Elektron Digitone Reviews

Great Module

This synth is really impressive. The sound is unique and fits well in a song. You have also an audio interface with it. After you learn how to use it, you will be obsessed with all these FM sounds. Also it’s not hard to start from scratch and design your own sounds. The onboard effects is good too. I’m using it for bass, plucked and leads.

Amazing device overall

So not long ago I decided it's time to invest in a hobby and bought an used Model:Cycles... Long story short, ended up getting a Digitone as well to do some FM goodness.

And I'm blown by it's sound, ease of use and overall feeling.

It looks slick and It is such a joy to press it's satisfying clicky buttons while hearing amazing sound it produces :D.

Of course 4 tracks \ 8 voices look like limitations if you want it as a standalone box, but with such an amazing sequencer it can be done. From my personal experience I found myself doing full tracks on it alone more often than I expected.

Also I'm coming from an iOS music production ecosystem and the fact I can connect Digitone to my iPad and use Digitone's midi tracks to control my software synths feels really empowering.

My only gripe is that faceplate can be a little missaligned at factory so some buttons can be "sticky" (a.k.a. touching faceplate when returning after being pressed), but that issue was solved easily by myself and a screwdriver.

I'm extremely satisfied with my purchase.

My best synth

The best synth which I've tried

Fantastic

All the other reviews cover features and such. I will just add that I came to this as a novice and was having fun creating within minutes. An amazing, inspiring device.

FM made easy

Elektron quality always over the top.

This FM jewel got a new approach to FM much easier to handle and to understand. Really fun and with a custom cable the device can be powered with a usb portable battery that make it really fun.

a fantastic machine

I love everything about this little machine: it's sturdy, feels good, looks super pretty, the sound engine is massive, and the effects work great on external signals too (I used its chorus, distortion and delay for guitar and analog synths).

the UI is quite hands-on and very intuitive: in 3 yrs of using it I don't think I have checked the manual... it's just some menu diving on less frequently used options like re-mapping midi channels. Most things just work the way you expect them to, e.g. hold ,,copy'' and push whatever you want to copy (trigger/note, track, synth setting)... The only (slight) pain is switching between views while playing (to alter amount of reverb or attack on the envelope) because they require holding ,,shift'', so either wild fingers streching or taking hand of the keyboard for a short while... Still it's super playable ,,as an instrument'' (i.e. a proper synth, not ,,just a groovebox'').

Then the sequencer, it's fantastic! At first I didn't like the fact there's no step interface (entering notes one-by-one), BUT turned out with copy and transpose it's like impulsetracker.

The FM engine is ace, so clean! It's not entirely true it's 4op because you can stack voices with Unison settings (so effectively it's more like 16op with towers of at most 4 ops?). It's not that easy to make glitchy noises (like on, say, DX27) but it is doable: altering the waveshape, some feedback, offsets et voila, sounds as ugly as you please.

And it seems to be always normalized? I mean there's no ,,too quiet'' problem of less harmonically-riched sounds like when programming the DX.

The only thing which I found disappointing was the arpeggiator can't be set to send notes over MIDI. Even if you play it, there's just the chord being sent...

Oh I forgot: the display is really well contrasted. Even on a very sunny day and looking from an angle, it's still easy to read.

All in all, digitone is a modern classic.

Fun and intuitive

The Elektron Digitone is a brilliant FM synth, designed for a fun and creative workflow. It's solid and well built, and is a joy to program and jam with. Super tight midi, Elektrons famous sequencer and endless sound-design possibilities makes this a studio workhorse

My to go DAWLESS Brain

I use digitakt as brain of my dawless setup.

Super capable box, control midi in/out of all my synths and effects pedals via kenton box.

Superb built quality.

Superb pre-amps and sound

Very powerful FM synth

I like the way it's built, solid. Powerful sound engine, well programmed, very good included sound effects, a large sound library, I am overall happy. I use it in minimal techno music production either for bass, either for textures or percussions. It looks small and simple but boy, it's not a toy. And not to forget, the sequencer is brilliant, as well as the MIDI sequencers which offer more than I wanted.

A sonic experience

Whether you use this as a music instrument or a grown-up toy, this machine has so much to deliver. It is true that Elektron's learning curve can be a bit steep, but this is a device meant to be explored for years and years.

Extremely versatile machine

This is a unit well know in the producer world, proven many times to be on top of it's game.

