Elektron Digitone II

Elektron’s updated FM groovebox is a powerhouse.

Elektron’s Digitone follows closely behind its twin the Digitakt in receiving a MkII rework. The two Digi units share the same build and sequencing workflow, but while the Digitakt is a sampler, the Digitone is a digital synth. As with the Digitakt refresh, the Digitone II makes considerable gains in terms of sequencing, track count and flexibility. It also branches out into new areas of synthesis.

Raising The Tone

The most visible difference on the Digitone II front panel hints at its most significant change. The four colour‑coded track selector buttons are gone because there are now 16 synth tracks at your disposal, selected from the main ‘trig’ buttons, as on the Digitakt. Polyphony has been doubled to 16 to facilitate this. This hugely extends the possibilities for the Digitone, giving you more scope to produce layered compositions, and letting you use the Digitone as a drum machine without forcing sounds to share tracks.

You can still use the Digitone to sequence external MIDI gear as well. Instead of dedicated tracks, any track can now be designated a synth or MIDI track. Connectivity remains the same: a full complement of DIN MIDI ports, and a pair of inputs for monitoring one stereo or two mono external sources through the unit and its effects.

The rear panel hosts a power switch and PSU inlet, a USB port, a full set of MIDI I/O, stereo line inputs and outputs, and a headphone output.

The redundant track buttons are repurposed for direct access to transposition, the arpeggiator and the new Note Edit mode. As there’s no longer a need for a dedicated MIDI mode, a button is freed up on the left array that now toggles the trig buttons into a track‑focused chromatic keyboard layout. Like on the Digitakt II, Bank/Pattern selection has been consolidated to a single operation, meaning Song mode now gets its own top‑layer button.

FM Extended

The original Digitone was based entirely on a versatile 4‑op FM engine. This is still the default synth on the MkII but is joined by three new generators: FM Drum, Wavetone and Swarmer.

Three new engines explore new synth territory for the Digitone II.To recap, the OG FM engine (now called FM Tone) uses an adaptation of classic DX‑style FM. Four operators are patched in a choice of eight preset algorithms offering different cross‑modulation, feedback and output routings. Sound design is made friendly by a clever system whereby two of the operators are treated as a pair, and the main frequency controls are quantised to musically harmonic ratios. Fine control is still there, but kept off the main page. You can also adjust the waveforms of the oscillators, tweak feedback and adjust the blend of output sources all from this main view.

The actual amount of FM in a patch is dialled in on the second page, which is perhaps the least intuitive part of the layout but makes sense because this is also where you find the envelopes that modulate this FM. My review of the original Digitone (SOS September 2018) goes into a lot more depth about all this, so let’s turn to the new engines....