Elektron Musical Instruments

--- In elektron-users@yahoogroups.com, ehdyn81@... wrote:


> As for the user wave elektron, what ever became of the internal timing
> issue? Some people on the forums were complaining of noticeable clock
> jitter. Hard to believe as A.E. have really precise timing. But then
> again,

I've always claimed that the Machinedrum is dead tight if you run it
on its internal sequencer, and I don't want to back of.

People have measured sample delays on individual hits, which is not
what I meant. There are some "magic" put into the timing of the
Elektron instruments, can't disclose all, but I suggested in the
thread to do a listening test and see what feels tighter.

Not always your ear want to hear the most dead spot on note, the ear
is more complex than that. Many of the legendary beat boxes have a
special grove to it, and I think that people would feel a hard-to-tell
lack of something if we made everything sample tight.

When we designed our own magic we went through all legendary drum
machines , especially the MPC-60 to get an idea of the "magic swing".
It's not a swing per as, but some notes we noticed where perceived as
more catchy if put a few samples forward or, most often before in
time. That's what people have been measuring. I don't want to go in
detail as we put a lot of effort into this other that to say - do
listening tests. Try a sample tight (computer sequencer) and take some
of your favorite beat boxes and see which result you prefer real life.

It was a big thread and I just had time for one post to state our view
on this, so it can easily get lost.

If you want rigidity, computer is the way to go, but we want to do
something more.

Note also that there is no delay between patterns, so the tempo is
kept dead tight over time. As a matter of fact we've had it run
alongside Protool for hours with any delays.

What you prefer is always individual, but there are reasons behind the
small, _almost_ unnoticeable timing of the different notes in the
16:th and 32 note realm.

Note that the MIDI clock out is always exact on the spot and when
running the internal sequencer (as well as standard MIDI can do it),
and that the internal "magic" (that's our view of it at least, I
respect others that prefer exact sample accuracy) is only applied when
you run on internal clock on the internal sequencer and is/can not be
applied to incoming MIDI triggering data.

Daniel, Elektron