and yet, tomorrow (payday) i order an Octatrack, because i am a horrible person and i deserve to suffer
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Lol.
Maybe the Rytm lovers didn’t post in that ranking thread.
I only just got my Rytm but yeah, it sounds fantastic. It can easily sound very heavy and thuggish, which is what I was looking for. It’s got CHARACTER
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Yeah AR is underrated, I have all of the metal boxes and wouldn’t really know how to rank them but the AR is without a doubt nr 1 for me, not to say that some of the common criticism is also valid. Things can easily get a little muddy especially if you overdo the overdrive. Analog hats are indeed not stellar by themself and it doesn’t sit as cleanly in a mix as for instance the MD does but who cares, it is the mix. I love how it makes my samples sound and probably most importantly for me: the interface is just so immediate, pure fucking magic.
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i’m all in favour of people being open about their kinks but come on mate
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Absolutely yes!
Absolutely fkng yees! 
Also Rytm does massive kicks, DVCO is amazing and mixing samples and synthesis can really sound magical.
Could be. I love my OT (my first Elektron box, so always gonna have a special place), but I also love my AK and AR - they’re also meant to be played together, no idea how I’d rank them individually.
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The AR has huge dynamic range. Needs to be gain staged carefully if you want to keep it out of crunch territory. Keeping its output down and turning it up at the monitoring stage works for me to keep things clean. Be aware that sample volume levels above 100 are going to start to distort the waveform (assuming sample is normalized to 0.0), regardless of how you set other gain stages. As mentioned, AR also has a ton of low end you’ll need to keep in check. Keeping that stuff in mind, I think it sounds great.
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I don’t get the ambivalence either. RYTM is awesome, and it sounds killer on a sound system. The kicks and toms do seem to have a lot of low mid presence but it’s controllable enough in the RYTM for live sets, and easy to address in a mix when recording.
It’s one feature (a base / width control on the filter) away from perfection IMO. 
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I’m also a huge AR fan. It sounds completely unique, even when just using samples.
Someone here wrote that it sounds like a peach: warm, fuzzy but punchy. I think this is a very good way to describe it
I think it’s 3 things away from perfect: base width filter, samplestart finetuning and amp env resetting. The last 2 make it a chore to get rid of clicks and pops when using samples.
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I used the built in notch filter quite a bit to pull out any low mids in kicks or snares muddying up my chart toppers.
Try the peak filter with a fair amount of resonance on the DVCO - moog bass ain’t got shit on it.
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i love my rytm. Best elektron box for me so far. big characteristic sound! i also loved my MDmk2uw+
but this machine is very fast. i guess i wouldn’t get it if it didn’t have samples. i’m not fan of the effects being on the master actually but it wasn’t what i was looking for when i was getting the machine. everything sounds very good.
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Errm. Yes , but also no. So it depends on the EQ. Some EQ’s can do exactly that… the ones that don’t are commonly considered “transparent”.
I had my first realization of this in Reason of all places. When I discovered that the decades-old half-rack parametric EQ can add oomph to anything, after I was tearing my hair out wondering how people get the boomy 50-80hz boost on kicks etc, because the mastering class EQ just couldn’t add anything that wasn’t already there. They added another EQ, part of their virtual SSL desk, that falls somewhere in between.
Filters with resonance on do something similar.
I don’t know how it works in the real world but I guess that hardware EQ’s also fall somewhere on that spectrum
The kind of stuff the non-transparent EQ’s add sounds something like resonance, more or less a fundamental whose amplitude follows the source material. So it’s literally adding something but it’s going to be different from something that had stuff in the same frequency range to begin with because it’s kinda like A.I., just taking its best guess in a sense
I wasn’t surprised by its relatively low rating on that thread. It’s the first Elektron product I’ve had that I wasn’t able to sell within two weeks. Reverb is full of them.
Went from DT to AR and highly regretted it. Don’t think it’s worth double the price unless a massive update is in the works, imo. Tbh, I haven’t even touched it since getting the S2400. At least for making Hip Hop, it’s just a much better experience in every way.
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Yes that would fix a lot in terms of easy mud control.
There is also the issue of the really basic inputs. It’s really unfortunate that you can’t route it through the fx, this has unnecessarily complicated some of my live setups, besides sounding less homogenized. I think it actually bugs me more than the static filterbandwidth 
you can’t just compare the ar with the dt. the dt is a pure sampler while the ar is an analogue synth. so it has raw sounds that need to be processed. dt simply fires already processed samples, which an ableton sampler e.g. also could. of course it sounds different. but one thing is true, the rytm doesn’t sound good right away, e.g. an original 909 or 808 hardware. Even if it shouldn’t imitate anything in my opinion, it still sounds too raw at first and only ok with the right processing.
