I’ve probably said enough previously about the lack of velocity-sensitive keys on Elektron’s boxes. The Digitone has the same wonderfully tactile panel controls as the other new generation Elektron instruments, with the big clicky buttons that make you feel important. I bought this gadget to power my Zoom field recorder, but it also works with Elektron gear and other bits of my kit like my 0-Coast synth and gave me three to four hours at a time of garden-based noodling. Happily the Digitone also worked with my secret weapon: a portable UPS/charger which has a DC output as well as the usual USB. MIDI is catered for impeccably with full-sized In, Out and Thru, or can transmit via the USB connection that’s also there for the very overdue Overbridge computer link. The rear panels are the same, with stereo in, out and headphones on quarter-inch jacks. These buttons exhibit a rare use of colour by Elektron, visually differentiating ’tone from ’takt, and making an already desirable form factor, well, adorable. The only significant physical difference between the Digitone and the Digitakt is that the 16 trig buttons have been squeezed horizontally to make room for dedicated track selectors. If this sounds conceptually like an FM version of Elektron’s Analog Four you’re close, although the Digitone is all digital and incarnated into the same body and price range as the Digitakt performance sampler (reviewed last September). But all this would be missing out on half of what the Digitone has to offer the real fun is to be had working directly with it hands-on, building multitrack patterns and performances with the internal sequencer.
Overbridge will also give you remote control, recall and automation of the whole machine via a plug-in. You could treat it as a sound module that - when Overbridge arrives - will offer discrete outputs for each synth track over USB. So what exactly is the Digitone all about? Fundamentally it’s an FM synth workstation, offering four-part multi-timbrality with eight voices.
I should have known better, I love these types of sounds looking through my DAW projects from the last 15 years I’ve put FM8 in nearly every one in spite of myself. Not a lifeless electric piano, half-assed flute or lazy bell to be heard, just a gorgeous wash of crystalline synth beauty, warm clarity, and solid low end that goes down forever. Oh mummy a couple of presets in and I was all beardy grin. Maybe it’s because I started my journey into synths and audio production in the early ’90s, when every studio seemed to have a dusty DX7 standing against a wall, as past-it as rolled-up jacket sleeves.īut then at Superbooth I wandered onto Elektron’s booth and braved the communal demo headphones to check out what all the fuss is about.
A little introspection revealed an ugly truth I’d not acknowledged about myself: I’m a bit FM-ist. Despite loving most of what Elektron do, I noticed a curious air of ‘meh’ in my own reaction to the Digitone’s launch. The Digitone marries a four-part FM-synth engine with Elektron’s much lauded performance sequencer. Elektron’s latest compact groove station takes a welcome new look at FM.
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