I’m looking for some hardware to add character to my samples that I record in to my digitakt. Considering things like the AH, Sherman, acid-box to get a nice saturated and raw techno sound. I’d also like to put percussion and other loops I’ve made through it to add more flavour, so modulation options would be desirable. What would you suggest?
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An old Mackie mixer, cassette recorder, cheap distortion pedals come to mind. All easy and cheap to obtain and will give a nice character to sounds.
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Death by Audio - Echo Dream 2. This is my go-to for a little extra spice. Has a great delay, has a great fuzz, also has a modulation circuit. All of which you can control separately. You don’t need to spend a fortune - and there are a ton of options that will try to convince you otherwise - but consider with this simple pedal you could add saturation…or delay…or use the modulation to introduce some movement…OR do what I do and use all three to blow samples to bits.
Chroma Console
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I’m not convinced by digital distortion…
I wasn’t too but to my ears, the Chroma delivers.
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Akai MFC42
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Get some pre-amps thats the advice i got.
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Any suggestions?
Nothing high end, and old mackie as I said earlier will drive nice and dirty.
They all sound different to every sound guy depends who you ask. I also own a Mackie 1202 and it sounds very good indeed even compared with some way more expensive ones. I haven’t looked into 500 series for that matter so cant speak on that. API, SSL or TridentA are the obvious ones.
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I know it when I hear it, but don’t know what you hear when you hear it, which is probably different to how I hear what you hear when I hear it, which means what I hear and call character is maybe different from what you hear and call character, but then what type of character because sometimes I like ‘warm’ and sometime I like ‘digital’ and sometimes I like what I hear which is not really warm and definitely not digital so what is it and is it still character or is it of bad character and if so can it be reformed into good character and what if that good character ends up on the digital side and isn’t cool is that a goofy character but still technically falls under ‘character’ so it still counts even though it’s wrong, anyway just wanted to give a quick one sentence answer, bye.
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OTO Boum pedal.
I’ve heard some pretty good digital distortions - I rather like the ones in my Rev2 and Take5.
Back in the day I had some bass distortion pedals by Digitech and Ibanez that really sounded great to me (and these were quite probably digital given the various options available - I wish I had never let that PD-7 go!).
A good digital distortion just needs some thought given to a post-drive filter, and this does not need to be a fancy characterful analog filter.
I think the needs of a guitarist with a tube amp are very different from the needs of someone with drums or a full range synth, and a lot of the common wisdom that may apply there is not that useful to us.
(Also, I recently picked up a Boss Katana and the dirt boxes it models are quite stellar - and even things like it’s Rat model compared to a Sunn O))) Life Pedal side by side sounds pretty good - digital distortion does not inherently suck!)
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I use Korg Monologue’s audio-in for this, it is a full analog signal path then. It got Filter, Reso, FIlter Envelope, Filter AMP, Drive, LFO can be synced and routet to the filter… Filter reacts to incoming audio like to velocity and you can automate all via the sequencer… Sounds fucking awesome!
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Compensate on the Output trim let me know your experience. cheers
…if u can or willing to afford it, no doubt, u go for an analog heat…
the most underrated elektron device of them all…
as much as i love analog vibes, ah is pretty much the last real, truu analog device i need…
since it simply gives /adds ANYTHING u feed it with that xtra vibe and breath and glue and punch just the way u imagine it…
promise…just keep an eye on proper gainstaging and ur always good to go…
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Pretty much the same i agree and you get some filters.
Retro Mechanical labs make my fave “character” boxes: rmlfx.com
For the $ though I think the best unit is the Monotron Delay… the input distorts bass frequencies in an awesome way, and having the delay at the edge of runaway feedback and tamed by the filter is a killer recipe to give samples some grit and presence.
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If you’re ok with mono, I really like Fairfield shallow water for this purpose.
LPG feels nicely responsive to dynamic source audio, the modulation is really cool, and the volume knob allows you to drive a little bit.
I’ve usually just run it fully wet, but you can get a more subtle chorus with a wet/dry mix
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