Hey, I’m anti Elektron fan boy. I’ve rejected 3 Elektron machines before. But anyone who plays the Digitone should know this is a very special box with many more creative directions in sound design. Operator and Ableton makes me yawn. And I’m pro Ableton as I’ve friends there.
Ok?
And? What does this prove? It’s just your personal opinion and nothing wrong with that.
But lots of pro producers beg to differ…so what?
Pro producers are welcome to it. I’m not that impressed with the term ‘Pro Producers’. Do they get magic music tech assessment pills sent out to them, for their superior status? Personally, I believe that we are all pro producers, if we want to be. And if we have the dosh! I’m very happy to sit with the best Elektron box I’ve touched, and to leave the Operators with their Operator. The Digitone is perhaps the best digital synth I’ve used in 35 years. My analog synths, the Prophet 6/Roland MKS 7/Arp Odyssey etc remain idle. And I’m an analog freak! Have you tried the Digitone?
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Ok
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And your experience can I ask? Have you tried the Digitone?
No only heard the demos
This discussion might be retitled as peeps who love their Digitone. And people who haven’t got one yet. As, of course, the Operator is a small but powerful synth on your computer. And the Digitone is an even better groove machine than the Digitakt, in my opinion!
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For me opening Ableton and looking at its interface these days strikes me with a deep boredom and is a real motivation killer. Push absolutely mitigates that, but I don’t own a Push currently. I’m still really interested to see what Ableton do with their hardware next. But if DN is a stripped down Operator in a box, then I’ve got what I wanted really. I’ve always wanted that type of hands on access to Abletons Operator on the Push, but it still felt a little cumbersome. The DN is that box for me. It does the job, it’s the fun and tactile and sound and quality I’ve been wanting from a device for ages. I didn’t expect that kindve satisfaction from it mind you.
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I have tried DN and as soon as Elektron fixes the Overbridge debacle, I’ll buy one. Mainly because I was hoping that someday someone release something like Operator in a hardware box.
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I’ve used Operator for years and will continue to. Bought a Dtone recently and I LOVE IT. I can’t stress enough that a very big feature of the Dtone is its default library. You can do basically the same things with each of them. You have your lineup of different algorithms to alter the flow of the signal. The workflow is a bit different for each. I don’t think either is superior necessarily, but with a hardware box you are already routing audio into your DAW. Just that step being done right off the top can give you cooler results. This is going to be a sticking point for a lot of people, so expect some people to say I’m out to lunch. In my opinion, the digitone gives you a waveform to edit right away. But still, you can achieve the same thing by routing Operator out of your DAW into an external recorder, or into a compressor (fx processors, etc.) and back into Ableton (et al) as audio. You can even just route it right inside Ableton, but You’ll often find sending audio out and back in sounds better, especially if you have hardware to process the audio through. In short, you won’t find one is “better” than the other, but you might find one more inspiring that the other. Personally, I love the chance to use the Dtone by itself with the flip of a switch.
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I am a huge fan of FM-Synthesis and Operator was always my go to synth (getting an 80s FM-hardware synth was always out of question because of those old lcd screens and programming interfaces). when the DN got announced I was very excited and ordered one right away. after using this thing for 2 months or so, I must say that the synth engine is more limited than Operator but the sequencing capabilities make up for it.
there are some things that I am missing from Operator, for example unfixed ratios on the operators, a dedicated pitch envelope or loopable envelopes. but I understand that Elektron had to simplify their FM approach to make it usable on such a small device.
soundwise I dont think there is any special voodoo going on in the DN. The DN is just a specialized computer that runs software with a little bit of AD/DA and thats it. I am not an expert in DSP but I’d think that the algorhythms used for the actual frequency modulation are very deterministic, mathematical functions without any secret sauce or other shenanigans.
I also think that Operator was a huge inspiration for the DN. The biggest one might actually be the use of additive synthesis to introduce different waveforms than sine waves. You can exactly do that with Operator just with a bit more options.
all in all, I think the DN will not provide you much more value when it comes to just making a patch and playing it with your midikeyboard. the real strength lies in its sequencer. In my opinion FM-synthesis is the perfect companion for the Elektron sequener approach resulting in inspiringsound-exploration and happy accidents.
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Many thanks all for the comments, experience and advice.
I now own a Digitone and am getting to grips with it. Will let you know the outcome!