Here’s the quotes:
I’ve posted them before and people don’t believe it still, that’s basically calling Simon a liar and I think is a bit over the top… 
Edit: I don’t know why I’m part of this broken record, really I just believe Simon that there’s more to it and it bugs me when it comes up over and over… 
Some of them !
I think the correct answer here is that yes, it is probably “trivial” if you are willing to destroy what the RYTM is right now and make it a midi machine instead.
If you want to instead glue new features in between an already set up system, it is by no means easy.
If people believe they can do it easily, they should apply for a job at elektron and make it happen, you will make many happy and hopefully stop needlessly taunting on the forums.
Which company would not want to develop the very best and fully features drum computer dream machine ever?
I’ve no doubt they could make some aspects of the dreams come true … I’m just not convinced they want or need to or even that they should … I’m all for focussed products, but I don’t doubt the demand/benefits
Developing these things is obviously an endlessly complex process of balance on all fronts, there is far more at play than just technical limitation. What about simple things like putting food on the table so the company can actually survive, even if these “omg terrible conspiratory” choices are made, elektron and everybody else is well within their moral rights to do so.
It is simple, we request features, they deliver what they feel is the right balance for us and them, elektron gets to make that choice. Is it worth spending countless of hours (aka money) on developing midi for a drum computer, or if it is best spend on making new machines? And boy did they make nice machines so far.
Who knows, maybe the octaMK2 is a moneygrab, maybe they are just changing factories/setups and did not want to stop delivering these machines so they decided to quickly upgrade them, both are perfectly sane and logical choices for any company.
Btw I heard recently they dropped this relatively cheap machine that can sample and do midi and all kinds of cool stuff called a Digitakt. Personally I love that, and much prefer having multiple machines instead of just 1 master machine, if that were the case I would stick to a computer.
Even if my RYTM could do midi, I’d probably still get another machine for focused midi sequencing.
Anyways building a pyramid is also trivial, you just need some blocks and a bunch of people.
Yes the midi topic is a sensitive issue for many (incl myself) - but the subject has honestly been beaten to death… 
fighting a lost battle…
Reminds me how much I love those silver boxes 
The best workaround for this is to work in chain mode. Set each one bar to a different pattern, link them, then you can jump in and out of the chain as desired. When your done, copy each pattern back into seperate pages in your new four bar phrase (or what have you). The functionality is there albeit with a little copy and paste at the end 
Elektron already knows how to implement MIDI sequencing. They have just chosen to not let A4 or Rytm owners sequence in MIDI. All the talk about different “internal language” in the sequencer (lol) would not have mattered at all when they designed mk2 models, but they still chose to leave midi sequencing out.
Remains to be seen how well consumers take the fact that Elektron refuses to listen to customer requests and cripples their devices by restricting very useful functionality in this way and releases a $1500 sequencing device in 2017 that doesn’t sequence in midi.
This whole MIDI sequencing in the analogs topic couldn’t be more tired. Everything on the subject has been said, and years ago, at that.
So what if Elektron keeps features on one product and not another? If that’s what it takes for them to succeed financially then great. If that’s what it takes for them to be able to offer something in a new price point, (DT, AH), then wonderful.
Their products are their reality. Why is that difficult to accept?
It remains to be seen when, if ever, those who want features that aren’t available on certain products will simply accept that reality once and for all.
Can we please finally move beyond this cyclical topic ?
In the meantime when i think to it… The RYTM is already Full of features and It’s a Drum Machine. I know people use it like a Groovebox, one machine for make full track and that way of using it differently differ from its primarily purpose lead to want MIDI sequencing.
The more a machine is capable of everything the more you loose yourself in the machine. If you think about it in Live 2 or 3 machines is a common practice. Also it’s very nice to split Drums from the melody and have 2 different machine (or 3…) So generally you will have the RYTM for Drums and 1 or 2 machine in addition for melody. We have OT (8 stereo audio + 8 midi), A4 (cv), DT (8 mono audio + 8 midi) … And without to forget MD and MnM are capable in the Midi control territory…
So basically all Elektron machines are capable of control (if we include the A4 because of the CV track)
So if the RYTM which is mainly for DRUMS isn’t… i really don’t see why it’s a DRAMA to not have Midi on this one. Probably some people would love it but also probably a LOT of PEOPLE will not use it AT ALL. When you are on DRUMS in LIVE you don’t want to SHIFT MIDI for Instrumental parts… (At least not on the RYTM because of the Design and already all the features… to me it’s FULL.)
I don’t see so much people using Midi Control with the machinedrum… not so much. And on the MD it was different because of the 16 tracks. (and the Layout… no 12 pads, no performance, no scene)
So on RYTM with Scene, Performance… and the fact that is mono (even for the Chromatic mode) we probably don’t do much with MIDI control on this one. However, it make more sense on the Octatrack. You have The RYTM for your DRUMS, OT for Controlling External Instruments with 8 channels (like it’s just HUGE) and 8 audio Stereo for covering every instrumental to stereo drums as well.
