The sound of the A4/AK... like or dislike?

Sure thing man. Here a few posts I’ve made on that topic, maybe some of it will be of use to you.

The tips across all of these posts are basically the same. Have a look.

I’d add to them that the DCOs are quite stable (a little too stable), so you can use the LFOs to introduce movement to the OSC (eg send the tiniest bit of modulation to the OSC freq, or to PWM or Amplitude Modulation). Also, where Moogs or DSI synths have a sound and no matter what you do, you get a variation of that sound, with the A4 you really have to “sculpt” the sound…so the envelopes are quite important as well to get a nice sound, more so than on other synths I find. The A4’s envelopes are super flexible, much more so than on your average analog subtractive synth. Using the LFOs to gently introduce some movement onto the filters is also a way to make the A4 come to life. There’s a setting in the menus where you can turn down the resonance peaks of filter 1 by turning that option off (I believe). I keep that off most of the time and send a little bit of LFO modulation to FilterFreq1 or FilterRes1…also nice: peak filter on filter 2 and use the LFO to introduce a subtle filter sweep, it can really fatten up the sound.

In general you want to turn the dials much more carefully and slower than on your average analog subtractive synth. Somehow the A4 has entire worlds hidden in the spaces between its more extreme settings. Sometimes it can be overwhelming even. This is also true for its effects, in particular the overdrive…to me it seems that subtly different amounts of overdrive make the synths and its parts respond in quite different (sometimes unpredictable) ways.

Lastly, the effects on the A4 are very good for onboard effects. But you have to tweak them a bit to make them add something special. This is really a question of taste, personally I love my A4 for pads and atmospheric chords, so I like to set up long reverb tails and run a little bit of the delay through the reverb as well.

This is also a good thread with lots of good tips from this community, I drew a lot from it:

Hope some of this will help you connect with your A4 more/better, if you have specific questions re sound design on the A4, feel free to ask.

PS: Personally, I found the A4’s presets entirely uninspiring and at times even poor. Just mentioning that in case you’ve been primarily messing with the presets. The A4 wants to be engaged with more intimately :slight_smile:

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