i agree
the A4 sounds mellow
that’s the reason i bought it, because i dig mellow sounds
however you can do nasty things with it too
for example treating your Microbrute with the A4’s filters and LFOs
and also keeping the dry signal of the microbrute
i do this with a Minitaur and it sounds downright nasty
you can sample the A4 in your Octa and use Lofi on it etc
i wouldn’t give up on it, its a great device , and just like the octa, the secret lies in its depth of functionality, just get deeper into it and you will be surprised.
use the effects too, as if it were part of the synth engine - eg modulating the reverb with an LFO - stuff like that. Send some sampled material from your Octa into the A4 etc.
it’s not just nasty out of the box. if you want really nasty out of the box, buy a Moog Prodigy
It’s no moog, that’s for sure…not sure I could sell my a4 though, I like its character.
If it’s not for you maybe the sub37 is worth looking into, they’ve done some things that can add lots of grit to the cream.
can anybody tell me …at 1:11 … how would I learn to play notes like that?
@op … 2 machines at the same time is “usually” a bad idea 
if you have produced a gnarly sound with the A4, which will happen eventually … check the performance mode, live record trig mangling, you can further process with fx from OT, and then push it back into the A4 inputs to add analog FX
@barfunkel …lovecraft Acid is a coooool track!
7:40 area and 11:00 area…need to hear that combined
on the A4, no doubt on the performance mode, it is a great thing…takes a little while to set up what you want but once you have it in there, amazing what you can do with it
Oh man, just checked into this forum for the first time in a while and noticed that this got some replies i hadn’t seen.
I actually wound up trading my A4 for a Bass Station II, a Hakko fx888d soldering iron, a homebrew noise synth, and $3oo.
The Bass Station despite being mono is definitely much more in line with the kind of thick heavy dronebass I was looking for.
Thanks again to all who tried to help me out, in the end the A4 really was an awesome synth but just a little too smooth for my tastes. Still love my Octatrack and Monomachine though.
Great tips on this thread, thanks guys for going to the effort of typing them up. Appreciated. 