Elektron Machine Drum MKII

[tekboi]

Hi,

Is this product worth the money? If someone owns the unit, what are your thoughts on it & how much versatility & quality can you get out of it?? Love to know people's thoughts & reactions. I have seen videos, demonstrations & read a lot about them & I am very close to buying the unit but would like to hear what people think before I do so..

Also, I have read some people had trouble with the Machine Drum in its use with Ableton LIVE but I think that might have been the older model, don't think its happening with the MKII but correct if I am wrong, has anyone experienced any issues with syncing tempo between Ableton LIVE & the Machine Drum's tempo?

The main reason for me wanting to go down this road is I am not enjoying the use of samples at the moment & really want program my kicks & drums from scratch, I think the Machine Drum is my best option, money (expensive) is not an issue if its worth it..

Thanks everyone..

[stjohn]

i have a mk2... i ****ing love it. but at times its a bit of a love / hate relationship.
straight out of the box, its can sound very 'machinedrummy' which i would describe as thin, clinky clanky, dry.... its hard to explain but you'd know the sound a mile away. but once you start to get to grips with the sequencer, paramater locks etc, you can totally bend that shit beyond recognition. which is what i love to do. the power lies in the sequencer and using it creatively. it is however, quite possible to get a nice overall sound from the dry hits. it just needs a little more attention than other classic drum machines like the roland series or jomox xbase or something.

what else..... on the kick drum front things can be frustrating. BUT what keeps motivated is that i have achieved some great kick/low ends/ooomph from it before, so it is very possible. i found that you can improve the power by using the separate mono outs.

the sampler is kinda weird too....but great. i get crazy sounds from loading alll kinds of stuff in there.

all in all the MD is not without some faults but they all kinda add up to the magic of a super machine. if your sound is 'classic' drums it might not be for you, but if you are into fukkin shit up... its yer only man

[stjohn]

oh yea.. with the Ableton problem, its more of a problem in Live than anything else. the clock on the machinedrum is rock steady. im personally happy enough to just press play and keep it time. u can nudge the MD like a record, so its easy enough.

when i tried to midi sync it with the MD as a master... things got a bit strange in Live.....basically anything with an internal sequencer (eg: the arpeggiator in fm8) was out of time.

with Live as the master things were grand. but in general, Live's clock leaves alot to be desired

[force]

Thats odd.
Ableton has always been rock solid timing wise when i've slaved it to my 909..






But thats because im a bastard..

[xfive]

Yeah slaving ableton to anything will mess up any LFOs and things of that nature that need an *exact* time to stay "sounding" in sync.

EDIT: slaving ableton to something also disables delay compensation - keep that in mind.

I've had some awful issues with Live 8 sending a solid midi clock to my machinedrum + monomachine. It would stay on for a few minutes, and then drift horribly all of a sudden. This drift would then be cumulative over the course of play such that after about 30 minutes or so you would have hundreds of milliseconds of delay.
I narrowed it down to my ultralite's midi interface, and I'm now using the Elektron TM-1 with Live as master and syncing the two machines to that, and it hasn't drifted at all after I set the initial clock sync delay in the live prefs.


Ok I guess that wasn't really about the Machinedrum now was it? :)


I've had a machinedrum since 2002. Just upgraded to the UW MK2 recently.. the sampler really is amazing.. Unlike any other sampler I have heard or used.

What stjohn says is spot on though, after you dig in, the sounds you will be able to create are much more diverse than anything you would conceive initially.
If you're after instant gratification, it's not for you.
If you're willing to dig in, the rewards will be wonderful.