You’re lucky! That egg will just keep on going forever. I only have a DSP modeled egg. Hmmm… ideas are forming… (not necessarily good ones mind you, but…)
Just one point I’d like to throw into this discussion:
Some views have been made wrt how ”modern music” needs ridic amounts of processing power. I disagree. AFAIK most of it can be distilled to using samplers and resampling layered material into new samples…? So take any 512MB RAM sampler from the 90s and you could pull off most ”complex modern production”. So your 25-year old tech is still down with the times, no worries.
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Modern music really doesn’t need to be made with any specific gear period. Some gear may facilitate getting to a particular result more easily, (or at least more easily for an individual) but it’s not an absolute requirement. A talented musician is a talented musician. Give he/she a set of tools, a little time, and a decent piece of music will probably be the result. However, some instruments are more inspiring than others for a given person. You give that musician a set of tools he/she finds inspiring and fun to use, and they may arrive at a better result, or a good result faster. DSP power will probably be the lowest priority on the list.
The important things IMO, are “How does it sound?” and “Is it fun and inspiring to use?” But that’s just me.
The musician might not want any DSP power at all, and be perfectly happy using a one-VCO mono-synth.
Age of the instrument, age of the tech, type of tech really are less important I think.
If you’re a keyboard player, even 6-note polyphony for that one single sound is a pretty big limit. Let alone 4 AND if you’re trying to use it for multiple parts.
The polyphony complaints about modern stuff are legit.
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Well, that’s the thing though. The Digitone, while it CAN be played with a keyboard (and is 8-note poly) is NOT in fact a keyboard instrument. There are other keyboard instruments that would be much better suited to playing polyphonic keyboard parts needing lots of polyphony. That’s where the right tool for the job comes in. Unfortunately there’s not much in the way of modern (as in last couple of years or so) FM/PM hardware synths with keyboards, and a good interface. That WOULD be very cool. Something like a Digitone with 61 key keyboard, more knobs, and 16 voices + 8 tracks sequencing would be pretty cool.
That said, there are plenty of cool keyboard synths out there, and a lot of them can do some forms of FM. Just not heavy algorithm DX-style for the most part. You have to go back a ways for that, and the interfaces just aren’t there for synthy people that like to tweak settings with knobs.
I agree though, for playing big keyboard parts, IMO 8 voice poly is the lowest comfortable amount, and more is better in a case like that. The Digitone if being played like a poly actually does meet that minimum (set in my own mind of course) requirement for keyboard play. I still don’t think that’s the best use of it though really, and that there are other things nicely suited for that type of playing. DSI comes to mind.
I think everyone is rather missing the point of this original thread.
We all know DJ Sikprik can write phat tunes on a shitty old casiotone from the seventies. He is both sik and phat.
That is completely irrelevant to this discussion.
What we are trying to get to the bottom of, at least I am anyway, is why a modern completely digital synth seems to have these DSP limitations in place, even more so than digital synths from the past?
The question was raised to Simon, so look forward to his response on the matter
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If a company today was to build a FM synth as expensive as the DX7 was back then, you would probably get a polyphonic/multitimbral monster. Instead we have a Digitone which has less polyphony but also has features unseen on a DX7… and yet is way cheaper.
and runs internally @96k unlike the yammy with its precalculated fm mod tables 
The DX used all kindsa ”math crutches” in order to run on the hardware that could be had for that price at the time…
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This post exemplifies nicely your elitist ITB attitudes
good day
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BTW, Yamaha already made such a monster. The Montage has 128 FM voices (and 8 operators algos). It also costs 2000€ more than a DT, of course.
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I suspect that in the past, developer were much more focused on optimizing their code to maximize the polyphony etc. And the idea that a full track could be done with a single gear + a sequencer.
Nowdays, I guess that companies encourage their developer to speed up the development of the code, by using high level language and/or to promote code maintainability instead of efficiency. And the paradigm is that several gears instead of one should be used to produced a track. Which is better to sell more.
This is just a wild assumption of course !
