I know this won’t garner me any friends, and this topic might get removed, and I might get kicked off the forum, which I don’t want, but it is worth the risk to say what I think should be said: Elektron Gear interfaces are dumb. I don’t mean everything (well maybe everything on the OT), but I do mean the most basic stuff on all their machines, including loading, saving, locating sounds, transferring, importing, exporting. I have an A4 MKII, an OT MKII and a Model:Samples. Messing around with each is fun, interesting and not too difficult (except the OT is pretty much always difficult). But the other stuff, as in, what to do with anything you want to save, move, get back to, transfer out, import, find, locate, mix with other stuff, is just… stupidly difficult.
Yes, yes, I know, maybe it is me that is just stupid, and Elektron definitely has made me wonder if that is the case, since so many folks around here seem to get it to its very nitty gritty depths, which is cool and fascinating to me. It might also be that there are those here who spend the necessary time getting used to the way Elektron does stuff so it becomes second nature. I suppose if I were willing to spend several weeks with only an electron box, or maybe two, get to know it really, really well, and then use it regularly, several times a week, I could get to proficiency (I sort of did that with the A4 last year), but here’s the thing: If I step away from a box, should it really be like a cloud of confusion when I come back to it a few months later and want to do the simplest things? No. It should not be that way, and since this doesn’t happen with any other box I own, but it does happen with every Elektron box I own, I think that says more about the stupidity of Elektron’s interface designs than it does about my intelligence.
I bought three new sound packs from a third-party today. One was for my Iridium. The other was for the Cobalt8M. The third was for the A4. I easily (as in a matter of a minute or two) transferred the patches, samples, etc. to the Iridium and Cobalt and was using them instantly. I got stomach pains thinking about doing this with the A4, and for good reason. I could see that I had previously purchased other sound packs for the A4 (from Elektron’s website no less) and had given up trying to use them via transfer.
Despite numerous attempts, I was not successful, either transferring over or locating any transferred material). Transfer 1.4 said the project was transferred (I assume with all the sounds, kits, whatever that needed to be there). Yet, I couldn’t locate it on the A4. I am sure there is some stupidly unique and mysterious way of locating the transferred material from the computer to the A4 that I will figure out by doing searches here, at GearSpace, reddit or in the manual (and yes I did read the manual). But, really, should this be necessary for something so basic and simple? No. It is dumb. And this is also the case with the OT and the Model:Samples. I may some day sell the lot, and never look at another Elektron box again. I like complex (Iridium, Korg, Wavestate), which have depths equal to or way beyond the A4, but they are accessible, and smartly designed. I am very intolerant of stupid design (things are way more difficult than they need to be because the designers didn’t think about the perspectives of the users), no matter how capable the machine (OT is king here).
Just my two cents. I do hope I didn’t offend anyone. This is not just a rant (although it is a rant). I think it is a fair statement about how dumb Elektron designs are for content management (as well as many other interface elements). I also feel pretty confident that there are others here who have felt the exact same way I do right now.
