Elektron Digitakt

Yeah, being able to have a flex machine playing back samples, basically as they're being recorded, with plocked settings, is some truly next-level shit imo

Octatrack: Windos 2000

Digitakt: aapl phone

looking forward to hearing proper youtuber' demo vids soon

what i really love about the MDUW is that you can sit down, solely play with it, and with the cleaver use of sample/plocks come out the other end with a near finished track...digitakt sounds like it will be able to do that and more!

  On 5/26/2017 at 2:04 PM, TRiP said:

what i really love about the MDUW is that you can sit down, solely play with it, and with the cleaver use of sample/plocks come out the other end with a near finished track...digitakt sounds like it will be able to do that and more!

that's pretty much true of any elektron gear tbh! they get nothing but praise from me :D

ya.

getting mine Monday...

the sound engine here is more basic than all the other Elektrons I think.. but the sequencer is the full thing so..

first thing I'ma do is use the MIDI seq and route it back into the machine.. should be able to "layer" a midi sequence with an internal sequence, giving siccc modulation to the max...

  On 5/24/2017 at 7:43 AM, sweepstakes said:

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.

Yeah, the live sampling is literally the reason I got one.  Until I had it in my hands, a lot of other things about it seemed like they would be over-complicated or counterintuitive but I think a lot of that is down to the manual.  Not that the manual is bad or anything, just that a lot of stuff about the interface that makes complete sense when you actually use it seem really complicated and obscure if you try to describe it.  There are plenty of fundamental things, especially about locks and scenes, that I just kind of figured out intuitively after watching 15 minutes of videos and sitting with it for an hour that, now that I'm going back and reading the manual cover to cover instead of just consulting the index when I need to figure out a specific function, that take pages and pages to describe but are actually two or three well thought out button presses.

  On 5/26/2017 at 3:56 PM, phling said:

ya.

getting mine Monday...

the sound engine here is more basic than all the other Elektrons I think.. but the sequencer is the full thing so..

first thing I'ma do is use the MIDI seq and route it back into the machine.. should be able to "layer" a midi sequence with an internal sequence, giving siccc modulation to the max...

Looking forward to hearing how you get on with it!

  On 5/26/2017 at 3:56 PM, phling said:

ya.

getting mine Monday...

the sound engine here is more basic than all the other Elektrons I think.. but the sequencer is the full thing so..

first thing I'ma do is use the MIDI seq and route it back into the machine.. should be able to "layer" a midi sequence with an internal sequence, giving siccc modulation to the max...

keep us posted!

*edit*

havn't watched yet but saw this:

it's really nice & hot outside and here I am waiting for the damn UPS

  On 5/29/2017 at 2:38 PM, phling said:

it's really nice & hot outside and here I am waiting for the damn UPS

Tough life! :p

  On 5/29/2017 at 2:33 PM, TRiP said:

 

  On 5/26/2017 at 3:56 PM, phling said:

ya.

getting mine Monday...

the sound engine here is more basic than all the other Elektrons I think.. but the sequencer is the full thing so..

first thing I'ma do is use the MIDI seq and route it back into the machine.. should be able to "layer" a midi sequence with an internal sequence, giving siccc modulation to the max...

 

keep us posted!

 

*edit*

 

havn't watched yet but saw this:

 

 

Glad to see they kept the clicky keys! 

so yeah first few hours impression.. after noodling around a bit, I tried using probability trigs to change patterns, looping the MIDI out back in.. and it works lushly. may not be for everyone, but tbh, a little box which can sequence itself for probabilistic music structure is pretty sweet.

There's a lot to that.. feel like barely scratching the surface.. you can also use notes.. was fun to have an internal track running with 16 steps, and a midi track also triggering it with a different amount of steps.. nice evolving sequences.. mute/unmute to control..

Then of course you get these 8 midi lfos so things can go fluffy pretty quick.. May not be news for OT owners but yeah.. got up & running with this pretty easily. The conditional trigs are superb for MIDI out.

