Elektron Digitakt II

The original Digitakt was pretty good, so how about an updated version with more of... everything!

Elektron describe the Digitakt as a Drum Computer and Sampler, and for a few years after its launch in 2017 it became more‑or‑less the default drum machine in hardware synth rigs. It’s versatile, though, and despite being the darling of the DAWless, it features sophisticated computer integration with plug‑in‑based control and audio over USB.

For the Digitakt II, the word ‘stereo’ has slipped into the subtitle, but this is just one of many upgrades. This is the first outing for a new underlying hardware platform that pushes past some of the long‑standing spec limitations shared by Elektron’s instruments. So, does the Digitakt II do enough to stay on top in a crowded field? Should you upgrade if you have the MkI? And does it leapfrog flagship Elektron devices like the Octatrack II?

Drum Computer

The Digitakt II is a multitrack sampler built around the Elektron sequencing engine. It’s structured like a drum machine or beat workstation with 16 monophonic, stereo tracks. Tracks default to playing one‑shot samples, but can also be used for loop playback, grid‑based slicing or MIDI sequencing.

The Elektron instruments share an architecture and workflow that can take some time to get your head around, but once you’re over the hump you can work quickly, and get straight to work on any of the other devices. The Digitakt II conforms to the standard Elektron MO but, as we’ll see, extends it in a number of ways.

Work on the Digitakt II happens within self‑contained Patterns that store sound and mix parameters as well as note and automation sequences. You can build a beat in a single pattern using mutes, fills and conditional properties to create variations, or you can compose across a bank of patterns. Eight banks constitute a Project, whose other chief property is to store the bucket of live samples that are held in RAM.

Reboot

At a glance, the MkII Digitakt appears unchanged, with its pleasingly compact metal build evocative of high‑end field‑recorder hardware. There are some differences, such as the display now being white like on the Syntakt and the top tier Elektron devices. There’s one additional button providing direct access to keyboard play mode, a nod to the fact that with 16 tracks and stereo capability the MkII lends itself to more complete compositions than just drums. Likewise Song mode now gets a top‑level spot. Finally, there are eight sequence page LEDs instead of four, reflecting the newly doubled maximum pattern length.

The Digitakt II shares exactly the same dimensions as its predecessor, measuring 215 x 176 x 63mm.

Internally, as well as a more capable brain, RAM has increased from 64MB to 400MB, and the internal flash storage from 1GB to 20GB. With more RAM, direct sampling time increases to 66 seconds, and longer samples can be imported. More significantly, the RAM allows a Digitakt II project to keep eight times as many samples in its live sample pool. The pool now has eight banks of 128 samples available for playback and ‘sample locking’: the Digitakt’s ability to fire any sample or preset on any step.

The Digitakt II is a class‑compliant USB audio device, with stereo audio in and out to your computer or phone. Extended Overbridge functionality is still in beta testing, and should bring multitrack audio streaming and remote control directly in your DAW, as with the original Digitakt plug‑in.

Round the back, things are identical to the Digitakt I, with MIDI in, out and thru ports and stereo audio I/O and headphone output all on quarter‑inch sockets.

Basic Beatmaking

One of my chief complaints about the Digitakt was the lack of a real concept of Kits. Loading sounds could be confusing and time consuming to a new user. Things are more immediate and familiar now, with a clear workflow for browsing and auditioning Kits and Presets (previously called Sounds) without needing to understand and populate the sample pool first. A set of excellent factory kits and a couple of banks of inspiring example patterns show the results possible once you’ve mastered the sequencer.

With a kit in place, you can play sounds from all the tracks with the 16 non‑velocity‑sensitive ‘trig’ buttons. If keyboard mode is active, the selected track will be pitched across the keys for melodic playback. Digitakt II gains some additional trig modes. Velocity mode mirrors the 16‑level mode on an MPC: allowing one track to be played at different velocities with the keys. Retrig mode is a note repeat function, again playing a single track but with 16 retrigger rates. Finally Preset mode maps the project Preset pool across trigs in banks of 16, making it easy to play and record multiple sounds within a single track. This is a more powerful version of the Slot trig mode on the Octatrack.

Pattern sequences can be recorded in real time using the current trig mode, or entered X0X style one track at a time on the keys. There’s also a step record mode. Patterns can be up to 128 steps long — eight bars at the default speed — and tracks can be set to different lengths and speeds. Everything can be automated as part of the Pattern, either by capturing in real time, or by holding any step and dialling in parameters: a workflow innovated by Elektron and dubbed Parameter Locking.

