Well the Toraiz arrived a few hours ago, I had to update it to 1.4 as it was on 1.3, then for some reason some of the factory samples were not loadable due to wrong file type(?) WTF! Anyway I wasn’t intending on using them so no biggie but kind of odd, could not see anyway of deleting them though, weird.
Anyway loaded up some of my own samples and was certainly impressed with the sound, lots of headroom and a very nice tone, I reckon it must have a decent output stage, wasn’t instantly blown away by the DSI filter but I didn’t mess with it too much yet, had a quick listen to some of the fx and some of them sounded really nice the distortion/overdrive blew my mind, plenty of parameters gave it a massive range which I did not expect at all.
I was expecting it to be both a bit easier to use and not quite as well featured, but I only had about 2 hours with it so far. Could not seem to find out how to copy a step or pattern (didn’t RTFM yet) not even sure if it is possible, some of the UI seems a bit odd, like being able to assign user modes for touchstrip to parameters that may not even be relevant to the track, again though might be me not understanding it.
Love some of the sequencer functions like step offset, and the simple manner in which steps or bars can be moved back or forewards on the grid are great, parameter lock seems very simple.
One thing that Elektron spoils us with is the direct parametric control via sequence steps and parameter pages, but they could learn a trick from Pioneer about screen and graphics, it looks really nice and the visual representation of the LFO for example is superb. Definitely light on mod sources though, and it is daft that filter is considered an effect, however the bitcrusher has its own pre or post filter and it sounded pretty sweet too.
Reckon it will take me a little while to get my head around it, but so far it seems like a keeper.
Although it has also made me appreciate the Octatrack even more, I definitely do not see them as replacements for each other, although the SP-16 kills the OT on some things, on other things the OT wins.