Mixer for DT .. or OT? Ambient music

Elektron Gear Digitakt
#1

Hi :slight_smile: very grateful for this community for all the information and fun advice! I’m looking for a some advice for my specific situation.

I come from a jam/funk band background - my music room is all traditional instruments (guitar/piano/drums)… or at least it was until I started getting interested in synthesizers this spring. I picked up a Korg R3 which has been fun and taught me a lot about subtractive synthesis. I was making loops via pedals or Live and wanted to go further. My friend recommended the Digitakt and after some research I got one- tons of possibilities, I love this product.

My goals for this setup are two-fold:

  1. create backing tracks that I can jam along with and edit in real-time
  2. create ambient music with the inclusion of field recordings (this is the main goal)

My other relevant gear: a trusty old Yamaha mixer and a Tascam 2x2 audio interface.

As it goes in this world of gear, I am still finding my setup lacking. The main issue is that, as my mixer does not have a headphone out and the DT does not have stereo monitoring, I have no way to listen to my R3 and DT in stereo. I have looked into a few ways to solve this problem but none have been overly satisfying so far.

  1. I’ve looked at other samplers outside of the Elektron world. SP-404, Electribe, Blackbox, MPC … all are cool but none of them make me happy about giving up the DT. I like the DT workflow and ease of editing
  2. OT - the answer I’m expecting to get the most from the forum - is another option. All of the features seem great but I really enjoy how streamlined the DT is. I also like the size of the DT. I’m just getting into all this and I feel like the OT is overkill for me. Other qualms about the OT include no mixer page (very useful for ambient) and that to use it as a mixer, that would take 4 of my audio channels for sampling. It seems like the OT takes a lot of setup to get your sound/mix, while with DT I can just sample some on my Korg and run.
  3. Add a new mixer or audio interface to my setup. Seems like there’s a lot of cool options out there but my interface and mixer work well currently. I’d love to have my synth setup self contained outside of a mixer/interface although that might not be possible as I expand. If I do get something in the route, I’d want it to have AUX outs to send to the DT for live sampling. I’d also want it to have a standalone option.

Things I value:

  • minimal in size
  • ease of expression
  • sampling: I use the DT’s loop function with midi loopback LFOs, I like this amount of sound tweaking

Other points of itnerest
** I don’t make/play techno or EDM
** I really don’t use the sequencer too much on the DT for ambient. I want a DN at some point and could use the sequencer on that.
** Other features I’d enjoy on the DT would include longer sampler time, longer sequences and crossfading
** I don’t plan on using Overbridge much. I’m really not interested in using a computer at all rather just recording master mixes
** I don’t plan on ‘performing’ with any of this gear, although I am interested in live improvising in my house
** I plan on getting some semi-modular gear in the future so options that work with that are also appreciated

If the DT had stereo monitoring, I would’ve already bought a DN and been off to the races. As it doesn’t, I’m second guessing everything :confused:

I would love to hear advice from this forum on the most practical way for me to solve this issue. I want to get back to playing and making music but my return policy is almost up on the DT and I want to make the right decision before I start diving deep into the hardware.

tl;dr:

  • How do you make ambient music with the DT?
  • What mixer/interfaces do people find useful with the DT?
  • Should I just get over myself and buy the OT?
  • Should I get over the DT and find another sampler?

Thanks for reading :slight_smile: peace and love

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#2

OT is stereo, can record loops on the fly as a looper, up to 8m28s, play very long audio files (2GB, around 3h30mn), quantized resampling, more fx, ultra precise control of up to 250 parameters with the crossfader, song mode, midi arp, 48 lfos…
With realtime resampling and feedback you can make crazy fx, like pitch delay, shimmer, granular stuff…

More capable, but less straightforward than the DT. You can’t plock several trigs, trig conditions are in a sub menu. Max pitch up : 1 octave. You can resample.

Digitakt vs. Octatrack

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#3

As I’m sure you know, you want the impossible :slight_smile:

Mpc Live 2 and Force could hook you up on CV. They do have some annoying limits on sample length but you can hold a whole song. Of course you don’t get two stereos ins. Force has an okay fader but it’s no OT. Both can have arbitrary looper lengths. Force is a beast though and mpc is the size of an OT almost. They do support USB midi though so that’s pretty awesome.

Black box might be an option but I’ve never used one so can’t say for sure.

Personally I finally caved and bought OT a week ago. It does look nice with the dt and you’d feel good putting the dn with them too one day as your elektron addiction continues.

If you just want to get a mixer the 802vlz4 is a nice small mixer that you “mute” channels to send them alt 3/4. Or you could get a bigger mackie and get proper buses. These are pretty cheap and smallish. (The mixer dept is something you could spend a lot of time on).

Just get the OT :slight_smile:

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#4

A DJ mixer mixer with some filtering and built in fx might do you well if you plan to keep your set up minimal. Seeing as you are working ambient, a serviced tascam 4 track and then building some looper tapes could be a good way to go, slowing down tape and really reveal some crazy textures.

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#5

As simple as it can get, just got this one for smaller set ups to go:

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#6

Which mixer do you have?

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#7

Yes of course :wink: willing to ask to see how close I can get!

Very capable machines but I don’t think I’m going to like the workflow.

Ahhh well I would be returning the DT if I went with the OT. The make some nice machines for sure, I could see myself owning all three in the distant future.

Ooh thanks for the suggestion! Unfortunately, this wouldn’t make my old mixer redundant since I’m living in the past with a powered mixer. Next steps would be selling my current mixer for new speakers which will be a whole 'nother rabbit hole!

Thanks for your suggestions! I still may end up with an OT afterall

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#8

Woah, this is a very tempting suggestion! There seems to be a person who services them on my local CL, with a 464 and 414 mkii posted now. I think for simplicity, space, and my wallet I will pick something else for now but I want to definitely keep this in mind for the future, thanks :pray:t4:

Yes! This seems to be the quickest band-aid to my problem. Not a lot of room for expansion but will get the job done.

This bad boy: https://www.musiciansfriend.com/pro-audio/yamaha-emx312sc-powered-mixer

Not too old but definitely feel outdated. I run the rec out to some powered speakers and then let the master send to some big cheaper monitors that can really move some air :metal:t4:

#9

Just to update (personal, and probably boring story to follow):

Bought a Rolls Stereo Mini-Mix but there was a very loud ground noise through the headphones jacks (some of the reviews mentioned this but I hoped to get a good one). Boxed it up 2 minutes after plugging it, pretty disappointed.

My DT had an exception error the same day and decided to keep looking for other gear. Convinced myself I wanted an MPC One then quickly unconvinced myself after watching some videos :sweat_smile: (not interested in the touch screen or the workflow I guess).

Fast forward a week and was sick of looking at gear and just wanted to stick it out with the DT… then today I just hit my first memory limit on a project and I only have 1/8 of the patterns full (disclaimer: this is my first project and I’m not practicing the best sample management). Looked on Reverb and found an OT for a pretty good deal and just went for it.

Long story short, I guess the DT is not the right machine for me right now. I really loved it in so many ways but I just want something more robust. If you’re laughing at my indecision then you’re not alone cause I’m laughing at myself too and my partner will be once she hears about my impulse buy :rofl:

I’ve found in life that if when my opinion are very set for no “real” reason I end up completely flipping them… again it has happened. I feel like I’m the ever present punchline of this forum that I tried so hard not to be:
Just get an Octatrack

Anyways, thanks for reading and for all the help and awesome info on this forum.
:revolving_hearts:

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