Was also beginning to sequence the AR, but only in a basic way, didn't have the MIDI chart at hand..

sound engine is pretty crisp, FX are good.. Not sure if there's a ton to say about that.. it's this simple sampler, easy to use. It is basic compared to other Elektron's. Wish there were more filter options - the LP/HP is super basic. There gotta be more coming. But, the filters do sound good! Tried only a little bit, but the LP is preeeetty squelchy with the right waveforms..

Sampling is kind of designed for collecting samples. To use a fresh sample, you *have* to save it to disk and give it a name.. hope some form of direct to RAM sampling is coming..

pretty good so far.

Here is a video of Cenk convincing you to buy one:

How the fuck is he so good at selling products without saying a word? He's winning at the game of Capitalism pretty hard

lol TOPKEKLER

This looks like a really nice, fast machine. Not just fast workflow, but reloading kits and switching patterns seems even more effortless than on the octatrack.

It seems almost like their take on the Electribe samplers than a cut down OT, imo. I don't understand why so many people are complaining about it not doing timestretching, or not being able to load hour-long stereo samples or whatever.. it just seems like a fun little unit dedicated to making the most of short samples. 

Chromatic mode timestretches samples so you can lock those.

It does look fun and far quicker than the OT. And yeah, feels like it would be like my ESmk2.

Those bass drum grooves he was getting on those tracks were making me chair jig.

  On 5/30/2017 at 12:11 AM, phling said:

so yeah first few hours impression.. after noodling around a bit, I tried using probability trigs to change patterns, looping the MIDI out back in.. and it works lushly. may not be for everyone, but tbh, a little box which can sequence itself for probabilistic music structure is pretty sweet.

 

There's a lot to that.. feel like barely scratching the surface.. you can also use notes.. was fun to have an internal track running with 16 steps, and a midi track also triggering it with a different amount of steps.. nice evolving sequences.. mute/unmute to control..

Then of course you get these 8 midi lfos so things can go fluffy pretty quick.. May not be news for OT owners but yeah.. got up & running with this pretty easily. The conditional trigs are superb for MIDI out.

 

Was also beginning to sequence the AR, but only in a basic way, didn't have the MIDI chart at hand..

 

sound engine is pretty crisp, FX are good.. Not sure if there's a ton to say about that.. it's this simple sampler, easy to use. It is basic compared to other Elektron's. Wish there were more filter options - the LP/HP is super basic. There gotta be more coming. But, the filters do sound good! Tried only a little bit, but the LP is preeeetty squelchy with the right waveforms..

 

Sampling is kind of designed for collecting samples. To use a fresh sample, you *have* to save it to disk and give it a name.. hope some form of direct to RAM sampling is coming..

 

pretty good so far.

sounds class - would love to hear some of your noodlings if you ever upload any with it

here's a thing I yesterday:

was mostly testing the midi program change feedback thing, which works lovely.. but yeah, these are just stock samples. Output is going to the AR compressor..

here's a video doing the same thing, but room audio rec via phone:

https://twitter.com/__o_____/status/869266846024957952

context: https://www.elektronauts.com/t/generative-mutating-pattern-chains/39706?u=void

So does this pretty much have all of the functionality of an Electribe sampler, or is it superior?

It looks far superior. I think the only thing that the new electribe sampler has over this is the polyphony/track count, and maybe the synth engine (not that I found it too impressive anyway). But the digitakt has all of the typical elektron sequencer tricks, etc..

The electribe also runs on batteries. I know that comes with its own set of problems but every time I look at the size of the Digitakt I think of how sweet it would be for bus/park jams if only it ran on batteries. I still want one, though...

Why do you recon they only made it an 8-track? Limitation is great and all that, but the MDUW can technically do 16 and that's ages old by now...surely it's not that processing heavy? ...or is it?

Probably a number of reasons, but one is likely so it doesn't seem "better" than the OT. A lot of people are asking whether it is, even with just 8 tracks. Plus that means that you can have all your mutes on one page w/ the 16 steps. And if people are dying for more than 8 tracks they can always buy another DT => more money for Elektron.

Honestly, 8 tracks with parameter locks is plenty. I'd bet that most people who feel like they need more aren't taking full advantage of p-locks. In some cases even one or two tracks is enough.

has sample locks too I imagine so sample per step not just sample per track so potentially if placed right you can have a serious amount of different samples running on a single pattern