Paired mine with a Rhytm and Xone 96 :)

FM made easy + excelent sequecing

This is great Elektron's design to tweak FM synthesis on-the-fly along with on-the-fly sequencer programming. The sound is good, a lot of to explore and experiment. The unit is small and handy - very easy to fit into the backpack and enjoy jam-session with others.

There is one thing though that is missing: transpose from the Digitone's keyboard in the same way as in Analog Four (just by pressing a key instead of changing the offset parameter and confirm this as an edit) - hence only 4 stars for usability.

Fantastic FM synth

A great FM synth, sounds very digital but you can get some really deep basses going to some quirky sound fx. As all elektron gear this has a great sequencer and is designed and implemented so well.

Makes FM synthesis fun

I used to have a DX100 in the 80s and never got into FM due to the fact that it's so difficult to program. This box opens up the engine and is a joy to use, even just as a pure 4-part/8-voice multitimbral module. Of course you can do much more if you use the internal sequencer and parameter locks. The distortion effect is also worth noting and can add some bite to sounds. Built like a tank, sounds great, and the Overbridge plug-in makes DAW integration easy.

Beautiful in every way

For something so capable, people will of course come up with wishlists for it. (Personally I'd like to be able to apply the filter on line in or have the ability to record all the tracks live together with a default note like on the Digitakt).

But basically this is just a stunning piece of kit. Once you've got the settings right to work with external gear it is just the right combination of powerful and playable. The factory sounds are already wonderfully dystopian and\or beautiful and you can either download additional ones or make your own from scratch by messing with algorithms, harmonics and so on... the main control interface of just switching between function pages for the 8 encoders works well although assigning LFOs on the fly from an immense list can be tricky.

For range I find it best to play with an external midi keyboard. Yes, the sequencer is great as others have said but its also nice to play as a standalone synth using as many of those 8 voices as possible and shaping the sound as you go. Start a drone with infinite release time going on one track and play along to it.

Something I wish I'd known: although by default Tracks 1-4 correspond to Midi channels 1-4, recording on these channels will not work well with the sequencer or with e.g. a sustain pedal. Instead make sure to use the Auto Midi Channel (default is 10 I think) and select the track on the Digitone instead.

Overbridge works quite well in Ableton I think but I've not had much luck with it in Logic. I can get a stereo mix but not individual tracks.

Central to my set up

This really suckered me into the Elektron workflow. It's a great FM synth on its own, with bonus midi sequencers if you need them, but its the amount of control you have over varying the sound step by step that really makes this such an incredible machine.

Amazing instrument

Currently used for leads, pads and other textures. Amazing sound quality, if this is your first Elektron instrument, congrats, but the UI will take some times to get used to but once practiced, is a very efficient and quick to get through the menus. Each settings "page" has 1 or 2 parts and a 3rd of 4th with the FUNC (shift) button. Not that much menu diving.

The sequencer is obviously very powerful, being Elektron but don't trust me, watch some videos on YouTube.

An FM synth/groove box for music creation (not only for FM synth lovers)

This synth/groove multitimbral FM box is perfect for my electronic music requirements: fun, control and fluid workflow.

This machine is not for all: if you are able to understand/love which sensations FM synthesis can make you feel, this is THE little box of wonders.

Respect to older FM synths, here you spend more time creating music and less creating sounds, but if you want you can go deeply into the 90% of FM's secrets: the sound development process is simpler (respect to the older synths like DX7) and you don't have some alghoritms, but trust me, it is not a bad lack, you will be able to create all sounds you need in less time and you will have a lot more time for sequencing and creating music.

Having only 4 FM tracks and 4 midi tracks is not so bad considering that you can trig any sound you saved in the sound pool within any step of a project.

If you use an external keyboard you can map multiple sounds to multiple splits along the keyboard.

I found only one bad lack: untill now seems it is not possible to record external pitch/mod controls inside tracks (they work only playing live)....Elektron is reactive in updating firmware of it's machines with new features, so I expect that this must-to-have improvement will be implemented one day.

The Elektron sequencer inside this machine is magnificent. The workflow process is close to perfection.

Live is a great machine, but using buttons combinations will requires some (not so much) time.

Amazing synth!

Sounds and functions are great! Worth every euro this one.

Like others products from Elektron, it's not easy to use it at the beginning but after few months, this synth is a strong element of my setup.

The sound engine is really beautifull and I have not found yet the sonic limits of this little monster.