Why people say Digitone are not good as Monomachine?

Elektron Gear
#41

Of course you don’t need it :smiley:

To me the Monomachine is not that versatile. I guess that a Virus is much more versatile!

The Mono is my favorite synth. To me it’s the most immediate road to glitch. It has a sound signature (as any synth does), and I can’t emulate it. (Well to some extend it’s definitely possible to get similar results with other boxes, but it takes me more work, and I lose the fun side of the thing). I don’t use it everyday… For some sounds I definitely use other synths… But I do love it, and I find it a very fun synth.

There are many well known music made with it around. Some’s Autechre sounds are obvious examples. Midera has nice tracks with it too.

But I don’t state that the MnM is better than other synths… it’s just a matter of taste.

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#42

you’re going to have to go for the quantum option and just get both. It’s the only way to be certain. :wink:

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#43

As usual :sweat_smile: But selling again for a reasonable price should be possible…well without a big loss, I mean to say.

#44

Monomachine

#45

I have both.
Monomachine is a better instrument…without a doubt.
No presets
A blank slate.
Makes it more ‘yours’
Its like picking up a bass guitar for the first time - you know how its meant to sound but it takes time to make it sound how you like it
Deeper… .the routings and assign sub menus are fukn top notch and visionary!
Delve into those and start tweaking… so good!
3 LFO’s assignable to mostly everywhere.
The Delay per track… and what a delay… the effects page is so finely tuned and combined with the LFO’s you can take a sine wave in the morning and by noon its dark outside!
Individual outputs…
VO machine. is not just for making wheezy random speech…
Thats when POLY mode comes in :dizzy:

… Eh, if the sequencing on it not up to scratch sequence it from Max for Live :bomb:

Im not knocking the Digitone… I have the Keys and love it… it just doesn’t have the broader scope the MonoMachine gives me… The send effects make me feel like I’m suffocating…

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#46

That’s it.

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#47

Thank you for clearifing. I am not an english native speaker, and Sometimes i miss the little but important difference.

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#48

When compared to other digital synths the Monomachine’s synth engine is not really that deep.

Yes you can select from a variety of machines but, when selected, that machine is basically akin to the OSC page and it has only 8 parameters. On some machines two parameters are basically just another LFO, which is a bit odd as there are already 3 LFOs per track. Also, on every Machine one parameter is always Tune, which is less useful except when using two tracks to create a sound.

By comparison the Digitone has 28 OSC parameters and the Virus TI can have as many as 41 OSC parameters.

#49

I understand your point, but complexity is not only due to the number of synth parameters that are available. But even if it were the case, there are more than 80 parameters available across the various synth machines in the MNM so I don’t think our silver friend is a slouch in that respect… and then you can also start adding in custom waves to the DPro machines.

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#50

Speaking of hundreds/thousands of OSC/synth parameters, anyone ever own a K5000r or FS1r?

Monomachine replaced both of those ultra-deep synths in my setup years ago. Well, maybe around 85% of the patches that took hours/days to create on those two could be made in only minutes on the MnM. With part-layering, multi-track recording of course. And a change in focus to finish songs rather than be a sound designer.

Later I stupidly tried to recreate the MnM’s multi-synthesis engines in Eurorack and lost that battle. Should have just kept the Nord G2 and avoided Eurorack.

Back to topic: Digitone sounds great out of the box. Monomachine, well it took me several months to even ‘like’ it. Years later I realized that it was tops among the small handful of hardware synths that I actually ‘need’. Wish it got the Digitone’s modern Elektron sequencer tricks though.

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#51

(I don’t have a digitone but I do have a monomachine, a4, rytm, OT, machinedrum)

To me, the magic of the monomachine is not in the core sound of a single machine. It’s the sum of parts, like others have said. Start with a pretty tame osc sound, crank the EOG, add some filtered delay… suddenly it’s huge. With the digital filters you can easily place a sound in the EQ spectrum and control how much head room it eats up, so it’s great for building a song. I think of it more like 6 independent little modular channels. synth -> amp -> filter -> insane EOF/EOG -> SRR -> delay.

