There’s a good argument to be made for the OP to really rinse the crap out of the already-owned Digitone in order to make SURE that it is or isn’t going to fit the bill.
Be a shame to lose out on some of its charms because one didn’t think it could do something it actually could. For instance, convincing virtual analog is on the menu with enough time spent on the right settings, or even a sound pack or two will get you there in VA territory more immediately.
One simply adds the Syntakt to the Digitone and enjoys life!
Duh.
This is the way.
FWIW, although I enjoyed the drums on the Syntakt, the synth side left me underwhelmed, so have decided to sell it and just bought a DN. I too listened back to my older DN recordings, and they sound great to my ears. I love the ability to dig deeply into the synth engine and just get creative with melody and harmony. It also drones well.
I might miss the analog drums and FX block of the ST, but I do have an ND2 and the analog filters on my A&H 96
You could probably try looking at one of the several previous threads in which people have already made this comparison for you:
I totally agree with you but I unfortunately have very limited time to make music, and when I sit in front of Ableton, I prefer getting a loop/sound working rather quickly, and recording it via Overbridge. So I know for a fact that DN is really deep and can do wonders if you dedicate the time, but I don’t think it’s working for me due to the complexity of FM synthesis.
That’s why I’m looking for an affordable and analog hybrid solution that can be used in tandem with DAW. Syntakt will either fit the bill or just wont add anything new besides the synth engines and analog sound, that’s why I’m hesitant. Elektron sequencer and Overbridge are too difficulty to pass out on, that’s why I cant find myself going for ASM Hydrasynth or any other digital synth out there.
That’s a bummer as I was more interested in its analog synth aspect
Don’t get me wrong, the analog synths are cool, I guess I just prefer polyphony and more control. My last experiment was to try and emulate a 303 with the dual VCO engine and it did that pretty well. It does sound great, and is a good solution for an all in one box, but maybe I just moved on from that
Syntakt’s Sy-Bits alone is a digital monosynth with two OSCs, Noise, SRR, BRR, two LFOS (going into audio rate) and two Filters, though … Swarm can do realistic strings (see second half of first example below), string machine sounds, brass sounds, electro basses, hoover and so on and so on …
Syntakt Playlist with Industrial, Old School Techno, Hard Techno, Acid, Power Noise, Berlin School, Kosmische Musik Electronica, …
I think this is the key in your story and question. Time limitations.
Have you thought about templating within Digitone?
Give yourself two weeks to gather all the sounds, that you’ve created since you bought DN, that you really like. Save them to the +drive in a clean bank with a good tag structure. Then proceed to sound design the rest of the two weeks to sound design sounds from types that you tend to use often. Save those as well. Until you have about 128 sounds.
Then start a new project and load all those sounds into the sound pool. Then give yourself another two weeks to create loops with the sounds in sound pool. You can easily sound lock them to get a lot of out a single track. (You could even go as far as using the midimapping functionality for this). Would even suggest setting a timer for this (half an hour per loop). Of course you can still easily load sounds into a track from the sound browser as well. But the sound pool will help in speeding things up and getting more out of a single track quite fast.
This way you’ll improve the speed of your workflow on DN and practice at the same time. And you’ll have a bunch of loops that you can use in the future if you have limited time and feel uninspired.
Just an idea :).
Syntakt is really great and quick to create with but as with all things it also takes time to really get the most out of it to make it sound less vanilla for example. Is that worth your time ? And is it worth it to ditch the time you spend with DN so far ?
The syntakt vs digitone discussion is a bit moot imho. Both are great and have the possibility to create great sounds and entire tracks. Syntakt is definitely quicker to get ideas/sketches down versus an unprepared Digitone though that’s for sure. 
This is a great suggestion Dave, thank you so much! I think I might see where this leads to before selling/buying new stuff. Much appreciated
Too busy jamming to make a real reply…
Edit:
My real reply is to not sleep on the Digitone’s presets. Choose a role for each of its tracks and be consistent with them. I normally go with a pad, a chord stab, an arp and a lead. For my setup, I fill the rest with Syntakt or XO and soft synths in Ableton.
You don’t sell your Elektrons cause once you sell it Elektron will release an update the day after.
You think it wont happen cause you’ve been waiting so long already but it will and you’ll be like…
I have Digitone, Syntakt and A4, problem solved.
Money solves such problems for sure
I have seen this solution popup here and there but as I’m using the ST in sync/ conjunction with my DT the retrokit isn’t really viable right? Would be sweet if I’m wrong about this…
Why wouldn’t it work?
I thought the retrokit required a sort of midi loop back (like feeding the out of the ST back into the in of the ST)
I don’t believe that to be necessary.
That was just common usage. Per my understanding, the retrokits was just manipulating the midi messages to take poly midi notes and spilt them across 8 midi channels.
I think there might be an editor you could use to alter how that works to split it across all 12 if you want, but I think just polying up the 8 digital channels might already be a bold experiment
Edit: tho…if you’re using Overbridge/Ableton, there’s an existing M4L device that you could set up to do the same thing with more hands on control of how it works.
You could even set up macros to tweak the parameters as though its a singular voice if you want
