Talk is cheap, share your patches! 
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Shenanigans. I keep hearing people talk about bare oscillators that sound “rich” or “full”. Seems to me that’s just harmonics added by peculiarities in the waveform. And the A4 has more tools than most at shaping those.
But I’m certainly not into modular so there could be a whole world there I’m missing? I’d be forever in your debt if you could post some recordings of straight, plain DPO tones so I could hear what the fuss is about (and try to match it with an A4).
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after using it for a couple of years: it’s not as fat and as inflated as moog for example, but is very neat, very detailed highs, doesn’t have that analogue drift as much as many other analog synths, while still making sounds that are immediately recognizably analog. maybe not so great for bombastic cutting through leads, but great for all kinds of bread and butter sounds, textures, sfx. not a massive sweet spot, but it does have an impressive range in terms of what it can do
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On the MK1 at least, there is a fixed high-pass on all oscillators, regardless of settings. It’s very easy to hear (and see on a scope). Whether it’s a design choice, overly aggressive AC coupling or whatever, who knows? It certainly does have a distinct sonic character and results in the low mids being relatively pushed before you can even start scuplting the sound.
Not to say it sounds bad, and I know they tweaked it for Keys and MK2, but it’s probably what a lot of people pick up on when they’re commenting on the sound. Yes, you can work a lot of tricks to alleviate it but you’re still working with pretty anemic starting waves.
That said, I’ve had my A4 since release and love it still! Now I’m wondering if it can be modded to change this, probes out time again. 
I’ve sold my second A4. Ultimately, I really like its sound, but it just doesn’t work for me whenever I try to perform with it. I found that I like to make either sounds that seem rather thin/naive with it or some that sound obviously electronic/analog, almost like moving electricity. It really excels at these and has a unique character that‘s imo more interesting than what a lot of analog synths can do.
The problem for me was that I can only make these move with LFOs or envelopes, having many of them with multiple routing options makes for organic movements. But touching and changing things manually didn’t work for me. It’s too easy to make a patch sound bad with just a few tweaks, since so many parameters are interacting. I guess you can solve that problem by exactly finding the limits of what you can tweak how far and then program some macros. I failed at that, as soon as there was more than one macro for a track, I couldn’t perform well. Sure, I could only use one macro per track, but that kinda feels wrong on such a machine.
I wish there was some middle ground between the „easy to set up, will almost always sound great but is limited“ nature of ST and „can sound great but is a lot of careful work“ approach of A4.
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To me, this is a spectrum with, say, the ST on one side, modular on the other, and the A4 in between. In that regard it’s already the middle ground, but definitely a matter of perspective.
I think you’re right in that the key to wrangling all this is macros. So something that would help is to make them less effort to set up and perform. I mean, it’s not so bad now, but it’s an investment. And seems like a scene-based system for this, like from the OT, could be more intuitive.
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Good perspective, you’re right about the spectrum being relative 
. I guess A4 is a bit too close to modular for me then.
You’re totally right about the macro setup that could be easier. It would already make things easier if there was a way to name it in the same screen as configuring it. Other than that, I think some solution like on Rev2 or other synths for assigning LFOs would work wonders: just press a “destination” button or whatever and twist the knob. This has been suggested here elsewhere for LFO assignment and it would also be great for macros.
This would also make it easier to find good macro settings in an exploratory way. Which is why I’m really interested in the NINA right now, where you can do exactly what I was describing, plus the knobs will always actually show you the values.
I don’t necessarily see a need for a “scene” function, the performance knob on MK II solves this quite elegantly imo. Only downside is that it’s not per track. Again, NINA’s morph feature per track that you set up with the actual knobs seems like the ideal solution for me.
Insanely late reply, but I’m literally only seeing your words today.
I guess what we’re arguing is the fundamental definition of what constitutes the sound of a synth. My DPO (modular oscillator from Make Noise) sounds 10000x more amazing than the A4, but the reason I keep my A4 is due to the sequencer, and all its abilities. Is that a part of the “synth,” or is that something else that sits alongside?
So in terms of the complete package we’re in agreement, but in terms of just the synthesis engine alone, it’s a bit weak.
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I like. I’m baffled by the haters. I’ve seen people say that there are tiny sweet spots and you have to carefully tweak settings or things fall apart… huh? It’s a totally normal analog synth that behaves as expected, apart from some well documented quirks about the waveform shapes and the filter not defaulting to being fully open.
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A4 is the chung whit… the puff pastry hangman
Have to respectfully disagree… I think the A4/AK is one of the most over-powered synths of all time.
