There are always grating high frequencies, though I can tame them a bit with modulation (fast LFO->Pitch) … I have to look into the FX Filters (I know nothing about them so far), perhaps they can help to take out some of the unpleasantness if that’s a reasonable workflow …
Edit: They can’t since they are applied to the whole bus of instruments routed to the FX slot …
Good to hear. Plan to run my Force through it, as the Force will be my master clock and “song mode”.
I find double notch and double LP to be pretty interesting for taming the high frequencies a bit, or giving them a different shape, especially with LFOs. Not as punishing as a LP ^^.
Oh, but the analog FX is always on for every instrument, right? It’s the selected tracks routed as sum into the FX at once. Like how I can’t control analog fx drive strength per sound.
Well, I think the digital hihats are better suited then [for me]: There I have two filters. What I started to do was to use high pass with resonance to an extreme, and then the second page filter -> LFO 2 to make the ring out getting darker.
Because that’s another thing I really dislike: That all those cymbal and hihat ‘machines’ fade out into a penetrant white hiss, which is the opposite of what I expect …
At least one can say that Syntakt offers more cymbals and hihats than most other machines and lots of classics. Just no sweetspot there for me so far 
Oh, you’re right, those are on AFX track only.
But yes, I find the analog cymbal engine good enough for hats, close to what you showed earlier. I’ll get back to this hats matter later. ^^
Syntakt Chill Jam
I’ve had the Syntakt for 1-2 weeks now.
On this track I’ve used Bd Modern, CY Alloy hats, SY tone kalimba/percussion type of sound, Sy chord (background “organ” drone), Sy toy also a kind of kalimba/percussion type of sound, Sy dual vco Fat Bass, Sy dual vco Trumpet/Horns, External input Korg SV1 El-Piano (comes in after approx 2 min) with some delay and reverb FX on syntakt
Fat bass + Cy alloy hats run through FX - the rest are clean.
4 patterns in a chain loop
No external processing - recorded straight into a sony PCM recorder (which has a limiter, but I don’t think the signal was hot enough to kick in…)
Could need some EQ post processing etc, a little bass heavy.
Inspiring box !
Yeah, but a lot like the Model:Cycles, it’s often better to look somewhere other than the hats/cymbal machines for good hats.
Yeah, the “oh it’s the model:cycles” effect is one I don’t want to apply to my music
Yeah, I know what you mean, and normally I’d defend it by being all “it’s actually really hard to synthesize hats” blah blah blah, but the 606 managed it, the Volca drum nails it and there’s plenty of other examples of great sounding synthesized hats.
I’m not struggling as badly as I did on the M:C to find the good hats, but I’m still fighting the desire to just plug my Sampler into the inputs for some decent hat samples.
Syntakt (different kinds of) hihat(s) tries …
I’ve done closed/opened with the modifiers, that’s why the “closed” hits have a slightly too weak attack.
(My hihats on the volca drum = my goals for comparison: That Syntakt Sound - #161 by Jeanne )
Can you only put hihats on a specific track [if I recall the Rytm restricted sounds to tracks] or can you put any digi machine on any digi track and same for analog?
Track 12 is dedicated to cymbal stuff only like machines hh basics, cy ride, cy metallic etc… However digital tracks 1 through 8 does have a digital machine called “cy alloy” that can do cymbal sounds.
Dieter says delete.
Thanks.
I have to say that I really like the sound of the ST and It can sound gorgeous if you push I a bit with some sound design knowledge! Even the hats can sound very nice of you use a digital snare as shaker or closed Hihat! Bought the ST because of its sound and not to replace a TR Maschine . For that I have my DT with lots of samples from classic maschines. In my latest video I use the Classic Snare as a shaker/open hat for example.
ha! i do the same thing. for my previous ones, i just manually tapped them out without a metronome or anything. i dont think its always necessary to show off pattern programming skills or quantizing when illustrating certain sound deign methods
thank you! i appreciate that
these sound really nice. they are ringy and creamy, i see what you mean. you’re making me consider a volca drum, always wanted one
i just found out that the analog “RS CLASSIC” machine has two independently tune-able oscillators with balance control and an individual noise level + tick control, with decay envelope. so analog noise, two analog oscillators, dedicated env, analog transient, analog overdrive, and separate controls for the levels and pitch of each osc. sounds really good to me. have you tried that yet? i agree that it doesnt give you the same type of control over waveforms as the volca drum seems to though
maybe dual vco would be better if you wanted to dial in ring modulated saw waves
i just remembered how much i loved making drum sounds on the a4. prior to the syntakt, that was one of my favorite percussion synthesis tools. you have separate control over the noise with its own filter, envelope, and bit rate, 4 envelopes, and tunable audio rate lfos with am/fm/hard sync/pwm, and even tunable filter feedback which, when routed, could potentially be used as a resonator maybe(?)
i still think you have most of that here, with the syntakt, but you’d need to layer tracks to have that much control
thanks for sharing
wow, i really like these. very nice. you used a digital machine for this?
also, i do the same thing with the digital hat machines with the two filters. i really wish the analog machines had a second b/w filter for taming everything. its a massively useful function for designing drum sounds. i use pretty heavy bandpass in filter 2 on almost everything. but yeah, the analog fx filters are so nice, esp the dual notch that lyingdalai mentioned. i havent figured out a great way to utilize it for individual sound design either, except for just routing a single track to the fx track. it isnt ideal, but it works.
i generally give up on trying to use the fx track for individual tracks though. but the “LS” & “HS” filters on the analog tracks are really cool as well if you want shelves rather than cutting out every frequency below he cutoff while retaining the higher resonance. i have found notch pretty useful for percussive sounds, particularly hats, too. but i only really use those when i have the second filter to further sculpt frequencies with
it sucks that you arent happy with the hat sounds youve gotten from it, but hopefully its still worth holding onto for other reasons for you
*in practice, RS Classic isnt too great for the more tonal hats. it’s hard to close the envelopes for the ringing osc while still making it audible through the noise in the same machine. here, you can hear how it just kind of constantly rings out, despite all 3 envelopes being pretty tightly closed on the decay stage. definitely not as metallic sounding as yours. i think maybe even the RS Hard with the single osc might be better
(ill stop posting hat audio now, maybe 
)
…
(except for this, messin around with Sy Tone FM Hats:
)
i especially like the sounds around 1:15, 1:42, 2:30, 3:00, & 4:00. wet hats
I think these ones sound better than the Volca ones you posted. To me, the Volca hats had a very artificial sound, I guess generated by the waveguide, that sounded like resonances from being inside a tiny box.
Oh, thank you! I don’t have anything against an artificial sound, as long as it carries those characteristics of real hihats I enjoy. And it’s important how it sounds in a mix (and my music is dense industrial stuff), and those do sound great. By time I’ll make a comparison and then decide if this volca drum will remain in the hihat role or get another role
Syntakt: 7th Dub of 7th Dub
Tracks: BD modern sound = kick + snare/rim, UT noise HH/shaker, SY Dual VCO Bass, CC Alloy HH, SY Chord, Sy Toy (Xylophone/Glockenspiel).
Bass + UT Noise through FX - the rest clean. Playing with LFO Delay + Filters
4 pattern chain loop, no post processing - Stereo in to Studio One + raise the volume a little before Mp3 mixdown,
Just testing different stuff + trying to see if odd meters are doable without too much hassle.
After some time with the Syntakt, would you guys say that it lends itself more to a specific style/sound/genre? Or would you say it is very flexible and could produce anything with enough tweaking?