Elektron Digitakt

  On 4/21/2017 at 2:36 AM, modey said:

 

  On 4/21/2017 at 2:00 AM, sheathe said:

No external editor is needed. Just record a wave at a really high pitch. Of course, you'll have artifacts, but that's the name of the game unless you are multisampling.

Ah, ok, I was thinking about it from pre-made waves, like the AKWF collection. Resampling all 4300 of those would be a pain!

Yeah script that shit!

the way you can zoom into wav forms reminds me of stuff i used to do with cool edit except away from the computer screen

this thing just makes me want an Octatrack 2 with an OLED screen, trig conditions, better quality timestretch, etc...

 

lack of stereo is a deal breaker for me. stupid way to intentionally gimp the machine. come on, Elektron!

  On 4/21/2017 at 7:37 AM, digit said:

this thing just makes me want an Octatrack 2 with an OLED screen, trig conditions, better quality timestretch, etc...

 

lack of stereo is a deal breaker for me. stupid way to intentionally gimp the machine. come on, Elektron!

This! Also, im wondering what's next in plan. Id be veeeery interested in such ot2 or the next md/mnm.

Ah the ctrl al addition is rad.

It is half the price though and a Drum sampler so meant for shorter samples so I can see why they didn't bother with stereo. If they added everything we want from other machines it would be back to top price again.

i'm liking it!

Seems like an updated, easier to use and navigate MDUW....without the drum synthesis (Which i must admit I never go too deep into anyway)

 

tempting, looks perfect for just switching on and getting satisfying results quickly

If I didn't have an octatrack I'd be interested as it looks interesting for the price point. I like the little jam from 26:19 (apparently that's only one track, pretty cool...) 

Yeah seems nice and quick and smooth but you can still get plenty weird. 

 

Also, on the mono sampling, jeez, If you're that desperate you can always sample and play L/R hard-panned on separate tracks, right? Stereo everything is overrated and just makes mixing harder. This makes me want to dissect some tracker mods to get a refresher on how to get freaky just using mono samples. For example, staggering the start of 2 instances of a note to get phasing, flanging, echo, etc.

 

Interesting how fascinated Cenk is at Cuckoo's idea at 24:15 to just make a short loop from a drum sample to use melodically. I always thought Cenk knew the machines inside out and something that simple would have occurred to him pretty quickly. Just goes to show you that not being such a nerd is often better for actually making tunes 

Yeah the mono limitation seems reasonable for the machine...not necessary but I can see why they made that decision. I'm not sure you can even hard pan the samples like you mentioned, but the tricks you mention could be interesting workarounds if they're possible.

 

And I noticed that bit you mentioned with Cenk 'asking' Cuckoo about that trick...I'm pretty sure he was just playing along as the friendly demo guy, because he has to be aware of that trick in general, in fact I'd bet there's footage of him doing that with other samples. He did seem honestly interested at how good it worked on that particular sample though...so maybe he wanted to show off that feature for the video while still giving Cuckoo credit in a way? Cenk does know Elektron machines perhaps better than anyone, and he was obviously at least consulted if not integral during development.

 

The rollout of this thing is really shoddy though, even at this demonstration, months after it was announced, they've got shit not working (that Master button that Cenk was cockteasing so hard), and decisions about final performance still unanswered, not just publicly unanswered but it seems they're still deciding behind the scenes. The company seems to be pushing a bit too much for goals they can't quite reach yet.

 

But ultimately this is a little disappointing to me because the machine isn't really doing anything new, and that's what I'm really hoping to see from the company going forward.

  On 4/21/2017 at 3:50 PM, sweepstakes said:

 

Interesting how fascinated Cenk is at Cuckoo's idea at 24:15 to just make a short loop from a drum sample to use melodically. I always thought Cenk knew the machines inside out and something that simple would have occurred to him pretty quickly. Just goes to show you that not being such a nerd is often better for actually making tunes 

 

you really belive that cenk didn't know about the trick? oh cmon! it's such a basic hack. he just wanted to give credit to cuckoo and to stimulate him and ppl alike him to continue to do youtube videos about elektron machines. for free!

that beat at 15:00 or so into the video is fkn amazing imo

I really excited about digitakt looks like nice beast but if they can't played my stereo chorus kick samples I'm afraid is a no go for me elektron if you're reading this please add! Also can please get conditional trigs on ot and maybe midi seq on AR???

 

 

Edited April 22, 2017 by sheathe

I don't see the big deal of conditional trigs tbh.. when I first heard about them I thought it'd be some super cool autechre way, like "this step only triggers if LFO's current value is over 64" and then other steps that only trigger if that step has been triggered recently, etc etc..

^ well that'd be cool!

  On 4/22/2017 at 2:21 PM, modey said:

I don't see the big deal of conditional trigs tbh.. when I first heard about them I thought it'd be some super cool autechre way, like "this step only triggers if LFO's current value is over 64" and then other steps that only trigger if that step has been triggered recently, etc etc..

