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vivi 💫

WIP flamingo cover! Just to give an idea of my first project with the Digitone + SmplTrek combo.

Just got my SmplTrek today!

00:00/01:41
vivi 💫
Global

Bonus video to show what this looks like

Birdy
Global

@vv I love the sound this synth makes.

vivi 💫
Global

@birdy the cool part is I really haven't focused on the actual sound yet much. Been mainly doing transcribing and laying down the notes. And learning how to link the two boxes with midi

naught but an skellington
Global

@vv this is great! What are your thoughts on the SmplTrek overall? How's the build quality?

vivi 💫
Global

@Aleums let's see... The build quality seems pretty good. I've encountered one main glitch in the firmware and I believe that the speed of the sd card is important.

The main glitch has to do with favorites not saving when you open the load sample menu without going to the main page after adding faves. Which hopefully will get fixed.

Currently using a slower card and it can miss loading samples in time if you are switching scenes too close to the beat. I'm hoping that the new card I ordered which is much faster won't have that problem. There's a settings option to test the card speed and though I haven't tried it I suspect my current card would fail.

1/2

vivi 💫
Global

@Aleums I really like how the device feels to operate, and it is pleasing to use. Other than the bug mentioned above the issues I have are:

  • The knobs are clicky and not smooth, and the ui does not have acceleration so it can be annoying when you have to turn them a far distance like turning a setting all the way up
  • when recording using the built in mic and speaker, the audio of the speaker is muted and there seems to be no way to avoid that without exiting the sampler UI and discarding or saving the sample, without being able to preview what it sounds like. This is a pretty glaring problem when using it and hopefully they can fix.

And very minor but it is confusing to switch between the SmplTrek and Digitone because they are kind of mirrored in their interfaces with the main scroller on the right on the SmplTrek and left on Digitone. So it takes a little switch in my mind to go back and forth. Maybe that will pass.

vivi 💫
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@Aleums (also, I can't compare it to other samplers because this is the first I've owned)

naught but an skellington
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@vv this is great!! Thanks for sharing. How's the sequencer on it? Anything you were hoping it could do that it doesn't? Does it keep up with Elektron's?

vivi 💫
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@Aleums so I actually haven't tried out the "similar" elektron hardware the Digitakt. I've seen it in action of course. It's certainly not going to be as full featured and it's far cheaper.

  • No arp mode, that's not a deal breaker though as I can use Digitone for that.
  • I rather like how the sequencer is laid out, it's nice to be able to see the notes in a grid and it's pretty easy to go through and delete things.
  • no undo, no cut and paste which is limiting if for example you want to offset a sequence, can't do that at all. There are some "power" ways to accomplish sequence offsets in Digitone using the copy paste so that feels lacking.
  • I like how there are the pads and the buttons. It makes it really easy to lay out drum patterns.

...

vivi 💫
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@Aleums

  • the one thing I don't like is that I expected you'd be able to switch instruments when laying down the notes using the button array, but hitting a different instrument immediately records that to the current position. You can of course double tap to delete though. Ether I will have to get used to it or discover some feature I missed. I still have to go through the manual fully.
  • I like that you can make a long note by pressing two buttons to denote the length.
  • ultimately it's pretty easy to use and I enjoy it a little more than the Digitone for laying out drums or complex patterns because you can see the pattern on screen clearly.
naught but an skellington
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@vv that's great. Sounds like it complements the digitone pretty well. When I had DT and DN at once I found that I was annoyed at having to deal with two copies of essentially the same sequencer.
I hope you keep making cool stuff with them!!

vivi 💫
Global

@Aleums I have a very cool track I made that I hopefully will be sharing soon!