Most of the “real keyboard player” types would not even consider an Elektron product anyway - they’re more likely to go for a digital piano or clonewheel.
I do know one who actually bought a Digitakt - there’s always an exception or two somewhere ;). He bought it to use a sampling drum machine, not for playing Debussy pieces with lots of sustain pedal.
This is exactly correct. The tables were also only calculated for a quarter of the phase, then mirrored / mirrored+inverted. The resolution wasn’t great, producing artifacts in some scenarios as well. The hardware, while still pleasing to the ear in retrospect (at least for me) was VERY primitive.
The Digitone is an advancement in just about every way imaginable. Maybe it doesn’t have as complex of algorithms, but the calculations being done, the resolution provided, and some of the other additions to the synth engine (imagine trying to make a digital filter on DX-era hardware on top of your synth engine 
) are actually pretty staggering from a technical point of view. That’s not even to mention the sequencer, effects, etc. all for $700.
Sure, Elektron could take all this, switch to multiple SHARCs, program some more algorithms, add more operators, add more physical controls, (and more menu pages…) and make a big flagship keyboard that costs $2500+. That’s not, nor has it ever been what they do though. You want that, you better start petitioning the Yamahas of the world.
I keep saying this, but different tools for the job. Different manufacturers for different tools.
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It really comes down to context, though. If you want to play organ and keys type of parts, yea you’re probably going to want more polyphony. But if you’re playing pads or harmonically dense sounds, more voices usually just means a muddier mix. Prophet-6 and OB-6 are 6 voice poly, the Prophet-5 was gold standard for how many years, and that was 5 voice poly. In the analog realm, that’s about all you need before your mix turns into mud. In the digital realm, one voice goes so far and is capable of much more harmonic complexity. Is 8 bell tones playing at once really all that pleasing?
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Forgot to mention same keyboardist friend who bought a Digitakt also bought a DSI Prophet 6.
Being an experienced keyboardist, he knows better than to plug a sustain pedal into the P6 ;). He uses the one plugged into his SV-1 instead.
Lol
You are the only one here that doesn’t seem to understand any of this. All of your replies are things like “Lol” “I find that funny” or other contrary remarks. You haven’t really presented an argument from any technical point of view.
People have different opinions
Pretty simple to understand
Like I said will be good to hear from someone with experience like Simon on the matter
Well, you are entitled to your opinion. Some of us are attempting to go a bit more in depth with the conversation though.
Show me a DSP or MCU (adding MCU after looking through the Coldfire datasheet) based synthesizer that does real calculations to synthesize sounds that has a ton of voices. There are a few. They are all quite expensive, generally fairly large (with a few exceptions) at least compared with something like the Digitone. The Virus TI comes to mind as one example. It’s a pretty cool synth, but there’s no way you’re packing that down with that amount of power into a Digitone sized box. Look at the Snow. It’s pretty heavily reduced in power.
The Blofeld packs a pretty good punch for its size, but as soon as you start getting complex, you’re losing out on voice count there too. Those maximum voice counts are for the simplest of patches.
The Modor synths are pretty cool too for their size. 8 voices on one 56000-based DSP.
Still for all these cool synths that seem to present more and bigger options, very few of them come in the size of a Digitone, with similar features, sequencer, etc. for a similar price.
It’s pretty apparent what kind of power you get for the price you pay.
There are also other more subtle differences between DSP engines and say a VST. Things may have changed with newer version of the VST format, I haven’t followed it closely in a while, but I do remember that one advantage to using the Scope cards way back was that using their interface was sample-accurate while VSTs (by design, or common practice I’m not sure) used inferior block based methods.
Anyway, I’m not a DSP programmer, (I work on the analog side of things) so someone that does that could be more specific. I’m only paraphrasing things I have read, discussions I’ve had with people that DO program DSPs, etc. I do have a decently technical audio background though, and have worked quite a bit in the field with a lot of hardware. Just trying to present things with as much detail as I’m able. There are others who could go a lot further.
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I’m not counting on an answer from Simon. Just a wild guess.