Well the first part it can't do, where a conditional trig follows an lfo value. But you can set up a cascade of trigs where trig 4 only plays if trig 3 is trigged, and trig 5 only plays if 4, and so on. They're mostly good at randomizing hits but there can be some method to the chaos.

manual & things are up:

https://www.elektron.se/support/?connection=digitakt#resources

 

first units shipping..

Can anyone clarify with certainty if this machine puts out a completely mono audio signal or if just the samples are mono but there is panning/stereo output? I wouldn't mind the samples being monophonic but if i can't pan the sounds within the machine i have no interest in buying this. 
My MPC just broke so i am suddenly on the market for a sampler, the Octatrack seems like a no-brainer but that new MPC Live seems really damn cool. The only thing making me hesitate with the Octatrack is it's age, i feel like it's overdue for a new version. I can't invest in more than 1 expensive sampler for the next 10 years so for now i'm reluctantly running VST samplers with a beatstep pro for now.

I'm about 99% sure you can pan stuff. It's got stereo outs so it'd be pretty silly otherwise.

Yeah, it has stereo effects as well, no?

  On 5/23/2017 at 9:02 PM, omnii said:

The only thing making me hesitate with the Octatrack is it's age, i feel like it's overdue for a new version. I can't invest in more than 1 expensive sampler for the next 10 years so for now i'm reluctantly running VST samplers with a beatstep pro for now.

get the octatrack imo. I had the same worry until I got it and realised it's still super futuristic. Of course there are still things that people on elektronauts will complain about, but I think it's a beautiful instrument that goes way beyond just being a sampler.

Yeah check the voice architecture on p. 13 of the manual. There is a pan stage.

  On 5/23/2017 at 11:48 PM, modey said:

 

  On 5/23/2017 at 9:02 PM, omnii said:

The only thing making me hesitate with the Octatrack is it's age, i feel like it's overdue for a new version. I can't invest in more than 1 expensive sampler for the next 10 years so for now i'm reluctantly running VST samplers with a beatstep pro for now.

get the octatrack imo. I had the same worry until I got it and realised it's still super futuristic. Of course there are still things that people on elektronauts will complain about, but I think it's a beautiful instrument that goes way beyond just being a sampler.

 

 

Same here.  Still very new to it, but all the "you don't really know what it's about until you actually use one" line is pretty on point.  I was very skeptical and only took the plunge because I absolutely needed a modern-ish sampler to be able to start playing out again and this is the last time I'll actually be able to afford any big purchases for probably a couple years, and it definitely is more than the sum of its parts.  The MIDI sequencer, for example, is kind of a joke on paper in the context of the whole OT workflow it's just right, an the stuff that seemed like it would be completely crippling (really limited polyphony per track, no note durations so all of the notes of a chord have to be the same length, only 8 tracks) are no big deal at all in practice, because it's jsut not at all about the kind of traditional "play parts in and record them" tape machine style sequencing you get in a DAW or an MPC or something.  Its MIDI sequencer is more or less an 8 track tracker and when you work with it on its own terms it's pretty special. My first love is the MPC but so far there's almost no overlap between the two for me, they're completely different things.

 

The digitakt almost seems like a middle ground between the two worlds of sampling drum machine and esoteric sample mangling mystery box from the demos I've seen so far.  Not something I'd need but  I think it has a lot of potential and it's cool to see them releasing something a bit less expensive.

 

As far as charging for Overbridge, Roland used to charge $500 for the software editor that you needed to get all of the functionality out of the ($3000) VP9000 back in the day and that ended up working out fine for them.  Oh, wait a second...

 

 

EDIT: I have a gut feeling that the OT will hold its value more than the Digitakt, too, if you decide it's not for you and sell it.

Edited May 24, 2017 by RSP

  On 5/24/2017 at 5:57 AM, RSP said:

Its MIDI sequencer is more or less an 8 track tracker and when you work with it on its own terms it's pretty special. 

yup, I think this is why I love it (and Elektron products in general)—it's basically a hardware tracker.

 

I think the digitakt will be a very awesome device in its own context, it seems super concise and "no bullshit", which in contrast to the OT's "cram as many features in as possible" means it's something that can promote a very quick workflow, as Cenk showed in the demo videos.. speaking of which, I can't wait to see some new videos, hopefully a Sonic State presentation is coming..

I get what you mean about the OT feeling like a lot crammed in one package, but it's also a very elegant design. The unusual architecture - monophonic tracks that can stream from card, scenes, flexible triggering, length and slice options, even the occasionally annoying +/- octave limit - feels like a real, modern, musical instrument in a way that makes other samplers feel cheesy. And there's things like transient detection and crossfade looping it does NOT have that seem like they'd be nice for lots of uses but almost definitely would have made it more annoying to use, would have taken away from the flow.

 

Also imo its killer feature is the live sampling. That is just really great and Elektron should be applauded for how well that works and how fun it is. Now, saving and loading samples is another story, but it's mostly tolerable.

Edited May 24, 2017 by sweepstakes