Let me elaborate, since I’m going against the stream here. The other advise offered here, is solid and good. The Digitakt is a great instrument. It sounds amazing, it’s easy enough to use and you’ll get stuff going with it in no time. Complete albums will be made with the Digitakt, if they haven’t already, and they’ll be great.
However. The Digitakt, for all its awesomeness, is a version of what you already have, albeit in an attractive and compact hardware box. While the workflow is different from a Push with Ableton, and that will generate new ideas on its own, it’s still closer to what you know.
But once you enter the realm of hardware samplers, you won’t go back. You’ll find stuff here you haven’t seen before and you’re going to get new ideas on workflow, music, loops, compositions and combinations of all this.
And there’s no sampler out there, that will allow you to travel to these strange new places, like the Octatrack. It really is a beacon that cuts through the entire world of music made with hardware. Once your brain starts to really get the Octatrack, it’ll fire up synapses that have just been waiting to come alive and make awesome stuff with your music.
I got the Digitakt when it was out, and I had the Octatrack on and off for about three years before. I sold the Octa to fund the Digi. Now, I’ve sold the Digitakt to fund my purchase of a Deluge.
So to be fair, I had the Digitakt for just a few weeks, and I was pretty productive with it when I had it. But I don’t miss it one bit. I miss the Octatrack almost on a daily basis, though, and I’m pretty sure that once I’ve learned the ropes of the Deluge, I’m going to get an Octatrack MKII.
Quite simply, my assumptions of the Digitakt being the sampler for me due to its more straight on approach, were wrong. It made me realise, and not until I’d sold it, that I really am an Octatrack person. And the reason for that is that it can take me to places I just didn’t know existed.
The Digitakt can do that, too, of course. It’s all in the hands of the musician. It’s a brilliant piece of gear. But I felt it was more a modern take on a traditional sampler, and not so much more (though that’s plenty enough and certainly a market with a void now), and I’m just not sure that my world needed another version of that, right now.
You’ve defined your needs on what you know now. But even if my advise has no substance for you, I can promise you one thing - once you get your hands on an Elektron device, your ideas of what you want to do, will change. And the Octatrack is a more interesting and versatile instrument to change together with.
But still powerful