Yeah I thought the same; maybe analog LFO’s are impossible.
They basically kept the MK1 Engine and made a new case so I can imagine the insides being a bit outdated. However; a new sample LFO should definitely be possible
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Nope
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What plug-in is like the Machinedrum? Serious question. The only good drum machine plug-in I have used that sounds great and easily tweakable is softube heartbeat, but doesn’t act anywhere near an Elektron device, even with MIDI controllers.
Besides that there’s microtonic, Geist, strix, the Roland clones, etc. The only one to ever come out with a proper drum MIDI controller was arturia with spark which has since been discontinued. I wish u-he would make a proper drum synth plugin…
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I don’t know, but that wasn’t the point I was making.
@monobear was throwing out “Elektron should do X… the Rytm should do Y… why doesn’t it do Z” as if a) Elektron owed them something and b) these demands were trivial and that Elektron were lazy and cheap for not having provided an update yet. There’s a lot of such comment on forums (fortunately not much of it on Elektronauts and we tend to keep it to the “feature request” safe space threads).
I work in tech, so I feel some empathy with the designers and developers of these instruments. Often designers and developers want to fix a bug or build a new feature, but the business doesn’t have the time or budget. Sometimes teams are just too small to get through all the plans. In fact, no-one ever “finishes” their to-do list. Elektron are a significant player in the market, but they’re not big. They make hardware which requires committing to an overall design for several years because you can’t change it once it’s released like you can with software. These conditions make for significant constraints. It seems very unlikely to me that Elektron can afford to keep anyone focused on just one device full-time after a product is released, so producing updates is likely to be a diversion from making new products. Even when you have a dedicated team that only work on one particular product (or part of it), and have regular income, it’s impossible to get through all the feature requests and fixes.
This attitude that people in a company “should” do some work for you, when there’s no expectation of further payment is pretty gross. It’s like demanding a chef make you pudding or you won’t leave their restaurant.
If you’re not happy with a bit of gear, sell it, or ask the company to add features into their update cycle (which Elektron give you for free). If the hardware you bought doesn’t get updates fast enough, invest in a set of tools which does. Software projects are easier to update, so buy into an ecosystem that puts software at the centre.
Sorry for ranting. I’ve just seen too many of these “it should do X…” posts in the last week and it’s beginning to get to me.
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No I am not demanding anything from any people.
But Elektron has become an Entity just like Apple. You can begin to form Expectations. It‘s a company not a friend.
I’m with you on this, it’s especially bizarre consider the sophisticated nature of analog meeting digital in the Rytm, it really is an outstanding innovation, I find the flexibility of what they can do with the analog circuits amazing. I don’t think it’s healthy to constantly view instruments by what they could do rather than what they can and it definitely stifles creativity to view it that way imo. I look forward to anything they might add, but really the only thing I hope for is a fix for program change messages so we can finally use the Elektron boxes with other hardware easily.
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Yeah, I must say I agree with you, also there are no perfect instrument, you are not expected to buy every elektron because you are not expected to be able to do everything. I am the first victim of this, whenever I see someone doing something cool, I think “Oh this is cool, NOW I HAVE TO DO IT TOO” but no, that’s not true, you can only do so much in one life time and it is OK that no machine does everything, much better to learn to do stuff with what you have (which means a specific set of stuff, not everything) than expecting to be able to do everything and be disappointed.
Made of people, not many. And even just looking at it as a company, they set budgets, for specific tasks, they don’t just throw in stuff willy nilly. Thinking of it, you might get more from them with the people angle than the company angle. A person might answer “let me see what I can do” a company will answer “not on our timetable”
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Elektron is nothing like Apple, it’s a small company with a limited market, Apple is a global enterprise with tech market domination. In the music world perhaps Yamaha would be a viable example of the Apple of the music tech world.
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I’d love it if elektron adds some of those great DT updates to the AR, but to me, it’s a very complete and deep machine in it’s current state.
Sometimes I turn on my old mpc (which I’ve worked on exclusively for years) and make music on it just for reference. The AR just has so many more options for experimenting with, and is so deep compared to these old machines. There’s a full 3 voice 6 osc melodic analog synth inside of this drum machine, as well as scenes, an fx track, velocity modulation, all kinds of fx, endless resampling etc. You could make a lifetime worth of original albums using nothing but the AR and some sample sources. To me the functions of the machine feel more like an inspiring challenge than a limitation. It’s truly an instrument with it’s own character.
The dev team is probably very busy, and they also have no obligation to add anything to a finished product which works. I wouldn’t want the machine to be bloated with additional features either, this would probably mess up the workflow as well. The main thing I do feel elektron could do better was update some weird things which currently just make no sense at all and kind of mess with the workflow. The visual feedback on the compressor was there, but was removed on the mk2? Why?It is also very much possible to finetune samplestart using velocity mod or an lfo, why not just add more resolution to the sample start parameter? This one is giving me headaches. I’d rather have them polish up these things than add more functions to the AR.
