Elektron Digitakt II Review: The Most Versatile Sampler and Sequencer Leave a comment

The unique Digitakt sampler and sequencer, regardless of being seven years previous, stays an extremely succesful machine beloved by many within the music world. So how does the newest mannequin, which seems to be almost an identical, maintain as much as the fan favourite?

Underneath the hood, the Digitakt II is a big improve in nearly each means. Sadly, it additionally comes with a big worth improve to $999, from $799. With used Digitakts going for as little as $400, the selection between the 2 isn’t as clear reduce as you’d anticipate.

I spent just a few weeks placing the newest Digitakt by means of its paces and evaluating it to the older mannequin, and finally realized the brand new model might be not well worth the improve for my (and lots of others’) functions. That mentioned, when you’re an influence person who all the time desires to strive the newest and best, it is a implausible piece of substances.

Limitless Potentialities

Bodily, the variations between the primary Elektron Digitakt and the brand new Digitakt II are extraordinarily refined. The monochrome display is white as an alternative of yellow. The instrument particular labels below the keys are gone, there are a few new buttons, and a few labels have modified. In any other case the 2 are almost indistinguishable.

I can’t probably cowl each function of the unique Digitakt. In truth, I’m going to must gloss over even a few of the modifications to the most recent mannequin. It’s an extremely wealthy machine that may take tens of 1000’s of phrases to comprehensively clarify. As an alternative I’ll be specializing in an important options and modifications.

If there have been two main strikes in opposition to the unique Digitakt it was that it solely dealt with mono samples, and storage was fairly paltry, even by 2017 requirements. Personally, I did not discover the 64 MB of RAM (equaling 14 minutes of mono samples) per challenge terribly restrictive, however the 1 GB of drive storage did result in much more time wasted actively managing samples. By rising the RAM to 400 MB (72 minutes of mono or 36 minutes of stereo samples) and the drive to twenty GB on the brand new mannequin, the storage problem is basically solved.

Whereas having assist for stereo samples is good, I truly discover the elevated storage to be the principle new function I really like. A part of that’s all the way down to how I primarily use the Digitakt II, which is as a drum machine. Stereo is simply much less of a necessity while you’re primarily working with percussion.

The Digitakt II is greater than able to dealing with melodic elements, and it even comes preloaded with single cycle waveforms so you possibly can play it like a synth. However as a result of the 16 sequencer tracks are monophonic, enjoying chords requires both utilizing a number of tracks and sequencing the notes individually, or simply sampling chords. And regardless that there are 5 completely different “Machines” (Elektron’s time period for the way a pattern is dealt with, e.g. one-shot, stretch, repitch, and many others.) your outcomes will fluctuate enormously relying on the supply materials.