reeloy, have you tested the OTO Boum?
…oto boum?
never heard of it yet…got a bisquit in use though…which is a sonic beauty of it’s own…
seems interesting
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…yup…it does, indeed.
but i’m fine with what i got here to let signals rumble…
most versatile single 8 bitcrushing til it hurts through an truu analog multimode filter like the oto bisquit…
and a heat is pretty much all i’m asking for…the sherman was gone again after a year…
but with those two i’m more than happy…and fine forever…
what separates the bisquit and the ah from all the rest, is the option of their each dedicated single potis for dry/wet ratios AND independant addition of xtra wetness/drive attempt…
I’ve just watched this video and I think I’m convinced.
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…ha…yup…cenk loves his heat sometimes even more than his alltime fav ot…and guess what…my next package from sweden will include the ugly model, of course…and…one more heat…!
because it’s exactly as he’s saying…i was also searching for this basic sound glue years and years…and tried so many pluginways to get there…
but only ah really glues everything to one charme at once right away…i still can’t believe my ears sometimes…
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How is the AH on Digitakt? I can see it working great on synths, just wondering how it is on samples, particularly if you have an entire song composed on the DT and not just say drums.
I have a Heat and a bunch of distortion/character/filter plugins including Decapitator, Vertigo VSM-3, Elysia Karacter, FabFilter Saturn, UAD Moog Filter Collection, various UAD preamps, and a bunch more. Nothing can replace the Heat. The distortion on the Moog Filter Collection is awesome, and it does some of the same envelope-following filter madness as the Heat, and there’s definitely something to be said for running signals through UAD Neve/610B pres…
However my favourite software distortion by far is the Vertigo VSM-3. I have the native version through Plugin Alliance/Brainworx, and there’s also a UAD version. It can do subtle master bus harmonics all the way through to extreme distortion, with a great deal of control over odd and even harmonics, mid-side options, and more. It can produce some amazing sounds that I haven’t heard elsewhere in software. I’d love to grab the VSM-2 hardware it’s based on, but it’s obscenely expensive. More for mastering but you can get some unreal tones out of it.
Back to the original question, probably the Heat is the better option, but a Filterbank sure looks like a lot of fun…
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Have you tried processing softsynths through AH using Overbridge? Does it make a huge difference?
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Honestly I just use it as an analog effects box for outboard gear, to warm up material on the way in via my interface, which has better converters. Occasionally I’ll set up an effects loop without Overbridge, to run stuff through the Heat and a pair of H9s - sometimes a softsynth or ITB sampled instrument can sound amazing through that chain. I could be wrong, but pretty sure Overbridge adds a bit too much latency for live playing of softsynths - could be wrong, haven’t tried it recently but I seem to remember that being a problem - but yeah, I suppose there’s a whole other side to it that I could benefit from, particularly when mixing, because there’s a range of sounds the Heat can do that I can’t get otherwise. But normally if I just want to warm something up that’s already ITB, I usually use one of my other plugins, often the VSM-3.
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Just to add - the Heat was my first Elektron, and I bought it specifically as a distortion unit for my Nord Drum 2, because I was sick of software latency. Same with the H9s. So most of time it’s hooked up to a Nord Drum (soon a Wavedrum as well), and the three of them can really bring life to iPad synths/instruments, which are more or less equivalent to softsynths - the Heat does an incredible job with them.
It is around the same price as the Sherman so I don’t see how you can think that, given that the AH is stereo and has quite a bit more overall. Messing around with one in the store is not going to give you anywhere near the same experience as using it in your own setup, it is a lot more flexible than the Sherman and can do almost everything that the Sherman can do and more - no they won’t sound exactly the same, and yes the Sherman is a great unit in its own right and worth the money, but the AH can do a lot more and is much more precise to control. The Sherman is wild and a large part of its appeal and sound are the AM and FM modulation and filter tracking, it can easily make an input signal unrecognisable, which is awesome when you want that, the logo on the Sherman is very apt 
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Cheers man. That’s good to know.
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Filterbank is bonkers, you can get really crazy stuff sometimes a bit too easily too. Heat must be more user friendly for studio use with presets and different modes.
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I had a Sherman for a while. It was fun to completely nuke and transform a signal, but the major issue was that the envelopes need a very hot signal to trigger. So it was impossible to use half the functionality at anything less than 80% distortion. There’s a workaround, sending a second signal to the env trigger in, but this was a step too far and I sold it.
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Yeah, I know, maybe because as a Belgium guy I’m very proud of Shermans work, Rodec mixers and also the work of Godfried Willem Raes who made some kind of robot for Aphex Twin. I just messed around with AH and youtube, and a simple soundpool drumpatch on AK in the shop. 
And years ago put some hours into a friends Sherman (at that time I was into hardtek/breakcore/noisy harsh stuff) and was amazed by how much you could destroy/fuck up your sound with it.
Seeing Elektrons do regular price changes and seeing on the 2nd hand market how fast the prices drop + seeing how fast they release mk2’s + knowing that Elektron isn’t ‘the boutique’ brand anymore which we could trust blindly + having to return my A4 within 6 months and my DN because of hardware issues I’ve given up on buying any new Elektron, yes I’m sorry but I bet there are more people like me thinking the same way! I can’t justify the price of AH for the little things I would do with it!
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Sorry, no synths in these videos but maybe helpful for making a decision.
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One thing about the AH from my own experience with it is that it definitely isn’t always an “instant gratification” box, I actually sold my first one after not really giving it enough time, but when I got the one I have now I decided to dig deeper. It really takes some effort to dial in the particular effect you are after, in particular the envelope, LFO and their targets, input level, drive amount, mix and so on, often precise and subtle adjustments can give some very responsive and pleasing results.
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Nice demo! Shows well what I like about the AH. In my setup I alternate between having it on the main bus and separate instruments. I set up my mixer so it only takes a button press to switch around.
Wish I worked for Elektron and could have multiple of every device
So, I’ve just bumped into Vermona Filter Lancet and Erica Synths Fusionbox and the uncertainty is back again. Mainly because of the Heat’s price.
I know AH is a lot more versatile but have you guys ever tried those other two?
Please reeloy, don’t kill me.