It would be insane to release a Syntakt II after only two years. Not happening.
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Mind-bending idea: what if the new Rust platform could run on the Syntakt? And the reason why it’s been over a year since any updates on it is because they’ve written a new firmware from the ground up in Rust to run on the Syntakt?
Did anyone check and compare the components of the respective PCBs, like the CPU etc to see if they’re largely the same on ST and DT2, or if they’re completely different? If they’re the same, then in theory they might be able to get Syntakt on the new platform and release a whole slew of goodies in the next few years.
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I agree with this. Personally, if they added polyphony, increased the total voice count to something like 32 and added a machine that had two pages of more complex synthesis plus the DT II features, I’d gladly pay for a ST II.
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I think they did.
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What’s that thing doing? Perhaps that’s related to sample stretching or other sample-specific needs and the baseline Rust platform could still run on the Coldfire CPU. I’m talking out of my hat.
Was about to point this out.
Th ST is much more powerful than the OG DT, and likely almost as powerful as the DT2 (or perhaps differently powerful is a better way to describe it).
The real constraint of the ST is the physical UI: fewer buttons, fewer LEDs. That means different keystrokes, and perhaps more menu diving to achieve things. The page LED problem might be something that can be worked around (I proposed a method in the ST feature request thread).
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In what way you mean? The quote above says they’re running identical CPUs.
The SHARC is a DSP. Could be used for all kinds of things. My guess would be at least the effects engines, the compressor, and the filters, but who knows how they balance processing between the SHARC and the Coldfire. (The developer in me would love to see their code base and learn about their software architecture.)
So you agree it’s theoretically possible that Syntakt could run their new Rust platform? If so, we can certainly expect more longevity of the Syntakt.
imagine the tears if they did mkIII of the trinity now. just with 8 pages
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The ST has 2 of them, plus 2 smaller DSPs. The DT2 has 1 Coldfire and 1 SHARC DSP. While the STs DSPs are not as powerful the DT2’s, the second Coldfire of the ST is pretty hefty. For reference, the original DT only has one Coldfire, and I think the same goes for the Digitone.
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The short answer is yes, but… as a software dev for over 30 years I have to say that the way the words Rust and Platform (and various other concepts) are being used in this thread are imprecise and threaten to get into silly territory where weird arguments start. So probably wise to just leave it at “yes”.
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My hope is that if they can’t add 128 step patterns through a firmware update, maybe there could be some kind of middle ground where two patterns could be linked (I’m not describing song mode or pattern chaining) in a way where all parameters are shared between patterns. The two patterns would be summed up to one pattern, so you would lose one pattern slot to accomplish this. I have no idea if that’s feasible, but it seems like a reasonable way to bring eight bars to the syntakt.
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They could have an inverted arrangement for pages 5-8 or maybe the LEDs could be blinking in a specific way.
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When you go into various ST menus, there sure are a lot of empty boxes that don’t currently do anything. To me that suggests they intend to add on more features at some point…?
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I think what we’ll be finding out soon is either that the 1st gen takt/tone trio will be bumped up to at least align with some of the better features incorporated in Digitakt II, or that they will be confined to what they are now - 64 steps/old UI.
For me, incorporating a 128-step sequencer on the 1st gen takt/tone trio will have a bit of impact on their 2nd gen counterparts, but the goodwill that Elektron will gain from that might be worth it. What I think will hurt Syntakt II is incorporation of polyphony in Syntakt, but Elektron has been kind of generous as a number of contributor in this forum say.
For Elektron, it might not be a question of whether Syntakt can handle the killer updgrade, but rather can Syntakt II outshine such an update that patrons would be willing to part with their OG Syntakt (or not) and get the new one.
Yes, highlight for pages 1-4, no light for pages 5-8, and active page blinking. Better with colors !
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The page button has RGB, so that could potentially also be used to denote if it’s page 1-4 or page 5-8 is playing.
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Ah, that’s just because of my own ignorance. 
Feel free to introduce the correct terminology and I’ll happily adapt to it. 
My understanding is that they’ve written a new real-time OS in Rust as the programming language - or perhaps more likely they took an existing Rust-based RTOS and adapted it - and this is what I mean with their new “platform”: the OS that DT2 runs on plus any relevant code libraries that Elektron wrote on top of it with the intention of reusing them across all of their future products.
I’d assume that this was a pretty massive investment for a relatively small development team. They’ve probably written things in a way that makes for easier reuse of slightly different hardware configurations within the same general “family” of hardware, so some form of hardware abstraction for their libraries. So you can imagine a future Digitone 2 that obviously might need slightly different DSPs for other forms of processing than a sampler would, but with the same overall hardware architecture. Their new platform would then run comfortably on that too.
So the question here is if this new OS/platform could also run on some of the existing products too, and if the Syntakt is one of those products. The first prerequisite, I assume, is that the hardware architecture is at least reasonably comparable and capable. Otherwise it’s pointless to even think about it. Assuming yes on that, it’s might be more of a business decision: do they want to rewrite, test, and deploy updated firmware on legacy products to bring them on to their new platform/OS to Syntakt or would that cost them more time than writing some of the functions and features in parallel in the legacy OS/platform that Syntakt currently runs on?
I guess it depends on how long they are planning on developing features for Syntakt too. If, say, they plan to support it with new features for 3-4 years to come, maybe it’s worth to bring the new platform/OS on to it and benefit from lots of reused features already written for the DT2. Or maybe they plan on releasing a Digitone 2 kind of device within the next 2 years, and then it might make more sense to just keep the Syntakt community happy enough with some nuggets of new features for a couple of more years before phasing it out. After all, Syntakt was the last product to launch before the new platform rolled out, and so it was also the most mature product on that legacy platform. Expecting 6-7 years of feature updates like Digitakt received may be wishful thinking because why would then devote so much time on a legacy platform now that they have a new one?
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