Elektron Digitakt

It’s no secret that we’re big fans of Elektron gear here at FM. Their Analog RYTM remains arguably our favourite drum machine on the market and just last issue their Analog Heat effects processor picked up a Platinum Award in our reviews section. Naturally, the news of an incoming drum machine has got us all a flutter.

Digitakt is something of a change for the Swedish brand, who have spent the past few years focusing on their Analog range. It’s an all digital drum machine-come-sampler featuring eight internal audio tracks and eight dedicated MIDI tracks. Each track has its own multimode filter and an assignable LFO for shaping sounds. There’s built-in delay and reverb effects too, along with 64MB sample memory with an additional 1GB +Drive storage.

As with all of Elektron’s recent efforts, the Digitakt will be compatible with the company’s Overbridge software, which allows the hardware to integrate tightly with a DAW and function as a VST/AU plug-in. Hardware-wise, the Digitakt is housed in a chassis very similar to the Analog Heat, complete with the same sturdy-feeling controls and parameter screen. Around the back there’s a pair of balanced jack outputs and a pair of jack ins – the latter of which we assume will facilitate sampling and processing external sounds.

That’s all we know for now; the Digitakt is currently only in prototype form, so we don’t have a full picture of how it will sound, and there are still a ton of sequencing features yet to be revealed. As for a price, there’s no official word there yet either, but since it relies on digital rather than analogue innards, we’re hoping Elektron can bring it in for considerably less than its Analog counterparts.