I do wonder if now they will give the DN a midi arp now the latest product does not have one and that there doesnt appear to be any “flagship” products on the horizon for now.
PS - does the Digitone keys have a MIDI Arp?
It seems so many people complaining about Elektron releasing nothing new are lusting after a new MachineDrum - a box released almost 20 years ago 
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Consumerism places a lot of identity in brands, owning things, and a constant hunger for new shinies. The disappointment is personal, I guess?
That’s really what it comes down to, isn’t it?
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While I would love to see what an Octatrack Mk3, an Analog Keys Mk2 or an Elektron mixer type thing would be like (not to mention a sort of hope that syntakt might turn out to be a big sampler/synth workstation ala ensoniq), I actually think the syntakt looks pretty cool.
Totally get if you got a few elektron boxes already it may not offer you much, but as someone who has been on the fence between digitone or AR as first elektron music box (not counting analog heat), this is probably spot on. Can I hold out for the Syntakt Keys though?
Same bro, same.
The question of which box to get shouldn’t be so complicated.
And them assuming that people will be happy to collect boxes is anti-consumer.
Everyone just vote with your wallets. Whether it’s yay/nay.
Well they’ve fallen a long way from Hector and 25 min blade runner-like teaser videos.
It’s just a different company than it was. It’s an unfortunate truth that us Elektron diehards have to come to terms with. I think they still make dope instruments, some of the best in fact. But they’re not the innovative, left field, trendsetters that they once were that’s for sure.
I still have a little faith that they’ll crank out something of interest every 5+ years or so but they’re no longer the company that I would pre-order blindly from anymore.
Fortunately for us the original instruments still exist and are still phenomenal and timeless.
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If I didn’t already own a bunch of gear that covers most of my bases, I would consider picking up a Syntakt. I love the Machines idea which brings me back to my Machinedrum’s workflow. Seems to cover a lot of sonic ground in a small form factor, fusing some of the best Elektron dna into one package (that DVCO machine 
) I’d say the price is a hard pill to swallow, but seems fair for what you get.
I wonder if the naysayers could play around with one, risk free, for a month, would they change their tune? Probably some, but not all. At the end of the day, if it’s not for you, hop on Reverb and find something that is. I think we are spoiled for choice these days!
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The things left out on the software side has much more do to with how they prioritize developer time. They choose not to develop these things so they can spend time developing things they feel are more important. It’s not like they made a midi arp for the digitone, and took it out.
There is no good reason for no midi arp on the Digitone. The only art they practiced with that decision was the art of cynical corporate decision making.
With Elektron I increasingly get the feeling that the way they make these decisions is by looking at a spreadsheet with all their machines on one axis and various features on the other axis and the rule is that each row should have as few checked cells as possible.
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Implementing midi arp would literally be the lowest effort yet most requested feature they could add. There’s basically no interface work to be done and I’d be surprised if the code for it didn’t already exist. Elektron knows how to do midi arp because they’ve done it before and the physical interface of Digitone actually makes more sense with midi arp than without it. Leaving it out was 100% a lineup stratification decision.
I’d agree with you if we were talking a fancy song mode or a adding a whole other synth engine but this is nothing more than enabling a feature that should have been on from the start. Personally it’s not like midi arp is even that important to me, it’s the fact that they will prioritize petty stuff like this over making the best possible product that’s a giant red flag for me.
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Don’t know about midi arp, but one very deliberate thing is no song mode.
The Digi boxes can all chain patterns, but not one of them can save chains.
Almost every drum computer or groovebox can do this, even cheap ones.
Even a Volca Sample can save pattern chains.
Also their marketing.
Elektron marketing:
- 35 sound-generating machines.
Reality:
12 of those are on the single cymbal track:
- 5 × Hihat
3 × Cymbal - 2 × Cowbell
- 1 × Impulse
- 1 × Noise generator
And that’s not 12, but more like 4 in my opinion, hihat and cymbal should be variations of the same machine. It certainly isn’t 12 very different ones.
There are 15 analog machines, 6 of which are bassdrums.
All the digital tracks have 10 machines, 2 of which are snares, so more like 9.
I would agree that the tonal ones sound very different.
It’s misleading and it seems a lot more limiting than the specs suggest.
I think that’s also why a lot of sounds in the demo’s sound alike.
I still think the Syntakt is a nice machine, but for that price it’s way too limiting.
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Funny, I’ve shat on the ST ruthlessly but limiting isn’t how I’d describe it … more like … existentially confusing?
It could really replace all my Elektron gear, because I don’t have any of the proper Elektron samplers.
That’s powerful.
But the workflow would have to change so drastically due to the missing features. I don’t think it lacks for sound design. Well, it’s not as wild and uncivilized as the Machinedrum …
It’s a smart move for a company coming out of a pandemic, having lost important members: it’s an existing case, existing machines (rytm/M:C) with a few cool new tricks.
I can imagine why they would not take a risk on a brand new top range concept right now.
Also with the landscape; loads of new options being pushed out.
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Still waiting for the one button synth that pushes the boundary a bit every time you push it.
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As for my 2 cents, syntakt looks like a really cool drum machine, like same for drum machines what digitakt was for samplers. Not for everyone, but definitely worth having if a all in one drum machine w/ the Elektron sequencer is what you’re after.
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… dude if you want a sampler drum machine the digitakt is right there.
like seriously what is with people, this release is elektron’s first box that’s anything like the machinedrum in years and y’all are actually fucking mad about it??
the Digitone exists. A fully-fledged FM phase-modulation synth that comes either in a laptop format or a keyboard station.
The Analog Heat exists, it literally is just a processing analog unit.
The Digitakt exists, it’s a fully-fledged sampler drum machine.
The Analog 4 exists, so does the Analog Keys, so there’s your dedicated analog synthesis.
If you want even more analog drums and still want to sample? The Rytm is right there.
Like how is this not diversity in product line to y’all? And these (excluding the analog keys maybe?) are current products elektron sells right now, I’m completely ignoring their older stuff and omitting the Octatrack because why beat a dead horse.
They only have like 10-ish products across the company’s entire history, and most of them are pretty unique and do different sorts of things. The Syntakt is so far their only box that does a little taste of everything. That’s the fucking point lmao.
It’s like when people got mad at Ess about the Model: Cycles cause it was a “rudimentary introduction to FM synthesis and the elektron workflow on a budget” and he quoted the reddit comment he got in the Perfect Circuit interview cause THAT WAS THE ENTIRE POINT OF THAT GROOVEBOX
Show me another groovebox that does everything the Syntakt can do on the market right now. Is it something everyone will like and want? No. Of course not. That would be silly and also incredibly boring.
literally made an account just to comment this because it’s been pissing me off seeing people complain about a new release when the thing they want is already an existing product in the mfin product line lol
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Long enough to go bankrupt.
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Fender then…or Yamaha and pianos. Whatever
I have A4, AR, DN, OT, Heat… and I’ve preordered a ST since I’m trying to downsize. yeah… that’s what it is. Sometimes before you can have less (so you can have more), you have to have more (so you can have less).
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