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 most recent 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 manner. Sadly, it additionally comes with a big value improve to $999, from $799. With used Digitakts going for as little as $400, the selection between the 2 isn’t as clear minimize as you’d anticipate.
I spent a couple of weeks placing the most recent Digitakt via its paces and evaluating it to the older mannequin, and finally realized the brand new model might be not definitely worth the improve for my (and lots of others’) functions. That stated, for those who’re an influence person who all the time desires to attempt the most recent and biggest, it is a unbelievable piece of drugs.
{Photograph}: Terrence O’Brien
Countless Prospects
Bodily, the variations between the primary Elektron Digitakt and the brand new Digitakt II are extraordinarily refined. The monochrome display screen 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 characteristic of the unique Digitakt. Actually, I’m going to should gloss over even among the adjustments to the latest mannequin. It’s an extremely wealthy machine that might take tens of hundreds of phrases to comprehensively clarify. As an alternative I’ll be specializing in an important options and adjustments.
If there have been two main strikes towards 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 mission 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 essentially solved.
Whereas having help for stereo samples is sweet, I truly discover the elevated storage to be the primary new characteristic 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 may play it like a synth. However as a result of the 16 sequencer tracks are monophonic, taking part in chords requires both utilizing a number of tracks and sequencing the notes individually, or simply sampling chords. And regardless that there are 5 totally 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 vastly relying on the supply materials.
