It may lack every feature of the Octatrack or the digital drum workflows of Machinedrum. (At least that’s what some of you have told us – attached to your gear, perhaps?) But I’m betting for many, Analog Rytm’s combination of dedicated analog architecture and sample support is attracting some interest as a balanced solution for hardware drum machine design.
And now we know roughly when we’re getting it. Analog Rytm is due Q1 2014, with “preliminary” price at US$1549/€1489.
And we know a bit more about the architecture.
The sample engine is “customizable” and “highly bendable” and can be layered with analog sounds.
There are eight digitally-controlled analog voices, with dedicated circuit designs for classes of sounds.
And for those of you complaining that these boxes just produce the same music over and over again, Elektron promises you can push “rhythms to extremes” (whatever that means). There’s also some interesting timbral potential here, with an analog multimode filter and analog distortion circuit per-voice, plus dedicated analog compressor and distortion on the master voice and effects sends.
Specs:
8 drum voices, each with: Specialized analog percussion sound generator, sample playback, analog multimode filter and analog distortion.
12 velocity & pressure sensitive pads
Analog master compressor & distortion
Expressive FX section
World class Elektron step sequencer
Chromatic, Performance, and Scene modes
Performance oriented beat control
Individual voice outputs
Let’s look at pictures, then. Click to embiggen.
http://www.elektron.se/products/analog-rytm