Elektron Digitone £699
Hot on the heels of the Digitakt comes the FM-based Digitone. Dan ‘JD73’ Goldman takes it on a test drive…
FM is deservedly starting to gain traction again in the synth world following the release of Yamaha’s Reface DX in 2015, the flagship Montage in 2016 (with Yamaha’s latest FM implementation FMX) and more recently, Korg’s Volca FM groovebox (also 2016). At the upper price point (alongside the Montage) there’s also the DSI Prophet 12 which now features four-op linear FM paired with its ‘character’ effects and analogue filters. However, while we have those high- and low-end options, and numerous great secondhand FM synths, we’ve not seen a mid-priced, truly hands-on FM groovebox since Yamaha’s DX200, which launched in 2001 and now commands silly prices second-hand. That is until now, with the launch of the Digitone; an FM-based desktop synth which comes pair with Elektron’s powerful, much-lauded sequencer.
The Digitone will look familiar if you’re au fait with last year’s splendid Digitakt sampling groovebox. The size and shape of the two instruments is near-enough identical, and many of Digitakt’s best features are carried across here, including the external MIDI sequencer, the great parameter lock automation system (P-locks), the fill and variation modes, and the excellent probability-based system of ‘conditional’ sequencer triggers. As before, the hardware build quality feels tank-like solid; essential, as you’ll be giving the buttons and encoders a full workout!
So what’s at the heart of this machine? Well, it’s good old familiar four-operator FM (where waves modulate each other) but with some very welcome new twists and turns. The native FM engine is eight-note polyphonic and has four dedicated tracks (accessed directly via the sweet shop style T1-T4 buttons), along with four MIDI tracks for controlling/ sequencing external MIDI gear (much like the Digitakt). What’s clever here is that you have a user-configurable voice allocation menu (accessed via the Unison button), with several voice allocation, stealing and layer modes, so that you can distribute the eight
voices as you wish between the tracks. With this feature, you can ensure any sound that needs to retain its full polyphony, or long sustain/ release, will always play as intended and have its voices reserved. You can control where any tracks will steal additional polyphony from too. You can also set layering so that multiple sounds can trigger simultaneously from one key. I love that Elektron have also included up to eight-note unison with unison-spread for huge multi-dimensional stereo sounds. A whole bag of great sounds and patterns are featured onboard too. In fact, on startup, I spent a while just exploring the brilliant, wide-ranging presets and seeing how they were built on screen. This revealed much about the genius of this machine, how versatile it is sonically and how hands-on Elektron have made their implementation of FM. FM has a bad rep for being complex, but the Digitone feels just as accessible as any other hands-on synth. To quote FM Synthesis inventor, John Chowning, ‘It lets the user intuitively explore this re-formable, shapeable ball of stuff, then put that through the normal processes of synthesis’.
As with the Digitakt, Elektron have split the sound engine up into easily digestible menus that use clear, responsive graphics. The six buttons under the encoders navigate to the main sound design areas. Using the turquoise function button gives these buttons secondary access to the effects and setup menus too. It’s easy enough to navigate despite the many parameters on offer. The first button, TRIG, deals with sequencer functions and this is where you set the length of your trigs (events) along with trig conditions (probability-controlled events). The secondary ‘function’ menu lets you set key scaling, filter tracking and allocate which four parameters are mapped to an external controller’s mod and pitch wheels.
Next there are three pages of synth engine controls where you really get stuck into the most important sound shaping. The SYN1 button takes you to the main synth page. Here you have level control for the selected synth track along with an algorithm selector which allows you to connect the operators (oscillators) in
Good old familiar fouroperator FM… with some very welcome new twists