Thanks. I know. BUT, it is harder work, right? Especially for some sounds. I like the bass I get from, and the leads, essentially the mono stuff. Even got some decent drones and pads out of it. But for chords/poly/bright (without too much resonance) it is harder work. Not impossible.
I get your point too, it is a groove box as well as a synth. I love the sequencer. The sequencer and the groovebox-ish ness are part of why I bought it, I think I need to supplement it with something digital.
It’s more about speed, when you have something working and are making progress, I don’t want to take a twenty minute detour to coax the sound out of the A4.
Everything you;ve said is true, but none of it negates what I have said…it’s both!
EDIT:
This ^^^ it’s great BUT…I think I need a something else like blakewait has
I’ve got other synths a moog sub phatty and a Novation peak for instant patch making fun…
The analog four is def not as much fun for that, but it’s a full groove box synth was my point…
Yeah I didn’t answer your question exactly but just giving you reasons why it’s good
FWIW thinking some more I wonder if part of it is dearth of good presets. If I’m making something in DAW, I can usually find a preset (in Pigrments 3 for example) that is a good stand in for what I want, then go back later and get the sound that I really want dialed in. With the A4 it’s like “Bloodnet”…ugh. Start from scratch, everytime.
I spent days organising the presets, agreed some suck and some are bit weird…
I deleted all the bad so everything I start from are good and my type of sounds.
I’ve been a beta tester so got to organise a while ago, but now it’s much easier to organise with transfer for everyone… go through and delete the crap and buy some sound packs and make your own
Personally I find the A4 quick to navigate through to get sounds I’m after… I do tend to get them from ballpark presets rather than INIT, but once I know what I’m after it’s fast enough.
I also really like the sound of the A4 overall… I think of it as ‘pure/solid’ sounding.
I’ve had a guitar analogy in mind for a while- the best, or my favourite, guitar sounds usually require high volume. These sounds can sound a bit underwhelming at lower volumes, but get better:come alive the louder they are.
There are a lot of all-singing guitar multi-fx units out there these days that sound good at bedroom levels but go to absolute garbage when cranked up. I think a lot of modern synths have the same issue.
I feel the A4 sounds are like the former… they sound better at higher volumes and translate really well… I’m lucky enough to have a PA set up in my workspace with a 2000W amp running 15” loaded cabs, and this quickly lets you know what sounds translate. At volume, kicks that sounded good at low volume can sound weird and require tweaking, but the A4 always works better than most of my other gear and comes alive.
This then translates when you bring the volume back down to regular listening levels.
So it baffles me when I hear people questioning the sound of the A4… I think it’s probably a reflection on user more than the tool.
The factory presets are a bit meh imo, but there are some great presets available. My favourites are Biopads 1 and 2 from Elektron, @taro ‘s drum presets, and @Floppydisk_Pirates’s synth presets. I can nearly always find a good starting point out of that lot.
I find the factory presets rather good (compared to say… the rev2 presets…) and I like all these weird SFX presets! @Floppydisk_Pirates patches are really great and inspirational.
I like how easy it is to manage presets with the A4 too (One thing Sequential should really copy because I like the sound but the software is really outdated).
I wished the Tetra came with such a great software because I might be playing with it now (instead of selling it)
I’ll grab some and try, as soon as I finish getting organised
I just started doing this, and I stand corrected. Just going through bank A I kept 70(!!) of the presets from that bank (some more out of curiosity to learn how they did it, than for the actual sound, but still)
Yeah, I am learning this now, I was lazy in my thinking and haphazard in the way I dipped into the presets. As I say above, I’m now going through them all getting organised into keep/discard/investigate and finding plenty I like.
Thanks all for taking the time! Now I need to take the time and clear up the sounds I like, and try some sound packs.
I recently swapped out my A4 mk1 for an MPC Live. Not thinking of it as a step up but just for a change of environment.
I hadn’t really played with the MPC’s Tubesynth before but I was genuinely surprised how much easier I found it to make weighty, expressive and useful sounds than the A4. I’m rarely this happy with a sound I’ve made from scratch with the A4 and it takes me a long time to get it sounding close to how I want it to.
I love how versatile the A4 is and how powerful the sequencer is… but I always find it sounds a bit weird. Sometimes that’s a great thing and leads to some quite out-there sounds that I wouldn’t stumble across any other way. More often it’s just ok.
