Well that is indeed unfortunate. Everyone has expierenced something like this with some Kind of Gear along the time. In my case it was a Sub37, that i found very dissappointing.
But thats worth a new thread.
These new black MKIIās sure are gorgeous and a software update too. Dang, itās not even my birthday!
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The snares sound great! Very firm and full. Do you use the compressor?
Loop points? You can loop between start and endpoints and this can be modulated. What else would you expect from an analog drum machine? The pads on mine work very well.
Itās not bling bling, those are some great updates with very useful features.
I really donāt know of any other drum machine in the world that compares with the AR (overall features and sound wise).
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I canĀ“t jump on the hate-train either. Elektron gives new customers the choice between a black and grey version, end of story. I like that they changed nothing else because existing customers arenĀ“t pushed to buy a new one. ALl new features are available for all users, even the old mk1 gets all new features from the OS upgrade. If anyone feels bad about this release the problem is clearly not on ElektronĀ“s side.
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But after all has been said, Nobody has said they are buying one 
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I do want a black A4. Have to see side by side which one I prefer, but darkness is really itās true color in my mind, light grey doesnāt reflect the sound I get from it.
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Iāve got the black Rytm on order and itās shipped. I think itās great that they made black versions. No hate. The MkIIās are already so deep and feature laden that when they released the last three firmware upgrades I thought to myself āoh my god now I have to learn [this and that]ā.
What I do hopeā¦ and I will report back hereā¦ Is that they use the same matte paint from the Digitakt and digitone. Not a shiny variant like the gray on the previous generation. That had a sheen to it.
I do have one question that Iām not certain of the answer. In the Elektron description of the new units they say that theyāve change the color to black and that theyāve also changed some of the lighting? Does anyone know exactly what this means.
ā The enclosure has a sleek black finish and a complimentary back-lit colour palette.ā
ā¦thatās how they describe it. Iām assuming that the buttons have an updated led color. And if thatās indeed the case, that can potentially affect all users in the new firmware update. Maybe theyāre trying to make it jive with the Digitakt workflow.
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Its a superior black paint. Not just any old 
No seriously from what iāve seen it is matte and quite dense.
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I would imagine complimentary meaning opposite so toned down a bit as opposed to the grey which had to be toned up to make the lights stand out.
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Oh yes. I didnāt really pay too much attention to the word ācomplementaryā being something that meant āmatchesā but youāre right. Good eye.
I already have an original A4, but Iām seriously considering picking up the new A4 mk2.5.
The only thing holding me back is that the process of moving my entire content (projects, songs, patterns, samples, sound packs, etc) would be a major PITA.
Is there an easy way to basically plug one machine into the other and mirror it?
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Iāve heard this mentioned - there is a tweak to rgb colour values for the black ones in some system states - I understood it to mean dimmer
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you can SysEx dump from one direct to the other iirc - donāt quote me, but Iām sure I did this when I got a Mk2
obviously only supports what āchunksā can be sent at present - single project & down - but you can do the +drive iirc
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Do you remember if it put all sounds (presets, samples, soundpacks) into the same banks?
there wasnāt anything too tricky about it to merit it being a reason not to get - I would however suggest (as you mention samples) that that could well be a very different kettle of fish - samples get hash tagged by the system (and obviously the A4 doesnāt have samples, but you mentioned samples). -so in that reagard youād need to ask somebody about that in another topic maybe, but I was able to get +drive banks mapped A to A iirc B to B etc
However, if thereās a gap in A i.e. 10 sounds then gap of 5 then 15 more sounds - the receiving Bank which you manually select when receiving will get 25 straight sounds from the start position, it doesnāt cater for gap preservation
The key to doing it fast is to connect both via Turbo (i.e. bidirectional cabled transfer sets up 10x midi rate) o r tbh probably best t o do via usb to computer (keep the backup) then move to new machine
Either way with the caveat that samples may be a bit of a headache on an AR in some ways then it isnāt an obstacle, it may get boring if there are 100+ projects, but thereās no shortcuts
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Thx for the info. I donāt know why I mentioned samples (I have an AR2, so my brain had crossed wires).
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Samples on AR, as on DT, are pretty straightforward to deal with: their location as no influence on what link them to Pools an Patterns.
For Sounds uploading, I wonder if you sysex every Bank sound from a machine to another, if thousands of Sounds can be transmitted or if you have to do this Bank by Bank.
Would be cool to be able to dump the whole machine state when doing a backup!
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although thatās why I mention the hashtag (not the name or eventual destination) - it is possible to have samples nested in folders with the same name, so they need a unique hashtag identifier iirc, thereās a subtlety to this afaict, but as I donāt lean on the sample side I am not too fussed about it impacting me, but if I relied on that structure across a machine, Iād be wary about that transfer process and any embedded dependencies based on those identifiers if applicable
The hash function that creates a hash ID for a sample should be consistent across different machines, so a given sample file will always have the same ID. So Iād be very surprised if transferring them to a different machines causes problems.
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Iāve been paid to develop software for 32 years. āRevealed at a later stageā isnāt how software enhancements work. No product would ever be delivered if we had to think of years of revelations to add in up front.
Iām just thankful they have developers still tinkering and enhancing the OSes on this older set of hardware . As a MkI A4 user I thought the box was awesome when I bought it. I think it is awesomer now and am impressed with the longevity of the product.
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