There’s an Elektron box for every need and every musician.
But you don’t wanna think about what you can do with them all, but what you can’t do without, for the moment.
The Digitakt gives you drums and sampling, and not just one shots but phrases and loops as well, as long as time stretching don’t matter. And the midi sequencer with conditional trigs into the Sub37 will make it shine in ways it can’t, on his own.
At this point, you probably don’t need all that much to elevate your rig and give your ideas a boost. And what you’re guaranteed to not need, is a learning process just because.
The Digitakt is the epicenter of sound and utilities when it comes to taking a bare bones rig in a new direction and also get into the Elektron workflow.
OT can do all what DT can do, and much more, especially concerning sampling / resampling / sample mangling.
More possibilities, more choices to make, so more complex, more time to learn it.
Just get an OT and study it for a good 10months for starters. That’s what I just did, should receive it in a few days.
If it doesn’t work out, resell and move on.
You will not loose a lot of money, maybe our ego’s will get a little bump but that’s part of being human and ultimately has no meaning in the scope of our lives.
Cheers and have fun!
Tony
//Edit:
Want to add that the diversity of the 1 box that is the OT got me to decide to choose that one over the DT. I wanted a looper, I wanted a hardware sampler with decent time stretching, I wanted to be able to play long samples and I wanted a midi sequencer. Now I have all of it in 1 box + a LOT more.
//Edit 2:
Easy backup, say no more.
I’m not sure that more features means more possibilities. I know that’s not what you’re saying, but what I’m saying is that often, when OT and DT are compared next to each other, it lands in a shoot-out of features. That’s just not a good way to look at it. They’re so different, they will enable you in different ways. I can easily see someone preferring the DT over the OT, even if you knew them both very well and had the funds for both, just because they will take you to different places.
Exactly and learning OT makes other Elektron gear a piece of cake to work with so there is the benefit on time invested. I hated the OT at first but now love it as I learn more tricks on how to use it. It pairs well with the A4 and other gears. I would get an AR MKI over the MKII it looks better and less expensive plus way smaller in size.
Isn’t it harder to decide now ?
Nobody mentioned MnM and A4 (except me).
If you are sure to take a Digitone for synths, I’d go for it and think about other gear later. You can do drums with it, as you can have a different sound per step. Take time to feel more comfortable with Elektron gear, and choose what you’d need really.
For what it’s worth: the Digi is a very hands-on machine, not frustrating, but very easy and fun to learn. If you get to know the Digi a bit, you also master the basics of Elektron-machines.
I was playing with an A4 MKII at a local store this weekend (never touched one before) and managed to get something half decent out of it in a couple of minutes.
100% go with the Digitakt! It’s the easiest of the Elektrons to get into IMO, and you can load it with any analog drum sounds you want and sample your Moog to create Poly Moog stuff if you fancy. It’ll be great paired with the Sub 37. Beyond that, some kind of poly - the A4 or AK would be cool for this, but they’re a bit more frustrating to learn. Or of course a Digitone or Novation Peak or a Blofeld or any number of polysynths would work well!
FYI, my main setup is a Sub Phatty / Analog Keys / Digitakt…
I use a sub37 into an octa. It works very well - play notes on sub37 keyboard and these are recorded and looped back on an octa midi track and then I tweak my sub37 until the patch is just right and then I sample it into the octa. I haven’t used the digitakt but I’m sure it would work in the same way. Song mode is definitely something to consider - I couldn’t work on my current set without song mode but maybe you can - I know digitakt doesn’t have a full song mode - worth looking into before buying.
i think maybe the Rytm mkII would be closest to those instruments, and also have the benefit of direct sampling options (not time synced sampling although that is another realm of activity).
although i don’t own a Rytm, from what other users have written, it doesn’t do midi sequencing … although for midi sequencing could always just grab a moderately cheap used qy300 or something.
For your needs it sounds like Digitakt is the way to go. As others have said the Machinedrum is an awesome frog box, but the melodic sequencing is icky. You can’t run a keyboard in to it like the OT or DT, which means manually scrolling through notes for every step. Sequencing chord progressions feels more like coding than playing music.
Edit: autocorrect decided I was trying to say “frog” instead of groove, but my point stands
For sampling and sequencing I’ll suggest a Digitakt over an OT any day of the week. Sure it’s not as deep but it’s more accessable. It took me a whole month to learn the OT with the help of Cuckoo and still I was grossly underutilizing it.
I’d strongly recommend reading through these forums and get an understanding of what works and what doesn’t. Quite a few people seem to have issues with Elektron’s latest machines. Also be aware that Overbridge is not available across the entire product range yet.
I didn’t read your post through, but the elektron unit that has gotten absolutely the most mileage in my studio and live set-up is Rytm (Mk1) - most tracks need drums, and the Rytm does everything you want (Synthesis, Samples and nice master fx including a compressor that sounds great… oh, and if you get a MK1 you even get working Overbridge)
DT = smaller budget/easy and quick workflow, great entry
OT = got the money/Deep…like really deep with so much reward when understood, imho, the epitome of an edm (and more) writing tool
DT seems super fun, OT changed my life.
I started with RYTM, then A4. Great combo! If I did it all again, I’d start with OT no question, its the one that “in the darkness binds them”
FWIW, if comparing DT to OT prices, @darenager pointed out to me recently in another thread that a used OT MK1 is barely more expensive than a new DT. I checked recently completed ebay listings (for the US) and a lot have been selling for just under $800, which isn’t much past the price of a new DT. So if you do end up wanting to go the OT route but don’t want to spend as much money for a shiny new MK2, that could be a consideration!
It depends how you want to interact with the box and what kind of musician you are. You need to watch the videos and read the threads. Don’t go by popularity.
And don’t succumb to the OT cult “it can do everything!” enthusiasm, without first watching the Cuckoo comparison video. As soon as Cuckoo started operating the OT, I knew I would hate it. "It’s easy, all you have to do is click-click-click-clickclick-click-click and then once you’ve set that up, you just click-click-button/combo-button/combo-click-click-click and you have to remember that you click-click-click…
I love my Digitakt as a drum machine sampler, alongside two polysynths. Lots of fun, relatively easy to learn / still learning it but making music. I wish it had a song mode. And Overbridge.