Sample Machines

When we first reviewed the Digitakt, each of its eight audio tracks worked in the same mode, playing samples in a familiar sampler‑y way. Playback could be pitched per step for melodic sequencing, you could set start, end and loop points, and each track had a filter, bit‑crusher and audio effects. While conventional, I noted that the sampler engine was unusually nimble, able to smoothly play and sweep very short loops to create synthesis and granular‑like results.

Over time, the Digitakt gained new sample playback modes. The MkII inherits these and gains one more, along with swappable filter modes, which are collectively referred to as Machines. The original and default machine is called OneShot, and plays samples in the same linear way as before, but in stereo.

The Werp machine is a time‑stretching mode, which breaks the audio into segments. It’s a fairly crude stretching algorithm but playing with the segment control can produce some interesting and unexpected results. This mode is maintained on the MkII, but is joined by a smoother granular warp mode called Stretch. This is now the go‑to mode if you want to play imported loops in time with your Pattern tempo with independent control of pitch.

Repitch mode automatically adjusts the playback speed of samples to match a set number of bars. For the Digitakt II, Slice has been renamed to Grid, presumably to more accurately reflect what this mode does. While it does slice your sample into sections, it’s always regular divisions of a bar. This covers you for scenarios where you’re chopping up a neat loop, but doesn’t give you the manual chopping workflow you take for granted on an MPC, Maschine, or for that matter the Octatrack. You can lock which slice plays back on each step, or play from keyboard mode (though there’s an issue that if you have a scale set some slices won’t be accessible).

Filters & Effects

Track effects are now accessed from a single page.The filter module for each track can be chosen from Multi‑mode, Lowpass 4, Equalizer, Comb and Legacy LP/HP. The default Multi starts out as a 4‑pole low‑pass, but can be morphed to a notch then a high‑pass. This is super versatile, and you also get a second non‑resonant high+low‑pass filter stage before the main filter, which is a real luxury. The primary filter has a dedicated envelope, with a welcome Reset option to choose whether legato notes retrigger the envelope or not.

The Lowpass 4 mode is more ‘analogue‑y’ sounding, with a more tuneful resonance. Equalizer is a single‑band parametric EQ. Comb is a short delay‑based comb filter combined with a low‑pass, which is tons of fun for modulation effects and resonant metallic sounds, and becomes a slap‑back echo or reflection at lower settings. The Legacy filter models the Digitakt I filter, which is good for backward compatibility and has a character of its own with a more aggressive resonance.

The effects offerings have been upgraded on the Digitakt II, and everything is now organised in one FX page per track instead of three. The track effects (bit reduction, overdrive and sample rate reduction) and the shared reverb and delay sends have been joined by a chorus send and a master overdrive.

It’s now possible to set specific tracks to bypass the master compressor, so you can set up a classic side‑chain pumping scenario, where your kick is set as the side‑chain trigger but passes through unaffected.

Modulation

Digitakt II tracks have swappable playback and filter ‘machines’.The Digitakt has seriously upped its modulation game, with three LFOs per track in addition to the dedicated amp and filter envelopes. This puts the Digitakt II ahead of its larger peers the Analog Rytm and Analog Four for LFO count. The LFOs are versatile, can be triggered, sync’ed or free running, and have single‑ and half‑cycle modes that turn them into extra envelope generators. LFO 3 can even modulate one of the other LFOs if you like.

I do wish that Elektron would find a more intuitive way to assign modulation on all their devices. The fact that mapping is done by selecting from a long scrollable list always means that I don’t use them as much as I could.

The Elektron sequencer, with its automation capabilities, is itself a powerful mod source. There’s also the facility of ‘trigless trigs’: you can set steps to trigger envelopes or other modulations without playing a note. These are especially useful when playing longer samples or loops which only have a single playback trigger, but might contain beats and notes that you want to coincide with filter envelope triggers.

Sequencer 2.0

The Elektron sequencer has been consistent for a number of years, but has had some recent updates which the Digitakt II inherits, and there are advances unique to this new instrument. In common with the Analog Rytm and Four you get the Euclidean sequencer mode for auto‑generating track patterns. Euclidean sequences can be predictable, but here you have two separate layers which can be phase‑adjusted and set to interact in different ways. A nice touch is being able to write the current pattern to the track.

Page Loop lets you choose specific pages in a multi‑page sequence to play. Ostensibly this is so you can edit one section of a longer sequence without having to keep waiting for playback to go around the horn. However, it’s actually a handy performance tool, allowing you to park pattern variations or fills on different pages, then instantly jump between them. Disappointingly, the MkII Digitakt still lacks Direct Jump mode from the Rytm, which lets you do this with Patterns, but Page Loop can get similar results.

The first truly new feature is the doubling of the maximum Pattern length, putting 128 steps at your disposal. Then there’s the ability to set multiple trigger conditions per step. The Elektron sequencer typically has a single parameter slot where you can set a percentage probability to all steps in a track and also place per‑step Conditional Locks. These apply either a different probability amount or some other event condition like ‘Fill’ or ‘Play on fourth of four bars’.

