It’s compatible with the other Elektron, 12V/2A.
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If we’re playing with words, let’s do it to the bottom of it.
Melody: a rhythmical succession of single tones producing a distinct musical phrase or idea. 
Anyway, the synth side is discussed here:
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Thanks for the correction I didn’t actually know melody implied single notes! Learning!
I’m not complaining either way - I’m increasingly tempted by the box. But most groovebox type things can do polyphony - so all I’m saying is I don’t tink it’s strange that people want/expect it.
It does have a slightly confusing personality which is lending to this perception. If it were simply being sold as a drum machine no one would bat an eye - but instinctively people may want to compare it to something like an MPC or the Novation circuits.
Let’s not ignore the enthusiastic marketing claim of it being an “all-round music mega box” - unless of course you want to play more than one note at a time 
It’s becomming clearer through seeing demos what its actual character is. And I dig it - and it’s certainly more than just a drum machine.
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With the amount of tracks available, I often find myself copying the melody of track to a new one, load a new machine and mess with the parameters. This is especially nice with the chord machine, using different LFO settings to modulate the inversion parameters, configuring different velocity settings, and hard panning the tracks left and right. The FX track can bring it all together with some filter sweeps and a bit of drive.
On paper, the individual machines seem pretty simple, but there are so many possibilities to layer, route, and modulate sequences that I don’t see myself running out of ideas with the ST any time soon.
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Heres the follow up breakdown video from the jam i did the other day! For anyone interested in sound design and opening up the Syntakts performance macro capabilities with a midi controller.
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No, Syntakt has 12 monophonic tracks, which by definition is multi-timbrality, not polyphony.
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This is what I usual do with my dn and dt but would run out of tracks, now with the st I can fill my boots, happy dayzzz
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“Single tones” with long release should at least not cut each other off. I hope we’ll see at least some kind of monophonic voice allocation in a future update.
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But each track is monophonic so wouldn’t you expect that, like with any monosynth.
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The Chord machine is not monophonic. I don’t see a reason for not adding a unison mode to it, which allows for overlapping voices.
Sounds reasonable, but OTOH it wouldn’t surprise me at all to find that the present chord algorithm relies entirely on all the notes being derived from a common pitch (e.g. something like: all the pitches playing are harmonics of some other note), meaning that a switch to overlapping notes would mean writing and entirely new machine.
But since neither you nor I have access to the code, we’ll likely never know how easy/hard it might be.
Using what terminology? A 12 person choir performs music that is polyphonic, even though each singer has a different voice. Or would you also say choral music is multi-timbral and not polyphonic?
Synth terminology is primarily marketing speak; paraphonic means two totally different things depending if you’re talking about synths or composition for instance, but you probably know that.
Back to the Syntakt, the chord machine is certainly polyphonic by any musical definition. It plays chords! If you want typical synth polyphony with other machines you can achieve that as well, just with a bit of programming. No, you can’t assign voices like the Digitione but that doesn’t equal a lack of polyphony (musically anyway).
Anyway, I don’t actually have much of a horse in this race. I’m not planning on getting a Syntakt anytime soon. It seems like it does some things really well and other things less well which is true for every piece of gear I own.
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You can get overlapping voices with two or more unison tracks (or any other kind of machine). What you will miss is the machine doing voice allocation for you.
I believe the Chord machine uses each of the four FM operators as one voice. As it stands, a new note comes out of the sequencer, and whatever parameters it comes with (whether from knobs or p-locks) takes over. If you want some of the operators to carry on as they were before, while one or more do something new (as would happen with overlapping unison notes on a single track), then you have to do most of the work of a general voice allocation mechanism such as the Digitone has. People would clamour to have it for the other machines as well.
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Yes it is monophonic, it only uses one voice. The chords are achieved by setting several oscillators to a different pitch. Just because a monophonic synth has 3 oscillators that can be independently tuned/pitched to different intervals doesn’t make it polyphonic.
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It does have a unison mode, but I don’t think that will solve your issue
Common synthesizer terminology. There’s a reason why you won’t see the word “polyphony” once in the Syntakt manual.
By definition of the word, the chords machine is admittedly a form of rudimentary polyphony, but not the kind of polyphony that’s commonly referred to when speaking about synthesizers, where the requirement is that each tone is played individually, with its own envelope and set of oscillators. What Syntakt is doing is taking one tone and tuning the individual oscillators/modulators of that tone to form a chord. The limitations are that the notes in the chord have common envelop and modulations and can’t be strumming or played individually. So in synthesizer terms, that’s wouldn’t even qualify as paraphonic, let alone polyphonic. It’s a nice feature for a monophonic synth though.
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How important is Polyphony in musical gear with a EDM focus. Just wondering if the Syntakt is not aimed at other types of genres than the usual ones we know grooveboxes are famous for. In other words Elektron are pushing you in a certain direction.
EDM is filled with pad and pluck chords, so I’d say kind of important. Not all genres of EDM of course.
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I’m having a lot of fun with the Syntakt. I’ve experienced a couple of bugs, and I’m sure it’ll continue to improve with updates, but even as is right now, it’s a pleasure to use.
I could probably live with this limitation, based on how I use my DN. I allocate one voice to the drum track and try to avoid voices suddenly cutting one another off (which sounds like crap). I am willing to impose that limitation on the drum track because I need the other 7 voices elsewhere, and because I’m not trying to make epic drum parts. If my DN had a 9th voice, I might allocate a second voice to the drums.
I suppose if you have a monophonic voice on the kick drum, and the successive kicks are far enough apart, you don’t have to worry about overlap. A little bit more difficult when successive sounds are close together.
But, what about creating a legato melody? On the piano, legato can be achieved by creating some overlap between successive notes. In other words, more than one note may be sounding at a time.
I am curious how users who’ve been consciously or unconsciously using polyphony/voice-sharing on their other devices…are going to react to this limitation of the ST. One obvious change comes to mind, the need to be more disciplined about avoiding sudden cutoffs on the tails of sounds.
Others have pointed out that polyphony can be created by stacking monophonic voices. For me (with my beloved Digitone as my frame of reference) I consider this to be a tedious PITA on the ST. I would have to copy the settings of one voice into another, assuming I want the same sound or timbre from each voice. And then, if I decided to change the sound, I’d have to repeat the process. Then there is the filtering and balancing of the chord-members. All that switching between voices. What a nightmare.
That leaves the chord machine. I am waiting for a demonstration of what is really possible. For example, what is the workflow for arranging a Bach chorale on the ST? Early adopters of gear like to tell you how you can do anything on that gear. But what about something in particular? In other words, how a machine approaches a well-defined outcome is more instructive than playing random-turn-the-knobs on all its features.
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