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#52

Im not a programmer nor would I pretend to know anything about programming but would it be that hard for Elektron to take the code, to expand it, make it suitable for modern chips and release a Mnm 2?!
Can’t they see how many people are waiting and calling for this?! I’d pay 2000 euros for it!
Mnm is already a legend! They have a fantastic base they can build on. Mnm is irreplaceable and brilliant at the same time… >>> money :moneybag:

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#53

I’d pay that much for a MKIII too.
I’ve read that the MnM’s hardware (DSP?) is outdated, no longer available, or the code won’t work on newer chips without some heavy lifting. Plus one of the original devs is no longer with us.

#54

maybe quite a lot of fans here are calling for it, but I don‘t think it is that well known in the general „synth community“. On the other hand there are endless digitone videos, demos on insta/youtube. People are praising it in forums. It seems to be in so many setups.
Even many beginners start with the dn/dt combo. Fm is so easy to handle in the DN and it shoots at you with great sounds
I don‘t know the numbers, but I assume the digi‘s bring the big

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#55

Yep, this is it for me. Along with the FX machines. I’ve made a few super weird tracks based on just one synth machine fed into 5 FX machines, or 6 FX machines and a mic or EM pickup in the input.

Or even the flexibility of being able to send a track out a set of outputs, through an external reverb, and back into the inputs, into a compressor with a one-shot LFO assigned to the threshold and triggered by the kick track for sidechained reverb. Or any number of other weird routings that can be set up.

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#56

YES! The fact that output routings are tied to kit is huge for me. Half the time I wish the machinedrum had that too. The live set I’m working on is a monomachine, machinedrum, and eventide space running into a mackie MS1202. It’s pretty much a perfect mix of sequencing, live mixing/routing, resampling, etc etc.

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#57
Offtopic

I still own a K5000s (bought it when it came out) and be honest: I find it easier to program than - for example - a Roland XP50. At least the K5000s has a lot of knobs for live tweaking.

But of course, almost all digital synths of this time were quite horrible from a UI perspective. Menu diving was real back then (at least on the affordable machines).

It’s not hard, but much work. It would require a complete rewrite of large areas of the codebase and, of course, you need to design a new hardware for it. Elektron has also stated multiple times that they will not redo old machines. That’s not what they want.

And the money argument is also void: there is a reason why they are releasing devices with a quite reduced feature set lately. While I love my machines (OT-)deep and “complex” that’s not what the average Elektron user wants. There is much more profit to make from a next Model:xxx device.

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#58

@dododo
I’ve got both. Know both…
DN sounds awesome. Mono is it’s own thing. If you like that sound, go Mono. But, I think you’d get more mileage outta the DN tho. You would also have warranty.

Not to throw a monkey into the wrench…Mono has some cool midi shit.

Side note…I’ve been wrestling with “to sell or not to sell” my Mono. It’s been in the closet for months. DN remains on the desk. :wink:

I love the Mono, but, not being a real musician, I gotta be realistic.

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#59

I am slightly surprised that no one has mentioned neighbor routing of the Monomachine yet.
When you hear folks talk about Monomachine being a modular synth, this is a huge component of it.
Thanks to neighbor routing, a single voice can have 18 LFOs, 6 LPFs, 6 HPFs, 6 bands of EQs, 6 delays, plus (depending how your assign the neighbor tracks as FX) reverb, chorus, compression, ring mod, flanger, etc.

So yea, the Digitone is indeed a beast with a fantastic sequencer.
But MM is a monster of an entirely different breed.
Neither is better than the other, they each have strengths and they each have weaknesses.

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#60

The thing with using routing, and most of the FX, is that you have to sacrifice polyphony. The Monomachine only has 6 notes of non-dynamic polyphony to start with.

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