The sound of the Analog Four

Elektron Gear Analog Keys/Four
#1

I want to start a discussion over here in the hope that an Elektron representative can chime in with some commentary on the sound of the A4?

The oscillators and filters seem to be fairly unique in their behaviour. So if everything is designed from the ground up? What is the ethos behind the design?

My own thoughts on the characteristics of the A4 is that it can sound more organic and natural than some other analogs. The osc’s + filters lend themselves well to being over-driven and distorted while still sounding fairly warm.

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Raw oscillator sound
#2

Man, I would love to see a short documentary on the design of all of the Elektron machines…how they got to the finished product on each one. Not realistic I suppose, as they’d be revealing a bit of the Elektron design magic, but I’d love too something about how they create something from the ground up. And I agree, when I really get a patch dialed in on the A4 with its internal effects, the sound can be stunning.

#3

It does take a little time to get to grips with, but can indeed provide rich and unique sounds. One thing I’m finding is that when I get something I like the performance macros are a key tool in limiting the modulation to a usable range - otherwise it’s too easy to tweak away and lose what you had.

#4

Yeah an insight would be nice but not essential. It is what it is. I can work with it.

#5

On the elektron-user.com Forum was a nice explanation how the A4 Oscillator are behaving. Their speciality is, that they change the waveform when you change the octaves. In order to control this behaviour you can use one of the filter to waveshape the waveform to your needs. I am not sure, but my guess is that this was a design decision.

#6

Although I can get nice sounds outof it, I still don’t understand some of the “design descisions”.
Why make waveforms thinner in pulsewidth when you are lower in the octaves? Especially when you have control over the pulsewidth.
Other one is the ladder filter. Why does it stop resonating at 50% cutoff? And it drops in volume dramatically making it very hard to make filter sweeps with the same overall volume. Making deep basstones is also very hard this way.

#7

The post on EU shows similarities with the MM wave shapes, suggesting some intentional design in how the oscillators behave.

Maybe the A4 is taking inspiration from the 303 which also supposedly had slightly different wave shapes (the pulse I think), as it was designed to imitate a bass guitar. Which could explain why the shape changes over the octaves like an acoustic instrument. Sounds more organic and not too harsh when overdriven. The A4 can imitate a bass guitar better than any synth I have heard.

#8

Found it…the post was from Anselmi:

[quote]"since day 1 I found the A4 very different sounding to other analog synths I own and owned with wide open filters the oscillators got a very characteristic flavor that vary from octave to octave. I specially found the saw wave got thinner and “grainy” at the lower range, and the triangle became somewhat “saturated”
this characteristic sound (kinda “nasal”) could be taken as a good thing if you like it, but some users could miss a more “rounded” sound, similar to the classic analog synths we all know and love like a roland SH or a moog one.

So I attached a scope program to see if there is some evidence that support what I hear and also see if I can get close to the round bass tones of this classic synths

This is what I found when looking at the saw wave:

saw.png950×518 9.1 KB

Downward octaves are represented by the number in each picture. A the left of the white line you can see a series of waveforms that not just change their period according with the played octave but also they change their shape. From 1 to 5 you can see how the initially more symmetrical saw change into a spike-like one, making it sound more thin at the lower octaves. Curiously, in octaves 6 the saw splits into 2 peaks that become very separated in octave 7…this adds even more “grain” and less “cream” to the bass end of this waveform

At the right of the white line you can see a direct comparison between the shapes of octave 2 and 5. I stretched octave 2’s waveform to fit the wavelenght of octave 5 in order to make them the same pitch and just see the change in shape. Beyond the picture’s line distortion when stretching it, it’s evident that the waveform shrinks to the left, making it more asymmetrical and spike-like, thus thinner sounding.

As weird as it could be the MnM’s saw wave (in the supersaw machine) is very similar in shape as you can see at the top of this column in green.

Last column shows a little trick that I found to make the A4 saw more symmetrical and full-sounded in the low register: at the top you can see the saw in octave 4, below it you got the same but with filter overdrive = 20…you can see how the wave is becoming thicker (and you can hear it for sure) and at the lower figure you can see a much more classic saw wave when you rise filter 1 resonance to 74 and lower the overdrive to 12, with the cutoff wide open

Then you can use the LP mode of filter 2 to classic filtering…OK, you lost 1 filter but anyway most classic monosynths just got a lonely LPF.

Try this new “oscillator” sound and you can get much closer to an old roland synth…you can add the sub oscillator to make it fuller sounding.

BTW, in this kind of sounds when you’ re looking for just one oscillator and one square sub (typical Roland stuff) it’s better to set your wave in, say, oscillator 1 and then use oscillator 2 for the square sub oscillator (with no main wave in this one) so this way you can set the sub oscillator’s level

Now for the triangle wave, you got a similar behavior in the fact that the waveshape change with the octaves

tri.png906×468 4.99 KB

At the higher ones (1) it’s a triangle but the low octaves shows a heavy distortion of the shape, like as a kind of “windowing” is happening. I found this is kinda nice sounding though and also that if you rise the pwm parameter to 25 you can get another saw-like waveform that increase the sonic palette of the A4

Now try it yourself and tell me if you can got the same kind of round and deep classic bass tones I did with this settings"

[/quote]

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#9

And that´s how it sounds:

[url=“https://soundcloud.com/puls-n/0001-3-audio-1”]
[ltr]https://soundcloud.com/puls-n/0001-3-audio-1[/ltr]
[url=“https://soundcloud.com/puls-n/0001-3-audio-1”]

