Tag: instruments

The Digitakt II Sequencer Has Bigger Brains and Better Memory

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The original Digitakt sampler and sequencer, despite being seven years old, remains an incredibly capable device beloved by many in the music world. So how does the latest model, which looks nearly identical, hold up to the fan favorite?

Under the hood, the Digitakt II is a significant upgrade in almost every way. Unfortunately, it also comes with a significant price increase to $999, from $799. With used Digitakts going for as little as $400, the choice between the two isn’t as clear cut as you’d expect.

I spent a few weeks putting the latest Digitakt through its paces and comparing it to the older model, and ultimately realized the new version is probably not worth the upgrade for my (and many others’) purposes. That said, if you’re a power user who always wants to try the latest and greatest, it’s a fantastic piece of gear.

Photograph: Terrence O’Brien

Endless Possibilities

Physically, the differences between the first Elektron Digitakt and the new Digitakt II are extremely subtle. The monochrome screen is white instead of yellow. The instrument specific labels under the keys are gone, there are a couple of new buttons, and some labels have changed. Otherwise the two are nearly indistinguishable.

I cannot possibly cover every feature of the original Digitakt. In fact, I’m going to have to gloss over even some of the changes to the newest model. It is an incredibly rich machine that would take tens of thousands of words to comprehensively explain. Instead I’ll be focusing on the most important features and changes.

If there were two major strikes against the original Digitakt it was that it only handled mono samples, and storage was pretty paltry, even by 2017 standards. Personally, I didn’t find the 64 MB of RAM (equaling 14 minutes of mono samples) per project terribly restrictive, but the 1 GB of drive storage did lead to a lot more time wasted actively managing samples. By increasing the RAM to 400 MB (72 minutes of mono or 36 minutes of stereo samples) and the drive to 20 GB on the new model, the storage issue is largely solved.

While having support for stereo samples is nice, I actually find the increased storage to be the main new feature I love. Part of that is down to how I primarily use the Digitakt II, which is as a drum machine. Stereo is just less of a necessity when you’re primarily working with percussion.

The Digitakt II is more than capable of handling melodic parts, and it even comes preloaded with single cycle waveforms so you can play it like a synth. But because the 16 sequencer tracks are monophonic, playing chords requires either using multiple tracks and sequencing the notes individually, or just sampling chords. And even though there are five different “Machines” (Elektron’s term for how a sample is handled, e.g. one-shot, stretch, repitch, etc.) your results will vary greatly depending on the source material.

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Terrence O’Brien

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September 6, 2024
It’s Not the Greatest Vocoder, but Moog’s Spectravox Sure Is Fun

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The filter bank is what makes the Spectravox unique in Moog’s lineup of midrange semi-modular instruments. It’s a dynamic 10-band filter bank with high- and low-pass filters, plus eight bandpass filters in between. These can be used to simply shape incoming audio like an elaborate EQ. But the bands can also be shifted around with the aid of an LFO for creating phaser- and wah-like effects. If you really crank stuff it can even give you pseudo-ring modulation. Is spending $599 on a desktop synthesizer a little overkill just to play some funk guitar? Absolutely. But it’s a fun little trick the Spectravox has in its back pocket.

The filter bank can also be used to produce sound all on its own if you connect a midi controller or sequencer with CV (control voltage) output. If you turn up the resonance of the filter and patch the EG (envelope generator) to the carrier input, then connect the pitch output of the controller to the spectral shift and the gate to the trigger input, then you can coax interesting marimba-like tones out of the Spectravox without any additional audio input.

The Synth

Photograph: Terrence O’Brien

Of course part of the requirement for a vocoder is a carrier signal, in this case a synthesizer. The Spectravox includes an incredibly simple but pretty decent-sounding single-oscillator monophonic synth. It has square and sawtooth options, with variable pulse width on the square. There is also a noise source that you can dial in to dirty up the single oscillator, but it goes from nonexistent to overpowering pretty quickly, and I generally just left it off.

The synth can be combined with a keyboard or sequencer which has CV output and is played like any other synth. Or, you can pair it with some external effects to create risers, drones, and other sound effects. Similar to using the Spectravox as a phaser though, while it’s a nice trick, you don’t need to spend $600 to get a basic monophonic synth. This is a nice perk but not necessarily a reason for it to jump to the top of your shopping list.

Where Spectravox starts to get interesting as a synthesizer is when you start combining all of its various elements in slightly unexpected ways. For instance if, instead of vocals you ran a drum loop into the program input, it would impart its rhythmic ebb and flow to the internal synth, or whatever you were feeding into the carrier.

