Elektron Digitone II

[serge]

I suffer from GAS all the time, but Digitone II hasn't triggered it for me yet. On the one side, OG does like 1/5th of what II is capable of, but on the other side - it introduces new tricks and with it, the complexity/overhead which I'm not sure I'm interested in. The OG's simplicity as a dedicated FM synth is it's appeal for me. For a sound designer and/or someone who is looking for a jack of many trades box, this may be a good choice. But if you're looking for rapid track production and don't want to get stuck, OG might be more practical. It just feels more menu-divey, less immediate, more diluted. I'm also biased since having syntakt, A4MK2s, RYTM2 and looking at DN as an FM synth, I don't really need the new modes. I would have preferred to see DN be a deeper/more capable FM synth, i.e. expand to 4 OPs, add Euclidean, more voices. Time will tell - I might cave in one day; just not yet.

[Constructed Identity]

I suffer from GAS all the time, but Digitone II hasn't triggered it for me yet. On the one side, OG does like 1/5th of what II is capable of, but on the other side - it introduces new tricks and with it, the complexity/overhead which I'm not sure I'm interested in. The OG's simplicity as a dedicated FM synth is it's appeal for me. For a sound designer and/or someone who is looking for a jack of many trades box, this may be a good choice. But if you're looking for rapid track production and don't want to get stuck, OG might be more practical. It just feels more menu-divey, less immediate, more diluted. I'm also biased since having syntakt, A4MK2s, RYTM2 and looking at DN as an FM synth, I don't really need the new modes. I would have preferred to see DN be a deeper/more capable FM synth, i.e. expand to 4 OPs, add Euclidean, more voices. Time will tell - I might cave in one day; just not yet.

Yea, they could definitely have added more operators and made it a more dedicated FM synth. It competes with the Syntakt now with the added machines, but in this age of rampant GAS I don't think it will hurt sales.

[serge]

Yea, they could definitely have added more operators and made it a more dedicated FM synth. It competes with the Syntakt now with the added machines, but in this age of rampant GAS I don't think it will hurt sales.

For sure. It's probably a good fit for someone who doesn't yet have Syntakt yet. For the non-FM sounds, for me Syntakt offers more with its 4 analog voices.

[Milkman]

Lmao I grabbed the Digitone2 2 months ahead of my original plan. I understand my country may experience some major import issues soon and prices may go insane.... so I used this as justification to get it this year instead of next.

Im 4 days in, and I loooooove the DN2. Its everything I hoped it would be (the FM synthesis it does is fabulous and it can do drum/perc sounds that easily rival that of ST), it has the expanded sequencer and tweaked, more efficient workflow for trig/note timings and etc, and it brought me the DN arpeggiator which is immediately my favorite arp I think ever.

Problems: there are some bugs, lol. 1 of my projects, containing 8 tracks of sequencer data, killed itself and will no longer play. Play just doesnt work, inside or outside of a DAW, in any mode, any MIDI config. Im sending that project to elektron for analysis.

DN2 also froze *during the saving* of that project, temporarily resetting all sounds to INIT sounds and wiping all sequencer data. After 2 resets, the sequencer data actually came back but it still wont play. All other projects and stock patterns play fine, in or out of a DAW. Overbridge does not work for DN2 yet, and since my Syntakt is using that at the same time, this may be introducing some bugginess.