Isn't the Analog Four the most incredible and deep instrument from Elektron so far?

Yes! Incredible, isn’t it? :smiley:

@Sandison
Thank you so much for taking a listen and leaving some kind words. Thinking about getting a second MK2 myself crosses my mind very often these days, too.

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Yes indeed!! Got a lot of drumsounds on my A4, but yours sound quiet unique :+1:

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Thanks! I always liked to shape my own.

The title of this thread say … ‘So Far’. Does this mean that there was an expectation that Elektron would come out with something better? Or has that ship sailed now?

Patching a non-A4 yesterday, something stuck me that doesn’t get talked about enough: how nice it is to have four independent tracks to flip between from a sound design perspective.

I always start with T1–T4 cleared out and patch away on T1. At some point I hit a fork in the road or have an idea I’m not sure about, so I copy it to T2 and continue from there. If it doesn’t work out, I can jump back to T1. And sure that’s just like saving a preset, right? Big deal.

Beside the fact that, with this method, my presets don’t get cluttered up with a bunch of unfinished, work-in-progress junk, the bigger thing to me is that at any time I can flip back and forth between T1 and T2 to comp the sound to assess my progress. And it’s not just the sound, I can also easily comp values and settings as I go back and forth (which can be a real life saver if I have to walk away for an hour or a day only to come back and have no memory of what I was going for).

And I’ve got four tracks to do this with. It’s rare I get to the point of saving a preset and I don’t have all of them filled — one track with my final sound and the other three with “save states” of its history that I can flip to, compare, and even use as jumping-off points for completely different sounds.

I really miss this ability when not sitting at an A4.

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Hello! Long time lurker, first post.

Just wanted to say thanks to everyone who contributed to this thread—so fun to read—for convincing me to get an A4. I’m coming back to hardware after two years of Ipad exploring (no $, apps are amazing for that) and was aiming for a Rytm since I make pretty basic acidy house/techno. I figured the A4 would be too ‘experimental’ for me.

Nope! It’s so much fun.

Running drums through its filter/distortion brings them to life much more easily than any methods I’ve tried before. Midi sequencing and amp env/filter-shaping a Volca Sample has turned it into a beast. Hooking up a launchcontrol for track volumes, filters and perf knobs has made it much more fun to use and less menu-jumpy to hit sweet spots. My only complaint now is the MK2 being twice as expensive—with such different sound sources, processing them separately would be wicked (tried overbridge but lost patience with latency things and would rather not use a computer). But I know that when I save up for that it’ll be a lifetime keeper which is a pretty cool feeling. Yall rock.

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Welcome to the tribe :woman_vampire:t4: This forum really is a gold mine, glad you could find some goodies in the meantime.

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This thread also convinced me to snag a mk1 for $400.
Now I’m overwhelmed by the configuration options
(also got OT2, ND3, DT1 and some other synths & pedals).
My goal is to use the A4 to compose canons & fugues and blend them into concrete sounds.

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i have been using it just a drum machine lately and it rips

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i’m more of a partitas and sonatas type

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Back on the MK1, I ran the CV out into the audio INs and and made this by generating tones only from the digital LFO at audio rates. No zappy in this case at least.

Not saying it’s spectacular, but it only makes use of the CV track, leaving the 4 main tracks free.

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on this misprinted A4 case it would be a disaster to plug external audio output into the mislabeled Audio Ins.

that would result in CV voltage vs Audio Output against each other and it would not be audible, maybe the last crack on your speakers tho

but yeah, putting CV into audio Inputs is fine, that’s how you can operate half of the mutable modules but I was referring to this mislabeled case

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Funny, it’s Rytm’s back inscriptions.
Have you reached Elektron support?
(maybe it’s not yours though)

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A4 fm does magic. Good job!

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Ah I understand. I’d hope there was some kind of safety net there.

But then again a buddy fried my first Rev2 by sending phanton power with some stupid XLR to 1/4" jack.

Thanks! :pray:
FM is one of the few areas where I would agree that patience is required to come to satisfying results with the A4. Small parameter changes are really key imo and can sometimes alter the sound drastically. And often the sweetspot hides on a single note/octave while the rest shine in oddworldly weirdness. Never gets boring to explore for sure!

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grey a4 is givignn me gas even tho i have two black mk1

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Can you relieve what kind of settings did you use? I once tried that cv-out trick but couldnt make it work. :confused:

Some good starting points over here:

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This is great!

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