In the past I’ve always been quite an advocate of the A4’s sound but I’m becoming increasingly uninspired by it, at least in the context of the music I make.
I just bought one, 1 week in. The filters are very bad vs other True Analog gear and not a lot of color. There is a reason we don’t have a huge library of 3rd party sound sets. Programmers don’t like its sound design. Takes way too long to get usable sound outside of a cool patch. Purchased to pair with my Rytym Mk2, sounds do gel good, not a ton of good plucks, keys. But hey I have a lot of reverb stomp boxes and I can get a few solid melodies out of it with outboard fx.
Really wanted to use this for melodies. Also having a ton of issues with using the A4Mk2 sending midi to my virus and Moog LP when A42 is receiving midi clock. And no clue why I can’t PLOCK Arp.
This unit feels like it is stuck trying to be a quasi RYTM. Wish they would have made it Analog/Sample Wave/Fm Synth all in one powerhouse. Don’t need it as a Drum Machine when I have other gear. OT2 and Rytm2 are in their own categories great and revolutionary. A4 is stuck in between synth and drum machine. just my 2 cents, super boutique and limited usability outside of Elektron universe.
…ooooooooo…another neverending one…even better than the ot one…
for everybody who’s new to this or even stating after a week these filters are bad…proper GAINSTAGING is a huuuuuuuuge gamechanger, making a difference to ALL elements in the VERY complex chain of sounddesign options in this TRUU ANALOG machine…
it’s ALL interacting with each other in there…digital mind, truu analog heart…
one of the rare claims that could’nt nail it more…
if somebody loves to hate it, he/she did’nt took a deeper dive…
and the fact remains…swedish musicmachines are NOT FOR EVERYONE…
if somebody wants to hate it, can’t see or willing to find the sonic beauty in this machine, well at least all swedish resale value is beyond all doubts…
reselling makes another one happy…
simple as that…
You should either take it back, or sell it to someone who is interested in it. The A4/AK is definitely one of those machines that people either love, or just don’t like. You don’t like. There is also a thing about Elektron boxes, where they actually show their colors after a longer period of time. One week in is never a good time to judge a complex instrument. But, you have. So, pass it on to someone who will give it some time.
Sorry if your feelings are hurt. Replied to a thread on a forum with a question. I answered it.
It’s not even close to complex as my OTMK2, on par with Rytm. I think a few days and I have it pretty narrowed down. I have a lot of synths and Dawless groove boxes, A4 isn’t super complex once again. Pretty let down by the general sound design capabilities and the filter does not sound analog at all. But I digress. Decent box and wasn’t nearly as expensive as my other synths. Does a nice thing well and that is shine in performance mode with Rytm. Compliments it very well. Hopefully it sees a major update which adds some nice features like DT.
Didn’t mean to come off as taking it personal. I’m just saying some people love the A4, some hate it. You obviously don’t like it. That’s fine. Move on. You made your point.
Sorry to hear you’re not enjoying your A4, and also that you didn’t receive a warmer welcome to the forum.
I’ve tried highlighting these issues a few times, so that anyone reading these threads can hopefully get a balanced view of opinions. Unfortunately, as you’ve just discovered, here you’ll often get told that you haven’t spent enough time with it / aren’t any good at synthesis / need to implement a bunch of tricks to get around the weaknesses. All of which I disagree with, but alas.
In an attempt to help you enjoy it more: as someone else mentioned not too much further up, the Biome preset packs have some nice patches that (IMO) are about as good as the A4 can sound. And if you can bear the programming, the performance macros might help you have some fun.
Beyond that, hopefully you bought it 2nd hand: a used MK2 sells for at least 20% less than the current new price here in the UK… And a £220 loss is pretty rough.
But you do need to spend time with it. And it is a very technical, programmery synth, so you do have to be good at synthesis to get the most from it. And it relies on modulation a lot for its sound, so yeah, there are lots of tricks.
If you hear those things and they make you feel bad about the A4, or the community, or worst of all yourself, you should definitely steer away from it because no gear is worth that kind of negativity.
But there’s nothing negative about those requirements in and of themselves. They’re exactly why so many here love the A4. Just as one shouldn’t go off about how “the filters are bad” when filters are an inherently subjective thing, it doesn’t make sense to frame the A4’s steep learning curve and modulation-heavy workflow as a negative thing. Maybe it’s not for you. That’s cool. Maybe it is for others. That’s cool, too.
Choosing every day to accept that and move on is what keeps us from being Gearspace.