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Nevertheless you can form wishes and expectations to a company and not have to ve thankful that people spending time. They charge you money and they dont know me. If this really was a community thing and prices was only to break even and so everyone can get along. Fine. But Elektron wants to grow and treats me like a normal customer. So I treat them like a normal company. And therfor I can form expectations. Thats the nature of capitalism.
You may not like it because Ess and Cenk are relatable guys but they were also salesmen in there positions at elektron.
Sure, but I always assume they charge me money for what is currently in the machine, not for what could possibly be included. I also expect that the budget plan include the machine as it launches and maybe 1 or 2 corrective updates with some extra features. Anything more than that is, I believe, over the budget.
Anyway, you seem to want a machine that does it all, and that’s just not the philosophy of Elektron, they design machines that do one thing, and given their architecture, expand it as much as they can. But the initial intention and design are fixed and I don’t expect them to expand that.
You’re right having expectations from companies, but I don’t think those are “healthy” in the sense that being able to do everything is the best way to not do anything.
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To be honest I don´t expect the rytm to be more than it is now. I would just wish it is. And be fair guys all those expectations that are formed here are very well triggered by elektron themselves and not by us people that always want more. You can look up all the presentations from Cenk where he states that maybe in the future the “box” can do this or that in the future. He promises nothing but he always helds up future gimmicks that the machines might do, so this is not coming from the community alone. In addition to that Elektron has done it which IS pretty nice of them, they have updated their machines with new stuff. And they sold Digitakt with the promise of Overbridge which took years to be ready. So you can not say, just take it as it is 
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I’m starting to form an expectation that Elektronauts needs to install a dislike button.
The public perception of a lot of Small/Medium businesses is very often that they are wayyy more corporate than they actually are… and most people forget that they are talking about passionate people with emotional connection to what they do. They’re not subservient to consumers desires…
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Sure, there have been some miscommunications for sure, I’m not sure wether we should put that on pure strategy, or just things not going as planned. However, the only thing to learn is to just not listen to those or accept that it’s a bet. When buying something, seeing is believing.
Totally! Had a debate about this on a modular forum, people were outraged that some manufacturer had not answered e-mails for a while, said that if you sell stuff a few hundred bucks, you should answer every e-mail, not taking into account that those hundred bucks usually just barely allow to keep the company afloat, that they are usually made of one or two passionate hobbyists and all the random (and usually unpleasant stuff) that can happen and disable a human being to answer e-mails.
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I don´t see why there is a need to be offended. I like Elektron and their people. But you don´t seem to get the point. I don´t demand anything from them. but I also don´t see them as individuals. They are a company that sell worldwide with rather big quantities. Their stuff is is on Stage all over the world. To promote the Boxes they rented a rather big place in the middle of Berlin in one of the most expenisive spots you can be. This was not a “szene” spot. This was the spot were all the big companys are. Believe it or not. If you put yourself next to the “Apple Store” you can not proclaim to be the two men working in the garage company anymore.
Think of Mutable Instruments for example. They are really a small company but they are so in contact with their customers over the forums and there is a real connection. whole different story. really
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Hmm, you are very right.
But in my eyes the marketing 101 is overlayed onto any of their boxes.
Of course hardware is not software. But I bet my left eye you could copy&paste code for example for the arranger from OT to AR. They decided to not do that but cripple it.
This is the same with many other functions.
And I may do Elektron wrong and this is not as easy as I think it is … then I say: Elektron, please make it as easy as it sounds! One ElektronOS for all future hardware. Same workflows and features etc. pp. … but here is the marketing aspect again: I wouldn’t own all their boxes. So they’re pretty good at this game.
Nothing is perfect but after all these updates the Rytm is damn close, imo of course.
One thing that does baffle me with Elektron and their sequencer, why on earth can’t you choose play direction ?! I know, trackers and all but still…
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This could lead to interesting results, but also introduces some weird decisions which would personally mess my mind up if using it:
- does the songmode change direction as well? Or only the patterns within it?
- do only the midi events in the tracks change direction? Or also the audio, the lfo’s and the envelopes?
- if a pattern start on the last step and then plays in reverse, how do the conditional trigs like pre behave?
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Seriously>? Who cares?? 
They could’ve product placed a Rytm in Elon Musk’s space car right on the dashboard for all I care… marketing is marketing, product design and creativity is something else completely, and something that I respect and appreciate.
We live in an age where companies, like Elektron, want to keep evolving/bettering their SOLD products, and probably have a strong drive and desire to do this for their own sense of satisfaction/achievement… the downside of this must be when these SOLD units slip into the hands of negative self-entitled people who can’t help but focus on the 0.01% of the empty glass…
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Totally. And if you sampled all Rytm users, you’ll get different expectations from everyone for each of those individual points. Good luck designers + devs coming up with comfortable UX and defaults that don’t piss anyone off*.
*
I’ve noticed that Elektron tend towards “use defaults that no-one wants” to avoid biasing one group of users over any other (if the default OT template and default AR sounds are anything to go by).
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