The TR8S does have pattern chaining (in lieu of no song mode). I wonder if it saves your pattern chain when you turn the power off?
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Korg, roland, teenage engineering, elektronā¦
Just off the top of my head, Iām sure there are others.
To me the digitakt seems to be deeper but he tr8s looks more immediate and easier to jam on as opposed to compose on.
I will most likely get a tr8s in the next few month to trial out.
MPC, by a country mile
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I use to love working with my MPC 1000; it had one of the fastest workflows Iāve ever encountered, and my beats always sounded so alive. My favorite MPCās are the 60 & the 3000. Nowadays, I definitely prefer the Digitakt; but Iām not really into making sample based music anymore like I used to.
One thing that I want to say that Roland has very right is the inclusion of the āsidechainā effect that can be applied to the stereo inputs. This is so very very useful, and I wish it was more of a standard feature for machines like this. Trying to incorporate sidechaining into a live rig otherwise can be very costly, and involve multiple extra pieces of gear with extra cables going everywhere. This is a majorly appealing feature for me.
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Side-chain, does that make it sound like Flying Lotus or somethingā¦ that pumping effect?
Flying Lotus, Madlib, J Dilla, etc. got that effect by using the vinyl sim compression on the Boss SP-303, and adjusting the volumes of the sounds to get only the kick to trigger it, and make things pump.
The āsidechainā effect will sound similar; it will make the volume of audio passing through the inputs duck whenever the kick triggers the effect.
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Iād just like to officially apologise for being one of the three people in the world who wanted to chain heaps of patterns together and be able to save that list (aka āThe Mode That Shall Not Be Namedā)ā¦
Iām still a human being damn it
āburn him! BURN HIM!!!ā
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Apologies accepted. 
The reality is that gear manufacturers seem to have decided that the feature is no longer important enough to be included.
I kinda see their point, and I understand itās annoying for the few folks who still want the feature, but at some point it really gets a bit boring.
Drum machines, groove boxes, and any other thing including a (step) sequencer are now primarily intended for performance, not for full production.
TR8S does sound locks also.
Parameter-lock, not sound lock.
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With this said, Korg caved and implemented a song mode in the new Electribes, eventually.
They implemented a chain mode, not Song mode
Whereās the documentation for that? The only thing I can find in the manual is a chain mode that doesnāt seem to allow saving of multiple chains just like you canāt on the Digitone and Digitakt.
This is comparable with what you can do on the TR-8S even though you only have 8 variations to do it with there.
Ah, yes, thatās right. Though your chains are saved. And you can chain in any order, back and forth. And you can decide the number of times a pattern is played, before it jumps to the next one.
But yes, perhaps not a Song mode as most people imagine it, when they talk about it.
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No, theyāre saved all right, as part of each pattern. And you can chain in any order, back and forth, and decide times each pattern will loop before it moves to the next one.
Itās not a great feature, by any means, though.
overbridge?
Ah, sorry, my mistake. Thatās cool.
Is that because itās fiddly and annoying to set up these chains like it is fiddly and annoying to create songs in any song mode on pretty much any hardware box ever?
FWIW, I gave up on song mode on the Machinedrum and even though Iāve made it a habit to test song mode on any device Iāve come across since, I never have found anything that doesnāt make me feel like programming a VCR using a membrane numberpad or entering a WiFi password using directional keys on a remote.
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Haha, yes, thatād be why
It was quite clever as a concept, though. From each pattern, you could set the chain to the next one, and only the next one. So it wasnāt a linear structure, it was just āGo from here to hereā, which was surprisingly flexible on paper. You could move in all kinds of directions. all the time. But just stupid fiddly in practice, as you say.
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