Question in the title A friend suggested the Digitone so I wondered was the community thought about that
Digitone will have better DAW compatibility.
Digitone is a very musical device- definitely guides you to making music and musical sounds(partially by restricting sound design freedom).
Between the two- Iād vote Monomachine(Iāve had experience with both).
Iām using both, based on that I would probably go for a Digitone first, but the MnM sounds like nothing else and is most definitely staying in the studio.
can you enlighten me why this is the case?
the last instrument i bought from Elektron (beside the AH, which is not an instrument for me) was the AR in November 2015. Since then i got a Pulse2, a BassStation, a Moog Minitaur and a Radiasā¦ the first two left the Room
Now iām looking at the DT
Iād say the big thing with the digitone is that you can only adjust ratios on the Digitone- you canāt directly adjust the tune of the operators/carrier. So you canāt get atonal sounds- the detune only affects the operators. Youāre kinda stuck into a musical territory(especially compared to the Monomachineās FM engines- which you could get REALLY weird sounds near-immediately. Thereās a beast to hone in those.) The Digitone is already a friendly animal, and you canāt really piss it off.
Thatās my experience with it.
Itās a pretty sounding box- but I need more capability to make music people wonāt like from my equipment.
had a chance to play with the DN briefly and for the time i did, its sounds reminded me a lot of the MM bbutā¦the DN is a newer machine compared to the MM, comes with all the new features Elektron has introduced so far and itās an FM synthesizer (which is not limiting) whilst on the MM you do have FM+ synthesis and more (one post here).
i would still go for a MM thoughā¦partially becauseā¦wellā¦itās one of my favourite Elektrons but also because of its endless possibilities in terms of sounds and not to forget the effects that can be used in various ways, making it a nice FX box if one wanted to (sure, they canāt be compared to the new ones but stillā¦)
thereāre few things i would like to have on the MM, mostly trig conditions, but for that one could either use a couple of solutions already mentioned here on the forum or maybe an OT?
one other thing to consider about the MM is that itās been discontinued soā¦mmā¦not an easy oneā¦get both?
Itās very easy to be musical with the DN, butI find uneven ratios can give you weird sounds pretty easily as well.
Never touched the MnM though
Monomachine. Monomachine. Monomachine. Itās beautiful and strange and beautiful and strange.
Digitone is growing on me but feels so limited in its sound palette by comparison to Monomachineās many wonderful bits and oddities. Digitone does sound really nice and can sound a bit dirty as well but still feels a bit limited.
Proper answer may be āboth!ā
But there aināt much out there like Monomachine.
my friend, whoās been a huge elektron user for a while now was bluffed by the Digitone capacity to instantly sound āmodular likeā and the way, like Ryan said, it makes music very quickly. He wasnāt adamant about the MnM but there also a preference in that. He went full modular in the meantime haha.
Iām leaning MnM, Iāve had mostly people telling how unique it is. I can always get a Digitone later I guess. I wish I could have tried the MnM the way I tried all my gear in the past before buying. The plan is to eventually have them all muahahahahaha ! I just love the āglitchinessā of the MnM.
Your either gonna love the mnm or hate it. There donāt seem to be many middle ground mnm users. I love it, itās my favorite piece of gear easily
Iām willing to take the risk, Iām sure I wonāt have any problem re-selling it in case I dont like it, which I think is very unlikely
Word to the wise- you can keep your parameters when changing engines by pushing Shift + Yes when selecting the new engine
Monomachineās also my favorite. Itās the one piece of gear Iād hold on to if I had to sell everything. (If I had to aggressively strip down my setup right now, itād be Monomachine, Octatrack, Modor NF-1m, and Volcas that Iād keep).
Agreed. I knew this when I got started into synths but it still took me two years to buy the Monomachine. Style wise I love the silver boxes and sound wise I regret selling my Machinedrum and am glad to finally have the MnM.
The Monomachine is so flexible itās worth twice itās weight. My current set up is the Modor NF-1, Monomachine and Digitakt. The Monomachine offers a lot of diversity in sound and can fill any gaps I may percieve in a song.
I had the Digitone too but that didnāt work out for me so I sold it. Both are wonderful machines but youād have to ask yourself what youāre really after
Monomachine is my favorite Elektron and i would even say my favorite synth .
Its weird because at first i did not like it
Its full of character really and i agree its probably a synth you really like or just hate it.
The Digitone seems more immediately full sounding than the Monomachine, imo. On its own, the DN sounds more 3D, glassy, crystalline, where the MnM sounds more claustrophobic, like an opaque plastic box or somethingā¦ at least thatās how they sound from my design experiments with both machines.
Both have their uses, of course, and the MnM is obviously capable of much more in terms of sound design (and especially so once you start using the inputs and additional outputs), but I would struggle to choose one over the other, tbh. I feel like Iām much more melodic with the DN though. Itās the first Elektron instrument Iāve owned that Iām content with just playing with a keyboard, after assigning some parameters to velocity sensitivity.
Another voice here chiming in to say MnM. DN is amazing as well and is IMO the easiest Elektron to get really lush with, but MnM is probably my favorite synth ever. So much depth that you will be learning new tricks with it a decade down the line if you stick with it. Internal gain staging has a HUGE impact on the sound. It can be super clean and clinical or it can be a massive distorted thick slab of beef, or piercing glassy textures, or etc. it just goes on for days in terms of capabilities. I really wish it had the modern Elektron sequencer, but the old school one is still very very good, especially when you get into the 3 LFOās per track which can p-lock destinations as well as the standard parameters!
MnM is a strange beast, but a beast none the less. Very exotic.
Yeah, Iām in the āI the ā camp. Itās the centre of my setup. I do think the Digitone is a lot more immediate and easier to get āgoodā sounds out of. Thatās definitely intentional on Elektronās part, but the tradeoff is depth / complexity.
The Monomachine often needs a bit of coaxing and there are endless tricks (especially with routing, effects, parameter slides, LFOs) waiting to be discovered to get the tougher / deeper / weirder sounds out of it. Too much of what you hear on it are people who havenāt really worked it out, doing quite soft techno on it. When you push it itās got quite a distinctive character.
Definitely get a Mk2 and install the free Immortal Waves and Oxford Overdrive waveforms - they add a lot to the DigiPro synthesis palette.
All-or-nothing polyphony and FX āmachinesā were big drawbacks for me.
Song mode, three lfos, SID arp, and Digipro were positives.
Sold the MNM, probably wonāt sell the DN.
Yeah, but the FX machines were so interesting! You could mess with them like individual voices