Yes even a cheap second hand rm1x has an incredible sequencer compared to any of the elektron boxes. [/quote]
Hmmā¦Iāve had an RM1x and have an RS7000 (although Iām getting rid of it for space reasons).
Theyāre better sequencers for some applications - itās easy to do polyphony on, real-time controller recording and so on. but if you donāt like what you played then your options are a) erase it and play it again or b) go through it line-by-line in an edit list. You canāt easily edit the sequence in a non-linear fashion the way you can with p-locks, and you certainly canāt copy and paste individual trigs around or nudge them back and forth easily while the sequence is still playing. On the plus side you do get access to grid groove, which is like a swing processor on steroids; on the minus side thereās no way (on the RS7000) to integrate the sampling process with the sequencer. That was what sold me on the OT and what is still its most powerful feature; sampling is just another operation, no different from playing back a note. No other machine offers this degree of control.
I would quite like to get an RM1x again, as theyāre built really well the interface is lovely, and the soundset & FX are quite good for a ROMpler. The RS700ā¦admire it, never fell in love with it. Itās quite a bit more powerful (many more filter types, better FX, somewhat programmable LFO, some sequencer workflow improvements, plus itās a sampler), but the sonic upside is let down by the extremely boring voice architecture, and it ends up feeling like 3 different machines crammed into a single box, and thereās no way to zap the factory presets. Also itās huge. I mean, physically alrge, you could fit 3 Elektron boxes inside it.
I do wish Yamaha would revisit the concept. If they took their AN1x VA engine and/or their DX FM engine and put them inside the R* sequencers theyād be off to a good start; the AWM sample playback system sounds OK but the thing desperately needs multiple LFOs, multiple envelopes, and a modulation matrix of some sort. But mainly they need to integrate it properly; it was always baffling to me how they could have advanced sequencer stuff like grid groove but at the same time have a really boring unprogrammable arpeggiator, or how they could have MIDI delay and Harmonizer functions but no way to control voice allocation or constrain the output to a particular musical scale. Sadly Yamaha does not appear to have any interest in making new electronic instruments nowadays, all they had at NAMM were mixers and acoustic instruments and some MIDI controllers. This is especially perplexing consider that they licensed Stephen Kayās KARMA system(as seen in some Korg gear), which would have complemented their existing hardware sequencers very well.
Yes, and I have to say that those machines (RS7000/RM1X) were built at the end of the 90ās (for the RM1X), and in 2000 (RS7000). So, whatās the problem with electron sequencers? Why such an obsolete conception? They could take Yamaha as an example, and even do better if they want. But do they want to built real sequencers, or just toys for young children?
Simplicity never becomes obsolete 
You can certainly do more with the Yamaha sequencers; the RS7000 is at least as powerful as a tracker and if you donāt mind resampling the limited voice architecture isnāt a problem. Indeed, I sometimes wish I could take the FX chips from the RS7000 and pop them into one of the Elektron boxes; the OTās effects are somewhat limited. But sampling, sequencing, editing and housekeeping are all very separate tasks on the RS (and RM1x, except for sampling), which is why you have that big hairy button array withā¦
[ul]
[li]7 operating modes in 4 groups[/li]
[li]38 sub modes in 12 groups[/li]
[li]36 housekeeping options in the āJobā menu[/li]
[/ul]
ā¦and many of those jobs are macros designed to relieve the user of the endless encoder-twiddling required to do things like making a sushi drum roll or adjust track lengths.
All that power comes at the price of less maneuverability and flexibility. Itās like a big commercial truck - you can pull an enormous amount of weight, but turning and so on is slow and difficult, plus managing all that engine power means using an 18-speed gearbox. As VennDiagram says, this means you have to do a lot of stopping and starting, and after a while you might reasonably think it would be easier to just get a copy of Reason or Ableton if you are going to spend so much time working on the screen.
A machine like the Octatrack (since weāre talking about general-purpose sequencing here) is more like a a small pickup truck or van; of course you canāt fit as much in the cargo area, you canāt manage as many tracks, you have a relatively limited number of gearing choices, etc. But you can move it around very easily and get a lot of things done in the time it takes the RS7000 to start the engine and get onto the road.
Of course I miss things like having a big number of different styles and being able to pick different patterns from a library of tracks - a great thing on a groovebox (also from Roland etc.) is to grab a kick and snare drum from one pattern, pull in a hihat from a completely different pattern, make some changes to the sound, get a bassline and chord progression from a third and 4th pattern and wow, you have a nice complex arrangement going with some very nicely polished MIDI patterns. But if youāre making stuff from scratch, everything gets a lot slower and you end up doing an awful lot of button-pushing.
I suspect that this is one reason many people like pairing Elektron gear with an MPC1000 running JJOS - they get access to a straightforward linear MIDI sequencer with ?32 tracks and a bunch of extra sample voices, but with much less operating overhead and much less space on the desk.
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