But it’s also not something that I’d consider a normal analog synth either… much closer to a modular in terms of extreme modulation and control options.
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Well, call me an idiot, but whenever I sit down with a Roland or a Prophet, i can just grab every knob or slider that I feel like moving in the moment and move it, and it sounds great 95% of the time. Without having to study their manuals or sit down with them for hours each day. In contrast, I’ve had several sessions where I sat down with a nice A4 patch and sequence I made to then twist some knobs or program some macros that are nice for performing. Many times, what I recorded with it sounded like shit as soon as I started to tweak stuff. Sometimes simple things like playing with a filter cutoff. Maybe that’s me being a noob, but the point is that a Roland or a Prophet allow you to approach it as a noob and still sound great. They’re less thinking and more feeling like A4, at least in my experience. I think that’s fair to point out about A4 before you buy it.
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I’m not calling anyone an idiot. I haven’t used macros at all so I could see how maybe on a complex patch with macros changing multiple parameters things might get weird.
I just personally feel like I can sit down with the A4 with an init patch, pick a waveform, tweak the filter cutoffs, add keytracking to the filters and some envelope, tweak the envelopes, add a little delay, bring in some osc 2, and very quickly have something cool going on that’s every bit as satisfying for me as any of the knob-per-function synths I’ve used. Which to be fair isn’t a ton.
I’m just kind of sad I didn’t get into it sooner because I thought it was going to be too menu-divey. But I’ve been so productive with it in the short time I’ve had it.
But also I’m not any kind of master sound designer. I’m happy with pretty basic bread and butter classic 70s style analog synth sounds.
I guess I should add that I have zero experience with Moogs, Rolands or Sequentials, and most of my synths are Korgs or Yamahas, plus some doepfer modular, DSI Evolver, and Arp Omni 2, so maybe there’s something I’m missing, maybe the A4 just happens to align with my tastes, or maybe I just have bad taste.
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I probably would still have a A4 if it had a proper mod matrix or a destination assignment style having 2 inputs per destination vs the modulators having 2 outputs. Doesn’t mean it isn’t a proper powerhouse, especially if you want to get into sequencing modulation but if you are sequencing it from outside trying to use it like a desktop module it does loose a bit of sauce. I think I traded mine for a spectralis that you used to own… now that’s a pain in the butt at times but also up there for best sounding synths of all time imo.
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Completely baffled too by the haters. Especially when they describe the a4 as cold, thin or weak. Are we talking about the same synth? I even have the mk1 version.
Try adjusting the oscillator pulse width around 20 points to left or right. Use a bit of noise and again, adjust the color a bit. I have some known sweet spots with those two things that i like to start my patches with.
Playing it w a keyboard opens things up too and makes me feel more connected to it as an instrument.
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I still don’t understand what you mean by “weak”. Are you still maintaining the raw, like, saw wave out of the DPO sounds noticeably better than the A4 (if so, please post a recording of this magical beast!)
Or is this an east-coast/west-coast thing and you’re just saying you like wave folding?
I wonder if this comes down to the one-knob-per-function philosophy of Sequential and (some) Roland, etc. vs the Elektron “box of nameless encoders” style? Because while the A4 is deep, the filter cutoff isn’t one of those deep things. It’s just a filter, and adjusting it has the same predictable results as any other synth.
But if you grabbed the wrong knob and changed the type of the filter, or were on the wrong page and changed the wave shape or something — well that would be a pretty drastic change. And frankly, having 10 encoders in a group up there feels like a lot. I’ve been using the A4 for years and I still grab the wrong thing sometimes.
Compare this to, like, a Peak. It’s covered in pots, but it’s hard to grab the wrong one. And when you do, you notice. So the unexpected happens less frequently.
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True, I’ve only had mine for a few months but I’m always grabbing the wrong thing mainly on the filter page. My brain thinks the second knob of filter 1 should be cutoff instead of resonance, I guess since it’s near the top of the graphic. And also on the lfo page where I’m always accidentally changing the destination when I’m trying to change amount, which can lead to some pretty awful sounds.
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The 5x5 encoders definitely messed with my Elektron brain on the A4, I always changed the envelope curve when I just wanted to change the release. But what I’m generally describing was not a problem of grabbing the wrong parameter but actually struggling with making things not sound bad. I just couldn’t do a nice filter sweep oftentimes, to stay with that example. Maybe that’s because it has two filters and I really liked to set both of them with some resonance and drive so that they sing, which meant that it went through ugly/shrill phases when doing sweeps. But that’s just my very personal experience with A4 and it’s cool if others get along with it more easily.
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