A funny thing happened on the way to the resurgence of analog gear…
The digital bits are still mighty cool to have.
Yes, the next time someone asks you about whether the return to analog is some sort of regression to the past, you might point out that what we’re seeing is a fusion of the best features of both. And so it is that owners of Elektron’s Analog gear (the Analog Four and new Analog Keys) get a “1.1” upgrade via firmware that’s almost a generational improvement on their devices, for free.
For a “point one,” this is a massive update. And unlike certain hardware vendors, you get all of this without having to swap your gear:
- Polyphonic operation
- Resonance boost (this is the new resonant filter mode)
- MIDI multi map
- +Drive for additional storage
- 512 factory presets
Now, is a firmware update normally worth writing about? No.
But I can’t remember the last time someone shipped “polyphony” as a firmware update, so this seems newsworthy. Enjoy, Elektron fans.