I think the strength of the S-4 is in the sum of its parts. All of my favorite sounds have utilized every sound sculpting component, often with subtle modulation on multiple parameters. The S-4 doesn’t always make every sound that I put into it sound better, but when it works it really works.
I’m loving my time with it, but I don’t think it’s versatile enough to appeal to every musician, so maybe it’s just not for you.
Btw, here are some examples from my last few weeks with it, for those of you who have instagram:
Yeah tbh i don’t think the S-4 sounds any worse than any other digital device that I have, sounds as good as the Octatrack or Zoia. In fact the effects are better sounding than the OT and on par with the Zoia. The conversion sounds fine to me too. I think why it may sound muddy is that stuff builds up really fast with four tracks, you just have to learn to be sparse. I don’t notice anything weird with the stereo field either.
You can do this with a Zoia really easily. I was literally just doing this but the S4 kept crashing again. You should be able to do it with a midi channel on Elektron such as Octatrack. Set a random LFO to hold. Figure out what cc’s you want to trigger on S4 and set in on OT.
Thanks for bringing that up, looks quite intriguing and sounds nice.
It appears that Cycles is built on Kontakt, and I think that a main difference between Cycles and the S-4 is the ability to work on live input. Cycles comes bundled with Kontakt Player, so I doubt there is any input processing at all built into that. Might be different for people with a full license for Kontakt, though.
Also I don’t know how much configuration is required to get hardware controls for Cycles, it probably work out of the box with NI controllers (as seen in the videos).
I think it ultimately depends on your usecase: If you use a laptop anyway, don’t use live looping/sampling, gel with the interface, and/or have a controller that works with Cycles, I don’t see much benefit in the S-4. Cycles + VST will be able to do more for you, for less.
true, cycles works with loading (your own) samples not live input.
i appreciate that for dawless people ofcourse a hardware unit like the S-4 is to be preferred.
The Tempera in no way is disappointing, I just feel like it’s a granular synthesis persons dreamland, and that’s not me. I took a chance trying something new, only to realize “it doesn’t click with me”. modulating modulations of modulated modulations is what it seems designed to do. I have heard some cool results on it, but nothing I have made. I am probably only using 5% of it’s abilities, meanwhile people around the world are patiently awaiting the delivery of theirs. So I just feel like it could be put to better use, in better hands.
The Reason the S4 appeals to me, mostly, is the realtime FX for running sounds thru it. I love hearing how it can take could take a single sound and create such a vastly different sound as a result of stacking the FX. I would then record the effected sound into whatever machine I am building a beat on at that time.
Maybe I should give it another go before selling it. I mainly want to make nice (tonal) textures for on the background of the beginning of tracks. So it makes most sense to load a sample and make a great texture out of it.
Any tips from you as other S-4 owners on what the best workflow is to get optimal results?
Here’s what I like to do for textures: load up an interesting, longish, sample and begin just with trying to add little modulations to that first layer/engine/menu (the one with the waveform). usually, I can get really far just adding fairly small amounts of modulation to just one part of the track’s chain.
Then you might try sending the output of that track to the other three tracks so you have a lot of flexibility and do the same kind of modulations with just one or two parts of the chain. (and save this as a project so you can have all that architecture set up as a template - and you can just load in a different sample).
Then you can use the mix screen to filter, pan, and adjust the 4 tracks and mix to taste.
I also recommend dialing the wet/dry way down throughout and playing with slow and minor modulation to get results that will be interesting and don’t just completely smear/erase your initial sample.
Batch 2 seems to be on its way, just got a shipment notification.
Tbh I am a little anxious about what awaits me with the current state the S4 is in. Guess I’ll know soon enough…