Short Sawtooth Test on Elektron A4. Testcase: first Osc 1 with saw, level to 95, played from C-5 to C+5. Filter setting: filter 1 set to Cutoff 127, Reso: 74, Overdrive to 12 (to waveshape the Osc 1 waveform, which is oddly changing its waveshape from octave to octave) That´s how the sawtooth stays a sawtooth. Filter 1 is now almost lost as filter…but there is still filter 2. Filter 2 settings: Cutoff 63, Reso 0, Type LP2 (12db) Keytrack 0, Envelope Filter Depth 63 (i wanted to have the envelope opening the filter). Played again a few C notes from low to high. Then Filter 2 cutoff to 0 and again a few notes. voila, nice and round. The trick is here to use filter 1 and it´s overdrive as a waveshaper for the Oscillator. Oh and i added from time to time also Subosc, 1 octave below, from Oscillator 2, with Level 95 too. Makes it even rounder

Please note, that the Soundcloud MP3 compression adds some nasty clicky digital artifacts to the sound, so feel free to download the .wav version.

#10

The Transistor Pulse waveform changes its shape a bit with the pitch. (Not the octave per se, but the pitch.) If it gets thinner or broader depends on your PW setting and your definition of pulse width - there are always two sides to it. :slight_smile:

The other three oscillator waveforms generally have the same shape regardless of pitch, except at the very extremes.

(This applies to the pure oscillator waveforms. Other things are seen at the output jacks since there’s a lot of filtering going on in between.)

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#11

Totally don’t dig the sound of the A4, not an exciting analog. Where’s the fm…bummer. I expected so much more. Use it strictly as a companion to my eurorack now.

#12

No FM, but with AM and the other features you can work some unique sounds.

#13

Do you mean not exciting in terms of features or?
Have you tried using the neighbor machines? You get a lowpass at the top plus 4 variable filters. That alone can get pretty interesting. Yeah, if you have a large modular you could do that too, but the amount of patching is significantly higher. Fixed(ish) architecture to a modular is apples and oranges, I think.
I’ve been able to get some really nice moving and sequenced formants, just because it’s so quick to try out ideas (save and load sounds!) . Synton Syrinx, eat your heart out! :slight_smile: Not really, but it’s more fun to do formants on the analog4 than the fs1r. :imp:

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#14

You can do FM on the A4.
The LFO’s go up to 2k, well up into the audio range, and can be applied to the pitch of the oscillators.

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#15

You can do FM on the A4.
The LFO’s go up to 2k, well up into the audio range, and can be applied to the pitch of the oscillators.[/quote]
Yes, cranking that multiplier right up and messing with the speed parameter can result in some really exciting sounds.
The addition of a keyboard tracking source (mapping to pitch or filter frequency) would allow for even more authentic FM sounds.
The sound of the A4 is indeed unique. It comes from a combination of integrated circuits (SSM/CoolAudio 2164 quad VCAs), discrete components (ladder filter), and the non-standard topology in which they are arranged (ladder filter into multimode filter, with overdrive in between). There’s nothing else like it.
I’d be interested to learn the secrets of engineering this awesome instrument.

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#16

You can do FM on the A4.
The LFO’s go up to 2k, well up into the audio range, and can be applied to the pitch of the oscillators.[/quote]
Yes, cranking that multiplier right up and messing with the speed parameter can result in some really exciting sounds.
The addition of a keyboard tracking source (mapping to pitch or filter frequency) would allow for even more authentic FM sounds.
The sound of the A4 is indeed unique. It comes from a combination of integrated circuits (SSM/CoolAudio 2164 quad VCAs), discrete components (ladder filter), and the non-standard topology in which they are arranged (ladder filter into multimode filter, with overdrive in between). There’s nothing else like it.
I’d be interested to learn the secrets of engineering this awesome instrument.[/quote]
Indeed, I did not mean that the A4 does exact “traditional” FM, but its own interpretation of FM.
I can get some really “FM - like” sounds out of it, and it gets even more interesting with all the modulation options, like for example putting an envelope on the speed of an LFO which is modulating the pitch of an OSC.
I am glad that the A4 has a unique feature set, it makes it stand out from the rest :slight_smile:

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#17

:+1: :+1: :+1:

#18

I’m so pleased with the sound, it’s beautiful with an incredibly wide tonal range.
I was concerned that a single stereo output and no track EQs would cause mix problems but was amazed by the control the filter section gives you.
The two filters and overdrive all work together as one in a way that I never imagined possible, allowing you to thin and fatten sounds as though you have EQ and a couple of filters, the oscillators’ wave-shaping ability also helps in that department.

The bottom end is just right, I’ve heard a few people complain about it lacking weight in this area but the single stereo out may well have been an issue if Elektron had filled it out more but it’s nice and rich with poise and good control.
The top end is heaven, pure and classy.

There’s nothing I’d change about it.

#19

For bass duties, I cannot use the A4 due to it lacking deep bass. I mainly make dub techno, and the same basslines that shakes the room from the monomachine would not even shake a leaf on a tree when played from the A4.

The only workable workaround I have found is to use filter 2 with resonance cranked up to get a sinewave, and then play the basslines with that. This make the whole synth part of that A4 voice totally useless!

#20

^ You could try using the tri waveform, add some filter distortion and res on filter 2.