DSP austerity in 2018

again, the discussion revolves around “you” or “me” can or can’t make a track with it, it’s not my point.
I have done entire tracks with one A4 and a singer, that doesn’t mean I couldn’t want more tracks on a digital machine

Of course you can want more tracks. However, the device doesn’t have more. So the decision is simple. Buy it and work around that, or don’t buy it an use something different. This particular device exists now, and is what it is. You’re of course free to talk about how many thousands of tracks and voices you think it should have, but that’s not going to change it.

I guess though that IS the discussion we’re having here. :smiley:

Continue. :slight_smile:

Shure, It’s up to me to buy one! thanks for remembering it!
Sorry, I didn’t though the discussion was about"This particular device exists now, and it is what it is"
I read the title and thought it was about “DSP austerity in 2018”,
So THAT is what I am talking about, unnecesary limitations and austerity in 2018 devices.
But it seems any kind of critiqu eis going to be rejected by some members of the group,
even if it comes from users who have years of contact and experience with the brand.
By the way, heard your tracks made with Digitone posted in the forum, very nice.

I’m not telling you not to critique any device you want to critique, and you’re right that the topic is what you say it is. It is however in the Digitone sub-forum, so I assumed (maybe incorrectly) that it is in direct response to the Digitone’s features and limitations. So, that’s what I was applying my point of view toward.

This is all subjective of course.

Unless we set out to design something similar, and are faced with the real world decisions that must be made, concessions given, focus applied, costs to meet, etc. it’s all purely opinion anyway.

We as users of these devices can make any demands we like. Whether they are met or not comes down to more factors than any of us would like to acknowledge.

Purely from a Digitone point of view, my point is still that there is nothing else like it that does exactly what it does, and at a decent price. So, it’s a unique instrument. You can throw ten more DSPs at it, but it’s not going to make it much more fun to use. And then the software gets more complex, the synchronization gets more complex, cooling gets more complex, power requirements go up, interface gets more complex, etc. More isn’t always better. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t.

People make exquisite music on a single mono-synth. People make good stuff on a 303+606. People make good music on an A4. People make good music on a wall of modular. I’ve hear good music made on a ROMpler even. So, you know, it’s not the voice count necessarily. It’s what you do with what you’ve got.

Unfortunately, I returned my digitone. I like the digitone but didn’t love it. It’s a great machine with plenty of dsp power. Good on elektron for developing this synth.

The UI is fine, but its the smallish factor…didn’t do it for me. And i have a monomachine, so there’s crossover. Really, I’m still stuck in my ways with the bigger silver boxes and I absolutely love my monomachine and it can do so much more and im more comfortable with the workflow. The price of the digitone is $1080 here, so its a bit expensive for a small box.
Anyway im sure everyone will love the digitone, especially if you dont own a monomachine.

my point is that I am kind of done with this mentality, seems like many people is going to be happy if in 2030 brands keep releasing hardware with the same synthesis methods of 30 years ago and maybe 6 voices or less, and that is going to be great for a lot of users, and there are many musicians who are going to be doing incredible music with only a tape player and recordings of rocks falling to the ground (to put an extreme but really factible example).
But there are others who don’t , and are simply expressing a desire for things to move forward or at least expecting them to don’t move backwards. It’s funny because If machinedrum and monomachine had conditional trigs and microtiming they would be without a doubt the more modern and complete of the elektron machines up to date, with the digitone being very close, or even more complete if it wasn’t for this kind of limitations that we are indeed discussing.

‘restrictions and limitations enable creativity’
That line always cracks me up :joy:

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Tell me a type of synthesis that hasn’t been around as long, and is still musically useful, that would work well in a small box (not talking full-blown large-Elektron, but Digitone sized) with a slick interface. FM (phase modulation / DX style FM) is very underrepresented in modern synthesizers with interfaces that people would actually want to use. Analog subtractive synthesis has been around even longer, and guess what, people are still doing cool things with it. Look at the reception to something like the Avalon for example. It’s a modernized 303. It’s a high quality piece of gear that serves precisely the purpose it was designed for exceedingly well.