Better Together

Photograph: Terrence O’Brien

I think the Spectravox really shows its versatility when you use it as a middleman between two different sources of audio. For one, a monophonic vocoder can feel a little thin. But if you plug another synth into the carrier, you can sing in gorgeous polyphonic synth chords. If I wanted to get some rich vocoder action going I would just plug my Korg Minilogue XD into the carrier input. And using things like drum loops to add rhythmic interest to other synths or even my guitar was always a blast. In fact, one of my favorite tricks was feeding a drum machine into the program input, my guitar (through an amp sim pedal first) into the carrier, and then feeding the output of the Spectravox through some chorus and reverb. The result is something that doesn’t sound exactly like a synth or exactly like a guitar. I don’t know how often I’d use such a strange effect, but I’m dying to put it to the test on a guitar solo.

It’s this sort of experimentation that makes the Spectravox so compelling and fun. In fact, it’s what keeps me coming back to Moog’s line of desktop semi-modular synths like the Subharmonicon (8/10, WIRED Recommends) and the DFAM. I love the sound of a good Mini Moog as much as anyone else, but these all offer some new experimental take on Moog’s legacy. My one major complaint about the Spectravox is that it is noisy. I had to cut a lot of the high end to get it to be usable on recordings.

If you’re in the market for a vocoder you should probably skip the Spectravox. There are better and cheaper options for just traditional vocoding, like a MicroKorg ($429) or Arturia’s MicroFreak ($359). But if you want something more playful—something that can be a vocoder if you need it to be but is really more of a sonic playground—the Moog Spectravox might well be worth the $599.

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Terrence O’Brien

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August 13, 2024
The Polyend Tracker+ Is a Powerful but Niche Groovebox

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Polyend’s Tracker+ is a significant update to its powerful (if somewhat anachronistic) sample-based groovebox, the Tracker. What made the Tracker so unique, and also confounding, was that it was a tracker (small t), but in hardware form. Trackers were an early form of music-making software that emerged in the late ’80s. They were initially used mainly for video game music but eventually found favor with a certain strain of electronic musicians, most famously Aphex Twin.

They’re very much a product of their time though, designed to work around the limitations of late 20th century personal computers like the Amiga. The new $799 Tracker+ has evolved to take advantage of modern technology, but its interface stays true to its forebears. The best way to describe a tracker is that it’s like composing in Excel. They’re vertically scrolling, spreadsheet-like collections of letters and numbers that can easily scare off a newcomer. But persistence will reveal a shocking amount of flexibility.

The Basics

Let’s get all the specs stuff out of the way first. The Polyend Tracker+ is a 16-track groovebox. Eight of those tracks can support stereo samples, with various methods of playback, and the other eight tracks can either control external devices via MIDI or one of the five built-in virtual synths. Samples can be simple one-shots or loops; you can slice up loops, or even load them into granular and wavetable engines for sample-based synthesis.

All of the tracks are monophonic. So playing a chord will eat up multiple tracks unless you’re using a sample of a chord. But tracks aren’t dedicated to any specific instrument so, you can combine kicks and snares on track one and maybe squeeze your bass in between hi-hats on track two.

The tracks themselves can be up to 128 steps, and each step contains instrument and note data, along with two slots for FX. The “FX” in this case aren’t chorus or reverb but things like chance, micro timing, and rolls. These two effects slots are the key to making your music not sound like it was written in a spreadsheet.

In addition to the increased sample memory, virtual synths, and stereo sampling, the other big upgrade from the original Tracker is support for audio over USB. This means you can connect the Tracker+ to your computer and get 14 stereo audio tracks out straight into your digital audio workstation (DAW). This makes it easy to put the final touches on an arrangement you’ve created on the Tracker+.

In Use

Photograph: Terrance O’Brien

Polyend nearly nailed the hardware with the original Tracker, if you ask me. The Tracker+ introduces some minor tweaks, but it’s mostly the same. It’s lighter and easier to toss in a bag but feels solid enough. The buttons are slightly clicky but have a new soft-touch finish. The large encoder has a bit more resistance, and the screen is brighter.

The grid of 48 pads is the same and remains, at best, usable. If you plan to use the built-in synths, I recommend connecting a MIDI keyboard. The pads are tiny, not velocity-sensitive, and don’t feel particularly natural to play. The quality of the hardware here is important since the interface can feel a bit like doing office work. But the feel of the keys and the resistance of the click wheel are all incredibly satisfying.

Polyend put a lot of thought into the interface to keep things from getting too tedious. There are shortcuts for quickly filling in entire tracks with data. For instance, you can quickly lay down a four-on-the-floor kick pattern with just a few button presses, generate a melody quantized to a specific scale, or randomly tweak the velocity on a hi-hat to give it a more natural feel.

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Terrence O’Brien

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June 21, 2024
Arturia’s AstroLab Puts Over 30 World-Class Virtual Synths in a Luxurious Keyboard

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But perhaps AstroLab’s best trick for finding what you need is playlists and songs. These are grouped presets that you’re able to bounce between with the push of a button. So if you need a quiet pad from an Ensoniq SQ-80 for the verse and a razor-sharp lead from an MS-20 for the chorus, you can group them into a song, which turns the instrument type buttons into direct shortcuts to specific presets. Songs are then further organized into playlists. You just press the arrow buttons below the screen encoder to jump to the next track in your set and load up another batch of presets.

