Nothing wrong with sticking to the OG DN. It’s a fabulous instrument. Get familiar with the sequencer and the so called Elektron workflow. Learn some good amount of FM. Do some nice tracks. And never hesitate to share some nice sounds in the one and only current sounds™ thread over here:
Thanks. Good advice. I already kind of knew that I should really get to know the DN1, before spending more money.
You can trig all 128 sounds. Transpose the pool, not the keyboard.
You mean to set a different start point for the pool in the multi map setting, right?
E25 is lovely… not gonna sell…
I think of it a bit differently. Arguably the OG Digitakt [sic] has 16 tracks and only 8 voices - a terrible ratio! But since those other eight tracks are locked to midi, we thought of it as a great feature to control external gear.
I feel the same is true for the Digitone II: you can think of it as having around 8-10 tracks with 16 voices in total - with polyphony on those tracks that need it - and then you get another 6-8 midi tracks as an added value. Sure, you can use it as a 16-track monophonic synth and it’s good that it has that flexibility over the OG Digitakt where those midi tracks are always fixed to midi.
I’ll keep my original DN just because I don’t have the money to buy the new one
anyway its an amazing machine
Hey,
Some tracks produced with 2 Digitone and an Analog Heat +FX
I have the feeling that 2 OG DN is a better live setup than one DNII. I think the DNII UI is a regression compared to the OG. Having 4 pages of parameters under one syn button seems to be a lot less fluid. Losing the 4 bottom corner buttons to select track is also a real drawback for me. For me Digitone is an FM focused synth so I don’t have many interests into Wavetone and Swarmer. FM Drum seems great but I don’t use a lot of drums in my music and the OG FM engine is already fine for the kind of drums I like.
So I think I will buy again a second Digitone and enjoy 16 tracks of FM goodness with a great and focused workflow
I have the feeling that DNII is a great machine, but not what I expected from the successor of OG DN. I would have loved if it had keep the original FM engine but pushed furthermore instead of a machine paradigm.
I still love the OG Tone but i‘m a bit sad that it got not much love from electron over time. Much less than DT or even Syntakt at this point. Something like euclidian mode or kits etc should have made it to the OG (as well) imo.
Well, of that‘s what’s limiting you, consider getting a second DN1. That gives you two extra outputs, 16 voices, plus an extra chorus, delay, and reverb.
I just bought one yesterday for 320 plus postage, but I guess they‘ll be getting even cheaper over the next weeks.
…u mean 8 tracks, not 16 right?
Oh yes I was talking about polyphony, 16 voices (same as DNII). And an advantage I see with 2 OG is the fact that you have 2 independant groups of ctrl all.
Lots of options…It all depends on the sonic palette you want to achieve…FM sounds like FM and imo I don’t need that vibe all over the place with a groovebox concept…If I want more colors I will go for sampling or some different method…physical modeling…mpe stuff…so for 300-400 Euro OG DN you have everything you need to take the FM-Journey…and yes DNII is for shure a good update for people having fun with FM synthesis alone.
With DN OG you keep old Overbridge thats compatible to older OS Macs PC… consider to invest 1000Euro + time and effort to upgrade you system with DAW & Plugins…one of the downsides to bring out overbridge after the release of the hardware.
Wow that’s really cheap. Crazy price.
I’d use it more like hosting two patterns in one: trigs 1-4 and 9-12 as part 1, trigs 5-8 and 13-16 as part 2. Upper row being drums, lower row being melodics. Then I’d map faders to volumes of each track and knobs to a macro of each track. This way, I’d have everything I need to transition between various states of a track, maybe even a set. Without having to keep extra stuff in mind like I have with this setup on ST, where certain tracks can only do certain things and you have to assign tracks in a way that isn’t ideal. Eight tracks is usually the sweet spot for me, but ST only has 12 and those limits. So I still need other gear and things get complicated with cables etc. That’s the main appeal of DN II for me: having it all in one box.
However, you then have to feed all of that stuff out through two stereo outputs, which is a deal breaker for me right now. Because I like to assign some performance effects in Ableton to two groups (drums and melodics). This might change when OB comes, but send FX on DN still complicate things. And currently, Ableton doesn’t allow for 16 individual tracks over USB. So I’d probably have to set up one of these FX groups within DN II via selective control all for now.
I’d also make another DN II template where I’d make four tracks the MIDI track, like you’ve mentioned. But the biggest appeal right now would be to have it all in one box. You’re bound to DN’s sound palette then of course, which is quite wide, but still has certain limits (like no field recordings/speech samples).
Starting to GAS hard on DN II. But if this
man is sticking with OG, I can do so too:
The digital Compressor in the master page would have been nice…
Well, I guess it’s over by now.
I like the Digitone so much that I’ll get a DN2 at some point in 2025 if they add multi map to it.
There is no substitute for the DNK and there may never be (I would not bet serious money on a DNK2, or is it DN2K?). But someone posted a photo in that thread of a DT2 among Yorke’s onstage gear. Maybe he didn’t want to switch to something that came out in the middle of his tour?