The fact is, we probably aren’t ever going to see anything truly new and different in synthesis, because there are only so many ways to generate sound waves. People do some innovative things with synthesis, but in the end, everyone goes back to the tried and true. Subtractive, FM, Wavetable, Sampling, and then some sub-mixtures maybe via modular approaches. Why? Because they work. They make sounds that many find appealing. Raising the number of voices isn’t innovation. Some instruments do have a lot of voices.

Look at the new Waldorf Quantum. That thing is insane? How many voices is it? Does it need more? Probably not, because what it’s doing with those voices is HUGE.

Not every instrument is for every person or every purpose. Not every voice count is either.

There are in fact tools available for someone who wants lots of voices with complex algorithms. It’s called a PC+DAW+Plugin. That is the tool one should use if one wants those features. It exists, it’s readily available, and if you already have a computer, the cost will be competitive too. Trying to cram that into a tiny box, isn’t necessarily a suitable approach. I mean sure, someone can try. Maybe they even succeed. But for how much money? A lot of people don’t want to pay Quantum or Solaris prices to get something powerful in hardware.

I still say there is absolutely nothing on the market like the Digitone, so that alone makes it unique in the current environment, whether or not it’s using a method of synthesis developed decades ago.

We could go on like this, but I guess a better thing to ask would be:

What features do you want in a $700 small format box?

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I don’t get why you think there is austerity. This is a highly technical subject, we’re dealing with what dsp (or non-dsp) chips can do and what developers can do with them.

Do you think the Digitone hardware architecture should be any different ? Can we imagine how that would impact the cost, the features or the sound quality ? I don’t have that kind of information so I probably should leave this thread, but if someone can comment on this, maybe the discussion could lead somewhere.

Until then, it’s just you and others wanting lots of voices and me and others not needing it (and glad not to pay for it). :roll_eyes:

And yet it’s true.

It doesn’t guarantee good results I’ll grant you, but to those inclined to work like that, it can be very liberating. You know what you’ve got to work with, and take up a challenge to get the most out of it.

I’ve heard music I REALLY like made on a 303 and 606 that is sometimes better than music made in studios full of every piece of cool gear ever made. The opposite is also true though. I’ve heard excellent music made with a studio full of the coolest gear.

Global Goon comes to mind, Luke Vibert perhaps. Try and tell me the limitations of the gear used here didn’t have some impact on the results produced.

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Like I said I find it funny

very much in the likes of
“if bill evans did it only with a piano you should to”
or
" hi I just finished 24 songs with my ukelele so i guess you don’t actually need synths"

“Beethoven finished his 9th symphony while deaf so stop complaining about the digicomposer mk6 having no audio outputs”

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Actually, that’s the opposite. The piano is 88 note polyphonic. :stuck_out_tongue:

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I’m not against polyphony. I’m not against large track counts.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that there are tools suited for certain tasks. There are tools not suited for certain tasks.

Pick the ones that work right for you, for the task you want to perform.

Don’t expect every tool to perform all tasks, because you’ll be disappointed a lot.

The Digitone isn’t a workstation.

That about sums it up. :smiley:

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haha! just wait till Elektron releases the Acoustic 18 :smile:

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Ok, now THAT is funny. :smiley:

Prepping for the Great Digiwipeout of 2018:

MichalHo_A77_TB303_TR606

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Wait a second!!! Those little silver boxes have CPUs in them. :stuck_out_tongue:

Nice setup though. I kind of want an Avalon, as I’m kind of missing 303ism.

That would only wipe the patterns… I hope :loopy:

I still have that Indonesian shaker egg on top of the Revox, in case there’s no more electricity…

I almost went for the Avalon (actually, TT-303 on first try), but then got the TB-303 for an incredibly low price, as the seller believed it was broken.