If you can’t find what you need among the factory sounds or any of the countless sound packs available from Arturia, you can always design a patch from scratch in one of the instruments as part of the V Collection. Then you can save it as a preset and load it on the keyboard. Granted, this requires shelling out for V Collection, but it frequently goes on sale, and if you already own Analog Lab Pro, which is included with AstroLab, you get an even steeper discount.

World-Class Soft Synths

I’m halfway into this review, and I haven’t talked about the sound at all. This is partly because, well, it’s Analog Lab. It’s an industry staple and sounds fantastic. If you’re not familiar though, rest assured you’re getting some of the finest emulations of vintage instruments available. When you compare the price to even one of the iconic keyboards it’s recreating, the value is undeniable.

The Rhodes, Wurlitzer, and Hammond B3 compare favorably with what you’d find on a Nord stage keyboard, but for almost half the price. It convincingly delivers that percussive dizzying effect you’d get from an organ running through a Leslie and the smooth chime of a Fender Rhodes.

In addition, you get rather faithful versions of basically unobtainable synth gems like a Moog Modular, a Yamaha CS-80, or a Fairlight CMI II. Not to mention mass-market classics like the Yamaha DX7 and Casio CZ-101. Plus Arturia’s Pigments and Augmented lineup, which marry orchestral, piano, and vocal samples with a robust synth engine. You’ve got access to everything from crunchy lo-fi piano and EDM bass wubs to soaring string pads perfect for scoring a sci-fi thriller.

The only real weak spot is the acoustic pianos. They’re not terrible and have definitely improved over the years, but they still feel a touch thin and flat compared to the real thing. The chances that anyone would complain about them at your next gig, though, are slim to none.

It’s worth noting that this is currently the only way to get Arturia’s Pigments in hardware form. That’s something that gets me personally really excited. I think it’s the best softsynth on the market, and it can easily go toe-to-toe with other giants in the space like Massive and Serum.

Some will speak of things being a VST but built into a MIDI controller derisively. But that feels reductive here. For one thing, this isn’t just some bare-bones digital synth. And the hardware it’s crammed into is luxurious. The semi-weighted keys feel incredible, and they have aftertouch (though sadly not polyphonic). The pitch and mod wheels are solid pieces of aluminum, and the screen, while small, is bright and colorful. There are even some handsome wooden cheeks on the side. This looks and feels like a high-quality piece of gear.

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Terrence O’Brien

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April 9, 2024
The Fender Tone Master Pro Is an All-in-One Guitar Studio

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While enthusiasts are still fussing over tube amps and drooling over effects pedal collections, gigging musicians are in the midst of a digital revolution. Offerings from brands like Kemper, Line 6, Fractal Audio, and Neural DSP all allow musicians to model tube amps digitally, with results that come astonishingly close to the real deal.

These new digital modeling amps are easy to set up, reliable, and much lighter and more compact than previous rigs. These days, the sounds are also remarkable. Unless they’re in the studio, many modern musicians are using digital options for their sounds, and many of those options are making their way onto hit tracks.

Fender has competed in the digital amp space for decades, but its new $1,700 Tone Master Pro, which launched late last year, is the first truly pro-tier option that we’ve seen from the brand in recent memory. It’s also one of the most intuitive I’ve ever laid eyes on. With classic models of iconic amps and effects, a touchscreen, excellent onboard controls, and a shocking amount of digital processing power, it’s essentially a portable guitar studio. It also has a four-channel audio interface and hundreds of microphone modeling and cabinet modeling options that easily compete with the real deal—even in the studio. It’s even pretty awesome for karaoke.

If I were shopping for an all-in-one guitar solution that works both in my bedroom and on stage, especially if I didn’t want to fuss around in menu screens forever, this is the one I’d pick.

Photograph: Parker Hall

The New Black Box

The Tone Master Pro looks nearly identical to most of the other all-in-one amp/pedalboard solutions I’ve seen. Essentially, it’s a black slab that is supposed to sit in front of you while you play, either on the floor or on a desk. A 7-inch touchscreen sits between two silver knobs on the top of the device, flanked at the bottom by 10 pedal switches and associated LED screens. It’s all very clean and modern, easy to hide while you play on stage.

One quirky and familiar thing I love is that Fender included its classic red power light on the back of the device, so you can easily tell it is on like a “normal” Fender amp. The rest of the rear of the Tone Master is a smorgasbord of inputs and outputs the likes of which I’ve never seen on a guitar amp.

There are stereo outputs in both quarter inch and XLR; four separate effects sends and returns (two stereo) for using outboard pedals and effects with the device; two expression pedal outlets; a mic/line and instrument input; as well as a foot switch control, 3.5-mm aux in, headphone output, MIDI in and out, USB-C, and MicroSD. And also, Bluetooth. If you need more, you probably need a mixing board or a patch bay.

Photograph: Parker Hall

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Parker Hall

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April 7, 2024