep releasing new products while struggling to meet crucial deadlines and have not yet fixed their existing range all seems very unprofessional. As much as I appreciate their communications and their “friendly” staff I’m much more interested in a product that just works.

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100 longish posts in this topic in one day? sheesh, its gonna take a while for me to read it all…

I too am ”done” with elektron. That is, now that I have my dirty trinity, DN and AH, its time to fill up the banks and pattns and concentrate on music making.

Its very often a choice between ”1 knob per function, mostly all sweet spot” or ”a wealth of options, modulations, with random pockets of sweet spots” IMO. However I consider elektron boxes of being very well designed for the latter, compared to many other PITA UI/UXs like the blofeld, shruthi-1, heck even DSI evolver is clunkier to use…

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I’ve been looking at that, too. It’s a bit over-specced for my needs, but if it has solid sync options, then it’s kind of what I’m looking for, albeit with lots more bells and whistles than I need.

Apparently, local dealer here says porta studios sell quite well. There aren’t that many of them, there’s Zoom and Tascam and Boss, but they all seem quite popular.

Feels like a market waiting for its revival, still.

Sync seems to be rare on new porta studios, my Zoom R8 and my Tascam DP 32 lack midi sync, which is a shame. Would be great, if they had better looping functionality too :wink:

BTW … reading this thread makes me feel to belong to a minority, I would even buy more Electron gear … some creative new digital stuff, a D8 with Midi tracks …

Sorrily that’s the modern way to do business. Almost all companies out there behave like that sooner or later. Shareholder value pressures everyone for the fast money and over-the-top unrealistic marketing does the rest.

The only way around it is to keep your GAS in check and buy stuff when it’s stable even if it take years (or not at all).

And, of course, that newest shiny something will drop in price almost instantly, because the lifecycle of product lines gets shorter and shorter. Look at smartphones. Why fix bugs when you can push out the next generation in a couple of months and it gets still bought by people even if there is almost no difference to the previous one …

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At the risk of starting a religious war here and with full awareness of their shortcomings, Apple for me are a counterexample. I have been getting 4 years of utility out of my iPad Air, it still runs the latest OS and I currently can’t justify getting a new one. We have an iPad 3 that’s still used by the kids. Software support was discontinued after iOS9 and it doesn’t get security fixes anymore which I can live with considering it’s age. Still it works. iPhones in my family are generally handed down until they cease to work, which in many cases has been as long as 5 years or even Ionger. And yet by the looks of it I’d go as far as to say Apple have quite a successful little operation running.

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Wouldn’t say that I’m “done”, but I’ve started working more with my other synths again, which arguably have more flexible and easier to program engines. The big problem I’ve been hitting with the Elektron machines, is the sweet-spots aren’t very wide. I’ll spend hours trying to get the bass I want out of A4/AK, when I can do it in seconds on my Minitaur. I can program the kicks, snares etc. I want on my Tempest, without being restricted and rail-roaded by the machines on Rytm.

That’s not to say that the Elektron machines are bad as such, it’s just taking me a lot more work than ideal to get the results I want in terms of sound-design.

My ageing eye-sight can’t easily cope with the small displays on the Elektron units. The new Elektron editor - if it ever lands, might make things easier for me. In fact - a FULL FEATURED, standalone editor for sound design, might make all the difference.

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The Elektron workflow incitates you to work in a ‘pattern’ mode, which is a bliss and a curse.

Sometimes I just would like to use my A4 or even my OT with a 1 knob per function interface outside the context of a pattern, just in “single mode” focusing on a single sound and play. A bit like on a nordlead or on an OB-6. Moreover the sound engine of many elektron box is not really suitable for this (no polyphony, no multisample, no way to assign the modwheel, after touch etc to make a sound expressive on the OT/digitakt for instance).

Or even better I would like to have a renoise/redux workflow : in redux a “patch” is a sound + a collection of phrase. I find this approach very liberating. But it is a software, and I cant work with software anymore.