What is uncovered here ? or Missing ?
Well not that much.
I think we should see fine tuning for samples (start - end) since its coming for the MK2. I would be shocked if its not the case since it can be implemented on the Mk1. Of course there is not going to be sampling (hardware limitation) Also a sample manager (damn its been a while since i am waiting for this)
Yeah … it was just my thought about the subject. I do not take part in any of this here and even remembering of this highly discuss there.
But to me, without to thinking about it. It’s very strange to ask for a feature… (i can certainly hope for some but that’s all.) When you know exactly what you buy at first. All is written, Operator manual is online at the release, people can read, and if it’s no midi … then there’s no MIDI and you find something else. Every performer / musician need to find his way with existing Gear with its design and its limitations.
The perfect GEAR doesn’t exist ! because each musician would have to design himself.
It’s kind of non sense… (To me…)
I prefer to be amazed by what it’s released and find my way with what’s on the market + second hand market… and move forward rather to stay on Crutch And do not even start the machine.
Fantasy & Reality debate.
Also i think Moving Forward is not only a hint, it’s probably the most important Tip & Tricks. People who make progress are the one will move forward no matter what.
Yeah, so? Companies tell weird stuff all the time.
Fact is, the protocol has nothing to do with it. And the way they store their data in the sequencer is also not a problem.
You can’t actually debunk it without reading the source code and study the schematics.
But if the analog rytm is not designed by aliens from the future then there are certain things that are pretty clear. Like which information they store.
It is not magic, it is just another (very well specced) step sequencer.
Implementing doesn’t have to be trivial tho, just that the reasons given here don’t make any sense at all.
It’s like telling your grandma that there are gremlins in her computer because she has no conception of how computers work.
In reality it doesn’t have to do with any ‘protocol’ (whatever they mean by that), or that their sequencer doesn’t work like midi.
They may have a shortage of memory space in their firmware, that would be a real possible problem they could have encountered.
Yes they theoretically can. The correct info is right there.
The sequencer does indeed store part of the data as something that can easily be transformed to a midi message.
The keyboard just gives off a number that is between 0 and 127, called the note number. This is stored in their sequencer.
The keyboard also gives off another number between 0 and 127. This number is called velocity.
This number is also stored in their sequencer.
You can, and this is the important bit, go into the menu and see these numbers in their sequencer, note and velocity.
At least, you can on the Rytm.
Same with the A4.
Have you even seen the Note Menu (A4) or the Trig Menu (Rytm) ?? It has exactly the information you need to send a note on midi message.
Yeah, could be, but the reasons i saw here are pure bullshit.
And i wish people would not believe all the crap companies tell their clients…
Well, those make kindof sense, tho i do think they are a little shy and hide behind ‘technical’ issues.
It comes down to them no wanting to invest time and money, and them having memory and cpu time constraints.
And those are real engineering constraints
How?
How is it “easily” transformed, from whats there, to sequencing external gear?
Well, a midi note out message consists of 3 midi bytes.
Byte 1: Midi channel and note on/off command
Byte 2: Midi note data
Byte 3: Midi Velocity data
Internally they have the midi channel, note data and velocity data stored (as i noted, you can check for yourself that this data exists in the sequencer). Note and Velocity are stored for every step/note and midi channel is available globally.
You also need the gate signal generated in their sequencer to generate the note ons and offs.
From there on its simply constructing the sequence of 3 bytes whenever a note is played and dump them into the buffer of the midi port.
The first byte is basically an OR command between a fixed number and the midi channel.
The second byte may need an addition or subtraction to match midi notes.
The third byte can be used directly.
So, that would be maybe 10~20 lines of assembly, or maybe 5~10 lines of C.
I don’t know what language they use but it’s not rocket science!
That said, it doesn’t mean they had other restrictions that prevented them from implementing it.
It’s just that it has nothing to do with a mismatch between midi and what they store in their sequencer. There is no mismatch.
I’m familiar with what midi is, but I’d definitely feel out of place claiming “simplicity,” when I actually have no clue how the specifics work, like the processing and coding of the OT.
I see your point, there’s data there internally, but how it actually get’s to your gear, yeah no idea.
I figured if it could sequence other gear, they would have dont it by now.
Seems they planned not too.
I am not expecting any new features to be honest and i am happy with my Rytm but lets just hope we can get some features from the new MK2 we never know
Where do you take this information from? Have you disassembled their code?
Have you just thought a second about the fact, that the Trig Data you can see on the Page may only be a visual Representation of Terms we are familiar with? So we can work with it? It says Velocity, but does that mean that Velocity as MIDI Data is actually stored in the Sequencer? And not some completely different Data? How do you want to tell from a simple graphic on the screen?? Thats ridicoulus!
I tried sending data as audio to an USAMO, which kind of worked for note ons but note offs were a problem.
maybe someone should write some custom firmware? Has anyone ever done a custom OS for any elektron gear?