Analog Four - pool and +drive disconnect

Elektron Gear Analog Keys/Four
#1

Hi there

I’m new to A4. I had a year of Octatrack experience a few years ago, so when I saw the A4 for cheap I picked it up, thinking it’s gonna be a breeze considering the hell I went through with Octa.

It’s easier than OT by a mile but it’s got those quirks that doesn’t make sense to me and that sorta wasted a lot of my time.

There is the + drive and there is the sound pool.

Now, let’s say I load in sound S1 to the sound pool.
Then I load track1 with S1 from sound pool.
Then I load track2 with S2 from sound pool.

Nice and easy.

Then I fool around with the sound of S1 in track1 and fix it up a bit. I like it so much that I think this is the sound S1 should have for all time. I save it to the +drive ( same slot as before, I’ve replaced it )

But wait! Why does track2 sound like the old S1? I realized that now track1 point to new S1 in +drive and track2 points to S1 in sound pool.

In other words S1 in sound pool is disconnected to S1 in +drive. What?? This level of complexity is baffling and already adds to the complexity that kits can contain a sound (either from sound pool and +drive) that has changed.

This means that a sound can have 3 distinct sounds itself. +drive, sound pool , kit setting.

I just discovered this a few min ago and I am completely floored by this kind of design. This sounds like a design by a computer programmer and programmers should never ever design musical instruments ( I should know, I’m a programmer myself). Anyway just putting this out there as I can’t understand the value of this structure. Back to my analog four now and hopefully back to making music which is what I was doing before I bought this thing :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes::grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes::grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

#2

There are a thousand discussions on the Kit architecture,

what you are describing is actually a good thing when understood and used properly

The sound pool isn’t a convenient cherry-picked collection of +Drive sounds - its sounds that are now in ram - they can be loaded immediately (unlike on +Drive)

The Sound Pool is best exploited by utilising the specific SoundLock feature

The Kit paradigm is as follows - the moment that a sound is loaded in a Kit it is completely divorced from its origins (irrespective of where it came from, origin is not a thing)

The soundpool paradigm is that a pattern will store a pointer to the Location of teh sound in the pool, not the sound, the position

so a different project with a different SoundPool would play a pattern from Proj1 differently on Proj2

The SoundPool is genious and the kit architecture is very flexible for particular workflows

If you want to keep track of the edits of a sound you like you’ll just have to keep updating the +Drive sound and pulling that out when you need it

If you think it through, it would be unworkable to have multiple kits use a sound that was edited/updated elsewhere and thus compromised other kits

Kits are probably where you need to focus your attention … .how they’re convenient if you straddle patterns that use the same kit - they allow a high degree of live tweaking with a safe return

Dig through some older threads to get a feel for the possibilities, no doubt there are also advantages to the other paradigms Elektron uses, but people on those devices often bemoan the lack of kits (and vice versa)

The thing is, it is what it is, you need to understand how to get the best out of what’s there - it is powerful, especially for variations in performance and pattern evolution - SoundLocks are fantastic for allowing sequenced or live playing of effectively something like a GM Kit arranged across a number of keys

You have to let go of any prior assumptions about how a sound should fit in and factor in for Kits/Soundlocks - strictly speaking you only hear Kits and Soundlocks, you don’t ‘hear’ sounds - sounds can be pulled into either of these and exported from either too - with all that flexibility there does come a bit of management for the end user

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#3

Sounds great! One of the reasons I’m super excited to try the A4 after 15 years with a non-+drive monomachine as my only synth.

#4

Such a great and useful answer, thank you for taking the time!

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#5

Thanks Avantronica, i think the quote above says it all.
I put the the sounds I wanted to use in the sound pool for no other reason other than that they will appear on my pattern. It was a conceptual decision ( sounds in RAM ) whereas you point out that they should be in the sound pool for a specific reason (sound locking).

Thanks for you insight. Just to clarify I didn’t want to imply analog four was difficult to use (it’s not) but I can see why newbies would be baffled. :grinning: I’m grateful for my Octatrack year. Anyway thanks for your reply!!!

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