I wouldn’t say the A4 isn’t fluid or intuitive, but it definitely is less fluid and intuitive than the Digitakt and Digitone. The filter envelope on the DT and DN are on the same page as the filter itself which is speeds up the workflow. On the other hand, A4 has two envelopes in their own ENV pages, the first one being normalled to both filters, and both have two destinations each. I think the less fluid workflow is just the nature of the beast when you have access to so many parameters.
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For sure, but still. Fine tuning a sound meant jumping between 4-5 different pages multiple times. It’s just cumbersome, even if you do get used to it and is necessitated by the amount of parameters available.
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Yep. IME, going from init to an awesome sound on the Digitone takes less effort (and uses up less of my music making energy) than the A4 because of this.
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I vastly prefer the A4 as far as sound goes. Digitone is modern in a way that displeases me, while the A4 is modern in a way which pleases me a lot, hah.
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Or use a knob on performance mode 
I guess probably most of people use perf for actually performing, but I think it can be a great tool to shape sound if use as a macro to control different parameters at the same time.
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Ive been half GAS’ing for one for ages. Never tried one though. Seems like something i could get cool stuff out of. But dont expect it to have the same “tone” as a vintage analog, or my modular.
Yeah, you can do that if you’ve already made one which can take a few minutes. When using performance knobs, the actual values aren’t reflected in the parameter pages. For example, I like assigning the filter cutoff to a performance macro and put it on the quick perf knob so I have access to filter cutoff no matter what parameter page I’m on. This does take a bit of setup:
- set the track’s filter cutoff to 0.
- Go to the performance macro edit menu -> knob A
- Scroll through the menu to find T1’s Filter1’s cutoff frequency.
- Turn the amount to +127.
When tweaking the filter cutoff with the performance macro like this, the filter page will always show the filter as fully closed, even when the performance macro is opening it up fully.
Performance macros are amazing, but they do require some setup. More setup than just flipping through pages and changing parameters one by one.
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I see what you saying.
Performance macros needs some setup, indeed, but if this type of settings are used quiet often, maybe saving a kit with those settings by default and start from there will speed things up.
I love saving parts on my OT for example, or even projects, complete different setups, as if it was my own personal presets default starting template, depending on what I’m planning working on. I guess something similar can be achieved with the A4 using kits.
Another differenr thing may be that the actual paremeter is not showing the “updated” parameter change on its own page when using macros, but that maybe something to add to elektron wish list?
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It’s not a joy to program, it’s true. I’m second nature with it and just zip around so it’s not bad but it’ll never be fun like a full panel. But if it had all that it’d be too crowded for the sequencer and live controls.
It’s a bit frustrating because if they took the same sound engine and just made it a regular poly synth with no sequencer, I think it’s be very popular. But then it wouldn’t be an AK!
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I’ve nearly bought an A4 Mk2 maybe 3 or 4 times and although I thought many of the sound demos and YT videos sounded great, the potential complexity put me off.
I don’t wish to derail this thread (I promise) but I feel like Elektron have a killer synthesis-based groovebox in them but they haven’t quite landed it yet (at least since 2017 when I got interested). Personally, I love these macro synth engines with limited controls but wide range of sounds and I think the DN came close but I always found FM difficult at the best of times. A4 is clearly a monster in the right hands but the complexity is always going to put a lot of people off.
It seems like the sequencer is central to Elektron so, to me, it feels like they design them to be used as grooveboxes. Maybe the next product will be the one I’ve always wanted and I reckon it might have a bit of A4 in there somewhere…
Yes but are options offering closer to the A4? I really like the Digitone, amazing sound and versatility tho still far away from how versatile an A4 can get
It could be actually… Deffinetlly from my point of view much more interesting than the Rytm. Not too sure about the MD and its 16tracks and 16 lfos that are definetlly real hard to match…
Oh yeah, you have way more control over the sound on the A4 than on the Digitone. But that control comes at the cost of fast workflow. I think one can get really fast at dialing in stuff once they’re familiar with the A4, but it’s gonna take longer to get there than on the Digitone simply because there are more parameters to learn.
Another thing I really like about the A4 is how the performance macros change parameters. Instead of jumping to the new absolute value like how it works on the Digitone’s control all*, performance macros increase or decrease values relative to the trigs’ values. This makes it a lot easier to make slowly evolving sounds, because there won’t be any sudden value changes.
*This works fine on normal trigs, but p-locked trigs will do a jarring jump from the p-locked value to the new control-all value.
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Yeah! That’s definitely something to take into account as making a smooth “control all” is key from my point of view. I hate parameter jumps too unless programmed on porpouse.
I’ve always thought A4 was one of the most gifted synths when it comes to envelopes… What are you missing?
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I agree it has more options than most, with 6 types with 2 trig behaviours, which is very welcomed, however since they are entirely digital it would be nice to have adjustable slopes, or even 3 ranges for each type (fast/medium/slow), also AD/AR with looping would be handy.
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Looping AD/AR is ALWAYS welcome for me. Those are my favorite types of envelope actually. Of course this can kind of be achieved with one shot LFO, but then you lose the LFO, and a little bit of control.
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Multi map edit, trig mutes, parameter slides… Isn’t this simply brilliant? Still half way along the user manual 
what an incredible machine man.
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That’s be great, or a custom envelope editor in the style of the OT lfo editor, func+amp or enc or lfo are all still available
Edit, adding something to the conversation, I’ve been getting some very pleasing filter sounds by modulating the filter with pitch sync lfo at 255 and 512 depending on if it’s bass or leads, sounds especially nice and almost to thick in unison
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Oh. I see.
Worth mentioning that there is also a length parameter for envelopes, not really a slope speed but close enough ^^
As for the AD cycling, I guess the LFO is good to me (but I could do with a couple others).
I also like the hardwired envelope and lfo on pitch, as well as PWM, that is displayed at the right place.
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