A first for Elektron sequencers: chance, fill and trigger conditions have independent slots.

The Digitakt II has separate slots for Probability, Fill and Condition. So you could now set a snare hit to play only while Fill is held, but only on every second bar, 70 percent of the time. With liberal use of Conditional Locks you can squeeze a lot of variation into those eight bars, and even have completely different sequences baked into Fill mode. If that’s still not enough, the Digitakt II can chain patterns together, and has a Song mode where you can playlist patterns, adjusting loops and lengths at each stage.

Breaking out of the single condition limit is massive, and I hope this gets implemented on the other devices. Even so I’d love to see more; conditionality is an innovation associated with Elektron sequencing, but other devices have taken the idea and run with it, including the Polyend Play and Teenage Engineering OP‑Z, and sequencers like the Five12 Vector and Sequentix Cirklon. It would be great to have conditions or sequence modifiers that add generative operations beyond simply ‘trigger/don’t trigger’, for example random or set pitch changes and retriggers.

Everything Everywhere All At Once

A highlight on the smaller Elektron instruments is Control All mode, which helps to make up for the lack of the performance macros and scenes found on the larger devices. It’s dead simple: while you hold the Track button, parameter changes are applied to all tracks at once. It’s a brilliant tool for creating build‑ups and breakdowns with no prep work. It works hand‑in‑hand with the Temp Save and Reload functions, allowing you to totally scramble everything in the name of dancefloor excitement, then punch back to the last sane state.

The Digitakt II refines the Control All trick, by offering the chance to exclude specific tracks. For example, you can keep your kick drum unchanged, while maxing out delay and bit crush on everything else.

Also new is Kit Perform mode, which stops Patterns from loading their own parameters when launched. This allows you to tweak sounds and effects, and smoothly move between Patterns without affecting the sound — only the sequences get loaded. This is a big improvement for performing, or when adjusting sound and mix parameters across a multi‑pattern song. However, to commit changes still requires saving to a kit and loading to each Pattern.

MIDI, Externals & Sampling

The Digitakt I has eight audio tracks and eight MIDI tracks arranged as two rows. The Digitakt II’s 16 audio tracks occupy all the keys by default, but you can switch any track to MIDI in the Machine selector. Control of external hardware or software has had some enhancements. You now get two pages of CC assignments per track, and two MIDI LFOs.

CC values can now be learned from your external instrument by patching MIDI from it into the Digitakt II and wiggling controls. Mapped knobs can now be renamed. Connectivity wise, the Digitakt II has MIDI in, out and thru on DIN connectors, and computer connectivity over USB. I’d have loved to have seen a USB host port, and a battery option would have made it my perfect portable groovebox. Audio from one or two external devices can be routed into the Digitakt (stereo or dual mono), and monitored through the mixer page, which offers level control, panning and access to the send effects.

The sampling workflow remains much the same on the MkII except that you have twice the sampling time and can sample in stereo. Available sources are the input pair, the mix out, or any of the individual tracks. It seems an oversight that you can’t choose either of the inputs individually. If you have a mono source connected it still gets sampled in stereo and ends up hard panned.

A nice feature is that you can choose a sampling time in steps, so if your source is clocked to the Digitakt you can grab, say, one bar ready to loop. Also nice is that after sampling something you’re prompted to assign it to a track straight away if you want. (I don’t know why the same courtesy isn’t extended when you browse samples from storage: instead you have to load to the pool, then go and find it in a track.)

The Digitakt II is still the Digitakt you know and love, but doubles up its core abilities: twice the audio tracks, stereo, double the sequence length, double the MIDI control scope.

Conclusion

The Digitakt II is still the Digitakt you know and love, but doubles up its core abilities: twice the audio tracks, stereo, double the sequence length, double the MIDI control scope. There’s more memory and sample slot capacity, more modulation, and more effects and filters. It also just sounds immense. This is a digital sampler, but as well as super crisp sonics, the built‑in send effects and the drive and compressor combine to give the Digitakt a huge floor‑shaking character.

The Digitakt is not trying to do everything like an MPC or Maschine, and I enjoy using it in a focused role as a drum machine. That said, it does have some excellent performance capabilities, it’s a great standalone groovebox that can also stand in to orchestrate a compact DAWless rig, and it can act as a bridge to your computer. In short, it’s 100 percent still a top contender for a place in any kind of hardware setup. As for upgrading, if your Digitakt I plays a peripheral role as sampler or drum machine it’ll continue earning its keep, but if the Digitakt was my main workstation I’d certainly be looking to swap it out for the MkII.