I’d bet that ‘chorus’ is a marketing decision, along with the monophony.
I believe Syntakt has the same CPU and DSP as digitone II, which accommodates 4 more voices overall than the Syntakt does. Considering the DN2 can do 16 voices worth of 4-osc synthesis and comb filtering with 3 LFO’s, that implies there is probably some compute headroom left.
Since the analog voices only require CPU for CV control (not nothing, but less compute than digital osc/filter/env would be) and only see the DSP on a per-track basis I suspect they could probably squeeze out a total of 16 digital voices with a lot of optimization effort, but then there’s a lot of interface and state tracking in the machine that needs adding to make all that work. Even if they could get it to 12 digital voices that would be awesome though, if I could have a 5 voice swarmer with true polyphony alongside 7 other tracks and my analog drum and bass I’d be very pleased.
No, Syntakt is the last of the original generation of Digi boxes (Freescale Coldfire)
I suspect the Syntakt FX are done in FPGA.
(also: The filters and everything else after the “machine” part of the chain)
My guess is that the FPGA is mainly used for generating all the analog control voltages for the analog tracks. IIRC the only Elektron devices with FPGA’s are the ones with lots of analog circuits.
Only Elektron knows for sure.
The FPGAs aren’t very big ones - the smallest in the Spartan 3A family.
Haven’t looked to see if this is mentioned in this thread, and I understand as embedded developer (kinda) myself the absolutely HERCULEAN effort this would require from Elektron…
But an SDK for custom Syntakt machines would be so cool. Kind of like how Korg’s LogueSDK allows developers to make custom oscillators and effects for Minilogue XD and the NTS boxes.
Imagine being able to create and share custom machines. I even like the idea of the consideration that you’re limited to x processor cycles per machine so you don’t overload the processor.
Machines could be uploaded via Transfer, and could export with project files. Something like that.
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a fourth entry in the reload menu (settings → pattern → reload from project):
Pattern Mutes
so that only the pattern muted tracks are reloaded to last saved state. handy when doing soundchecks or when copying patterns and maintaining the previous pattern mutes
Has this implications for Syntakt moving forwards in that Elektron may gradually reduce or even eliminate their Coldfire programming resources or are their devs likely to be conversant in all the platforms they’re using?
Given the rise of vibe coding I wonder if many manufacturers, Elektron included, are going to start opening up at least parts of the OSes. It might become a consumer expectation and therefore a competitive advantage.
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I dunno where people are getting this information. The digitakt 2 and digitone 2 still use the same coldfire chip, just with an additional sharc DSP chip as well.
You can see it here. DigiTakt II teardown - #9 by dzyndzel
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direct pattern transpose in syntakt. i am not sure why features like this are not integrated in the ST. it makes everything less cumbersome when working in a chain of banks and other pattern based machines.
from the DN manual
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Yeah that would be great. And with a menu selecting which to tracks include in the transpose, like the new Selective Ctrl-all menu.
It’s pretty tiresome holding TRK and only being able to use the Tune parameter to transpose (which doesn’t even lock to semitones)…
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yeha on the MK2 would have been cool to use the actual transpose +- buttons for it 
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i am not sure whats the reason why change length in pattern length settings wont have any effect if the value is higher than master length. it would open so many possibilites and shouldnt interfere with any pattern change rules.
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I’d love it if presets also saved velocity, modwheel, pitch bend, breath control, and aftertouch. I don’t save presets because the real sound design work for me is in those sound setup screens. Instead I treat patterns as presets, which makes it pretty laborious to mix and match sounds from different patterns. I have a midi controller(expressive e touche, but a lot of other folks use others in the same way) always plugged in to control modwheel, pitchbend, and breath control. It makes the syntakt feel like an organic, expressive instrument
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are you talking about the macro mappings for aftertouch modwheel velocity pitchbend? these are saved in presets
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Wow! I must’ve made some mistake when I tested to see if they saved with a preset. I’m so glad this already exists!
I’d like to amend my feature request to: It’d be nice if my brain worked all the time. Also it’d be cool to be able to control the fx track with mod wheel, pitch bend, and breath control.
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@adamantium3 you can control FX track parameters via MW/BC. Just use MIDI Channel 13 and B.10 FX TRACK PARAMETERS in manual.
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the good thing is you can even test the macros in preset selection by selecting a preset and twist your pb mw at bc control while playing some notes