The mic thing came up on the discord and this is what Chris had to say about it… Looks like the inputs are just routed into the effects section for mixing in
For now, but knowing Sonicware I wouldn’t expect big feature changes in an update
I’m a big fan of this hardware, especially over the Liven series, mostly for the sweet sweet velocity sensitive pads. I think the Cydrum sounds really cool!
Tempting as well. But I’m thinking that since it was released, they added many new engines (and a huge variety of sampler modes). They could be similar internally, but on a surface look pretty much different between the models. Like O-ambient thing - is this the same to any ELZ engine?
And in any case it’s still mono-timbral (even with the looper).
Yeah, most of my complaints about the Lofi 12 XT are sampler specific: The file management is bad. The sampling process is bad. The slice mode is limited. Etc.
But there’s some other stuff that probably carries over to this. I use my Digitakt more often than any other piece of gear. And coming from the Digitakt, the Lofi 12’s sequencer was very annoying. On paper, it has a lot of the same tricks. But it’s not nearly as well implemented.
So yeah, this thing honestly makes me kind of sad. I really wanted to like the Lofi 12. And I think with a few updates, it could have been a lot more fun. But that’s not happening. Oh well.
similar vibe here. love the sound of this one. seems to be lightning fast in certain areas, but I’m reluctant from my XT experience. not a fan of the hardware, and some aspects of the ui.
I am wondering what you didn’t like about the XT? The DT slicing is significantly more limited and sequencing is about the same. File management also seems similar. Was it the performance of loading and browsing large sample libraries?
If they can squeeze some of the performance and pressure pad stuff onto the lofi12xt I’ll start using it again….
It seems like each subsequent machine includes stuff users requested on the previous. Which in a way is good but in a way annoying if they can’t implement retroactively on existing devices.
can I have discord invite link please
Of course! https://discord.gg/JnJqy47asK
This looks like a perfect pairing with my Ambient0 for some Aphex-esque jamming. Thanks Dr!
If I’m being 100% honest I feel like sonicware is taking the piss on musicians of a certain genre. They read a lot of internet posts and respond by adding features that they don’t know how to implement.
I have no problem with them as a company but this one and the texture lab and the ambient joint, and the lofis, and the 8 bit chiptune deal, and basically all of their main releases are like niche things that someone wants and is willing to take a $239 risk buying new, and then be not terribly mad if it’s only worth $238.
When you do this, it’s extremely unprofitable, so they’ve managed to release the same thing like 30 times with different color molds which keeps costs down to a minimum and again, it’s not that expensive of a base product so people aren’t too mad.
But then I look at this and it’s like, $400 introductory, $500 list. I look at that tomagatchi screen and those kinda cheap looking small (albeit velocity sensitive pads) and the kinda cheap looking hollow plastic hardware implementation and though I do see some strong points in the battery power, and the appeal of the sounds created by this device, I don’t feel like it’s a very earnest offering at the $500 price point and I think that this price point is getting to right around the cost level where you can’t just shrug your shoulders about implementation.
I mean maybe this little plastic duplicate of the other similar boxes is a major improvement over the other sampletrek and lofi xt in the same housing, but I think it’s like sip said, I don’t even see an LFO and it’s got wavetables and shit. I think this might be putting the cart before the horse, as the saying goes.
But the demos sound suuper tight, and I’ll be interested to hear people’s real opinions about the sound engine, because we already heard everything there is to hear about the hardware builds from every other sonicware product because they’re all the same exact hamburger with a different colored bun.
Not trying to be negative so don’t read it that way, just feel like I’m not sure sonicware knows anything except how to part people with their money at a lower base price, and it now will soon be determined if they can pull elektron-nomics and raise the price by $100USD with every release without updating the chassis.
Honestly I completely missed the price, assuming this was more in line with previous
devices’ pricing. Ouch.
Regarding the LFO - It does have a cycling envelope per instrument but at least based on the marketing material that’s the only LFO-type thing which is kind of wild on a Device that’s basically a Syntakt competitor.
It looks very cool but it would need to displace something I’m already using and I just don’t see it doing that. If I were just getting into hardware though it’s something I would like to look at, because on the surface at least it’s a lot of bang for the buck.
Nah, I went over it back in the thread about the XT. File management is not much like the Digitakt aside from the fact that you load samples into the RAM. My main gripe is that you can’t move or rename samples on the machine. And renaming them on the card means the machine can’t find them. So if you want to just sample some stuff, play around with it, and then name and save what you want to keep, it’s an annoying mess. Whereas that’s really easy to do on the Digitakt. You also can’t truncate samples on the Lofi 12 XT. And it’s really dumb about project folders. All and all, I just kind of hate it.
As far as the slice mode goes, it’s not at all right to say that it’s more limited than the Digitakt. You can set your own slice markers but you’re limited to 15 slices. So if I want to split a sample into 16 or 32 equal parts that’s something I can easily do on the Digitakt but not the Lofi 12 XT.
But more importantly, and this goes to the sequencing, which is going to probably be relevant for the CyDrums, I usually work with parameter locks on the Digitakt. For a bunch of reasons, they’re not as easy to use on the Lofi 12. For one, there’s no trig preview. And it’s not nearly as simple to get rid of an individual lock without deleting the note altogether. There’s a bunch of stuff like that. Stuff that on paper it can do but it’s just not as well implemented. For example, you can’t edit the length of a note that’s already in the sequencer.
Yeah the manual isn’t available yet, but no mention of LFOs anywhere on the product page. Why can’t it just be standard to have 16 freely assignable LFOs on all synth gear?? 
Synth manufacturers are HOARDING LFOs 
I think this is dead on and there was no need to hide it.
It’s not productive to the release, but I didn’t say anything I’m ashamed of, just sometimes a post that takes more than one pass of the thumb to scroll through can be disruptive to the vibe of a product thread.
I’m glad to share my opinions but I try to do it where it’s not at the cost of the user’s experience engaging with the forum.
I like to phrase my opinions in the form of images because they’re easy to interpret or ignore, but for something like this I had a few words that needed to be said.
GRRR FX BLOCK VEWWWYY ANGWY.
I think there is a balance to be struck between being critical and interfering with the flow. We don’t need another discussion of TE’s pricing policy or Behringer’s lack of ethics. But in this case, it’s definitely worth pointing out the issues with build quality and unaddressed bugs in past releases, and the creeping up of the price point, things that I don’t hear in the discourse here and elsewhere. Maybe part of that could have been in an unhidden tl;dr. But I don’t think that your entire post was out of bounds. We’re all looking at the same demos from the manufacturer. This is the time to set a context in which the next demos, and hopefully from third parties, can be evaluated. And I say that as someone who has throughout my life been slammed for harshing people’s buzz, to the point where I am much mellower here than I have ever been, and I still probably come across as old man yelling at cloud. People don’t like analysis, but if it can’t be done here, it can’t be done anywhere.
I was on the verge of pulling the trigger on a DT 2 as my first ‘serious’ groovebox (I have a Move a few Pocket Operators), but then this drops. Are they comparable? would the DT 2 offer significantly more in the drum department? I was only going to use the DT as a drum machine since the Move sequencer/sampler is fine for now (and I was planning on picking up a Torso T-1 down the line for more advanced sequencing shenanigans).
Hope this doesn veer too close to being off-topic…apols if so (im new here)
I’m having a hard time seeing how this is better than a used DT1 at the same or less price. If you have the scratch for a DT2 or DN2, there is no comparison, as far as I can tell.
I think that this device actually has a methodically calculated number of features which are not present on DT1, probably intentionally. That says nothing to the elegance of the implementation, however.
