Coming from the MnM to the MD, I’m kind of surprised that each track doesn’t have it’s own delay line on the MD. Does anyone know the reason for this decision? I figure we can find of fake it using the RETRIG functions, but still, it seems a bit still not to be able to have a delay line for the hihats while also having a separate one for a dub snare or something.
Anyone have any suggestions besides routing the tracks to external outputs and FX?
My guess is at the time that was a limitation of the technology.
Keep in mind the MD is oldest of the litter.
As a MnM user the lack of delays per track is a bit of a let down. On the other hand maybe I abuse that feature to much on the MnM. I know my MPC has a this same limitation so I often send a track out to a Strymon El capistan delay.
Would be interested to hear what other have to say. Still waiting on my UW version to show up till then I have just the Mk11. Perhaps the sampling could help if you sampled the Snare delay and all then did it for the high hats to free up the delay for other duties. Not sure if you can sample the internal tracks with Fx and all?
I guess I could figure out a way to resample just the snare with the delay, then load it into a new channel and trigger that when I want the delay. That’s a pretty good idea. Seems a bit of a pain, but whatever.
Among other options, retrigs are indeed one, but there are more. Put a single sound on multiple tracks, some of which are quieter/panned differently to mimic a delay effect. Aiming LFOs at these tracks (and giving them different reverb and filter settings) can make the results cooler than just a delay alone would have made them.
Another is to use a control delay track. Plock trigs there to change the delay settings per hit. This can take a bit of doing, as you might need to plock the send levels on the tracks you want delayed as well to avoid potentially unwanted tape-delay style effects, but with practice it can work nicely.
The MD is indeed older technology but there are workarounds to many of its limitations