I was thinking of spending some money and buying an elektron cycles for FM drums and bass tones, but when I was checking the reviews I became suspicious and skeptical.
Do you think the name ‘cycles’ actually implies that this ‘FM drum synth’ is actually a rompler containing samples of many single cycle waveforms, rather than ‘real oscillators’?
I was watching the reviews and it looks like the pitch knob could be carefully callibrated to only go an octave up, an octave down to hide the aliasing which can occur when pitching up a single cycle waveform sample really high, or the ‘fartiness’ which can occur when pitching them down really low.
So if anyone knows if it is true oscillators or sampled single cycle waveforms inside that box please let me know.
Also, has anyone had any success plugging a drumpad into it and playing the FM drum sounds live from drumpads? Thats the purpose I want it for. The tiny drumpads on the box look sub par for live play…though overall the box is enticing, Im skeptical about making a purchase before I know.
I bought one of these a few weeks ago, so I’ll share what I know. The pitch knob has a range of 4 octaves (24 semitones up or down). Most sounds can also be played chromatically, either on the 16 trigger buttons or an external keyboard, giving it the full range of notes that you’d see on most synths.
It’s a digital synth, so I’m not sure what the distinction would be between a sampled single-cycle oscillator and a “real” one. As I understand it, a lot of FM synths generate sounds with sine waves stored on a lookup table.Is that what you’re talking about? I do hear some low-pitched noise in more complex sounds which might come from aliasing. But it could just be some other artifact of the feedback algorithm. FM synthesis gets pretty dirty when you modulate it heavily, that’s part of its character. I can also get nice clean sine waves if I turn the color and shape knobs down.
I’ve never tried an external drumpad with it, but I assume it would work. It take MIDI input through 3mm trs or USB.
Thanks for the information. I think if it plays notes across the full range of keys from a midi keyboard then it should be ‘real oscillators’. Maybe I was being overly skeptical.
So, can you only play one of the sounds at a time, across the full range of keys with your midi keyboard or can you play each of the six sounds from a separate key like a keyboard drumkit?
Hopefully I can plug some kind of drumpad into it to play drumbeats live but the one I have doesnt have midi out…Is there definitely a midi over usb for plugging in drumpads on elektron cycles?
I wonder if it can power the midi drumpads too, because my drumpad also has no separate power input, only usb.
Maybe it is sine samples in a table, or real time generated oscillators, as long as there is no obvious aliasing its good for me.
I don’t think it can power other devices through usb. If you want to use a usb drumpad with it, you most likely will have to connect both devices to a computer and use Renoise or some other software to route everything to your liking. I think each track in the model:cycles is a different midi channel, so see if your midi controller can assign each pad to a different channel. If not, i think you can do it through software, although I have never tried that myself.
Thanks for the information.
Its a shame it cant be used as a drum module triggered by the drumpads directly over usb.
Its not too much to power, just LEDs and Force sensing resistors.
These newer drum synth machines should come with ultra sensitive 4x4 16 pad layouts in my opinion. Im not such a fan of the 8x2 layouts or the ‘all in a line’ layouts.
Nevrmind, it looks like a fun machine anyway.