Machinedrum was my gateway to Elektron gear. It was my first drum machine. Initially, I bought it to generate sounds for sampling into a DAW, but I got hooked on sequencing out of the box and that led to trying out the MnM, OT, DNK and M:C. Of all of those the one I kept (and use the most out of all my gear) is the lowly M:C. It’s by far my favorite piece of gear and I just wish it had polyphony. (And Digitone wasn’t for me.)
I’m thinking about moving to the AR (MKI) to replace the MD for a number of reasons, one of them being that I always wanted to have more expressive control than the MD offered (and I tried many things to make up for it) and in the end while I love some of the iconic sounds the MD is capable of, the work needed to get it to sound good in general isn’t trivial. In short, I think its natively digital, plinky sound isn’t for me, and while it’s capable of getting close to many sounds and has sampling, I am constantly tweaking sounds to get them to sound better, when I think I’d rather have something which offers easier-to-reach, warmer and fuzzier sweet spots than the sea of squelches and plonks that is the MD.
As I mentioned I want more expressiveness too. I want to be able to feel like I have more tactile control over drum sounds, instead of the digital random mayhem the Machinedrum is so good at (and I’ve enjoyed). AR seems like the opposite of that with velocity modulation and scene morphing. Much less unpredictability and submission to the machine.
The power of the MD is hard to let go of. And the MCL I just bought for it makes it a lot more useful and fun and even more of a jack of all trades. And half the tracks on AR is not a minor tradeoff. Seems like with MD+MCL there’s the possibility of basically having Ableton Live in a box. (Or, well, two boxes…)
Another reason I think I might like the AR is it resembles the M:C in many ways and having all the modern sequencer features built in is preferable.
If I buy an AR it would be with the intent of selling the MD after recreating anything I might try to keep (which I’m sad to say isn’t that much after all these years of owning it!) Prices are high right now and I’m not the type to collect gear.
I’m not done researching the AR, but I understand it has some FM machines. Are they comparable to what’s offered on the MD?
Also are the VA capabilities on AR significantly better than what the MD can do now with the X firmware?
Any downsides related to the stuff I care about - sound, expressiveness, sequencing - that I should be aware of?