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Like when my friend said he got the AR a month ago and claimed “i mastered it”. Bit rude, but i laughed in his face. Flagship Elektron stuff has a steep learning curve, so time, focus, and patience are needed to perform miracles. Comparing it to DT just sounds like not enough time was put in.
For me, the magic lies in the performance mode, where you find new sweetspots of sounds. Love it to bits. Also the control inputs on mk2 are mental!
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Discovering the broken in this machine is really hard, but assigning parameters to the Quick performance dial really helps find happy accidents. I was definitely surprised at this. I think a huge part is the encoders. I don’t think i own anything else that uses them, and always struggle with midi controllers, so this is somewhat in a similar ballpark, and having something directly connected to the sounds i hear, and also mappings I’m not 100% clear on, creates those moments where you get inspired. And it’s the challenge of finding inspiration that i feel is where this machine stands alone, for better or worse.
It’s definitely a sound design style box, although lacks some key sound design tools, like eq, decent envelopes, being able to pitch further, but it also reminds me of how these things are done with the Kawai XD-5, esp in envelopes, and also to some degree the Roland R8, although the R8 envelopes are super basic, although sound more rewarding quicker.
Another part is, the AR2 needs partnering with something outside it to really get at something interesting which is probably why the individual outputs was a choice, at least in part. I wonder if due to how much you can do in the machine, this makes us think it should yield better results? The further we go with it the more we ask of it. It’s not a single box that’s taking you all the way very often, as much as it promises it can.
For me, it doesn’t quite have the surprise in sound of say older gear, in a way it’s incredible build quality and precision causes this. It’s super accurate. Comparing to an old sampler it’s not as interesting. Comparing to a classic drum machine, which it’s clearly in reference to, its also not as good out of the box. The tools to make similar classic drum machine sounds are there, but unlike having a team of designers sculpting those presets and limits to make a more immediately useable drum machine, like the TR’s, we have a much rawer starting point to create with. I guess remember the context in which those drum machines were created. Organ accompaniment, compete with a real drummer, being able to save. Today if sold a box of presets some would shout rompler!
For me, it ends up sort of sitting in this middle ground. Incredibly impressive and quick to use, but you need to spend loads of time to make it sound good and maybe you need more gear to find what it teases. It’s neither sampler nor drum machine, it’s more drum synthesiser with very cool sequencing abilities.
It provides so many possibilities but oddly rarely is inspiring when using it, unless going down a very focused sound design route with other support, as you will need it as you wish I could just have a bit of eq and a bit more control over pitch and shaping.
I bought the grey one new a few years ago, and I’m glad I bought it. However, it’s probably the most challenging relationship i have ever had with a piece of kit, and in the most unexpected ways. It’s very easy to use, very hard to find.
I wish i had the black one
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I’ve said it before in other threads. Rytm is the only machine I can’t produce without. And I have tried. Its fast to work with, sounds great and used right just delivers really groovy stuff. Taming it with eq and compression isn’t much work. It’s always the foundation for my tracks.
I’m not always a fan of the dvco as it often sounds out of tune and off. Hats can be good with some work. Cymbal sucks hard though. But that’s when samples come in. Just because the analog voices are there don’t mean you have to use them.
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The problem is that the 909 cymbal is the best cymbal.
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…it sounds unique…it sounds raw…but never used it for real…
it’s the only one i never purchased…
always wondered why it keeps the highest pricetag of all actual products, since i’m totally convinced the a4 is the way way way way more versatile truu analog product…
also and especially when it comes to ALL kinds of drums and percussion soundshaping AND enveloping them properly…
while they both share very intresting live macro control concepts…nowhere else to find…
but sure it’s way easier to achieve a kik within predefined kik machines…
whenever i heard somebody using the rytm, i heard the genious tricks every elektron sequencer can do at work, combined with heaps of boomyness and earscratchin’ sharpness all drowned in an analog overall flavour that could not really get to shine…
only if u keep it dead simple, it worx for real…
while melting samples with analog flavour is always a great thing to do…
anyways, anywhere…
but hey, it looks damned sexy…especially in it’s black reissue…
no gear nerd out there who could not suffer from shock crush on it… 
lot’s of shiny happy people…not so many shiny happy ears and wallets…i guess…
i’m in love and endless satisfaction with a cycles heated up and the a4…plain out of the box…
while one shot samples, i can do with anything…
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