Elektron Tonverk

Is Elektron’s polyphonic sampling workstation their most musical device yet?

Rumours circulated before the Tonverk emerged that Elektron were working on a new instrument that could be something a bit different. Inevitably, disparate wishlists were projected onto this chimerical wonderbox: it would surely be the next‑gen Octatrack, a Syntakt ‘Pro’ or a mashup of the Syntakt and Digitakt. Any of these would have been terrific, but the Tonverk is in fact something new to the line‑up: a polyphonic sampler. So, can Elektron’s distinctive approach bring something new to this category, and is it sufficiently different from their other offerings to warrant a whole new instrument? Let’s find out.

The Tonverk slides in between the compact Digi units and flagship Analog Rytm, Analog Four and Octatrack instruments in both size and price. It looks like a stretched Digitakt, with the narrower trig keys of the Digitone. These adjustments allow the 16 track/step buttons to be laid out in one row, in turn making space for an octave of piano‑format keys like on the Analog Four. I/O has been expanded with some extra outputs. USB‑C ports are used for power and connectivity, and storage is via SD card, both firsts for Elektron.

Pick & Mix

Swappable sound engines (‘machines’) are a standard feature on Elektron’s instruments, but the Tonverk takes modularity to the next level with effects machines and a flexible routing and mixing architecture. The 16 tracks follow a mixer‑like layout, with eight source tracks for audio or MIDI, four versatile bus tracks, three effects returns and a master. This is one of the most interesting things the Tonverk brings to the table, facilitating sound design, performance setups, and external hardware configs.

The eight instrument tracks can operate in four sampler modes or as MIDI tracks. The Single Player and Multi Player modes are traditional, polyphonic sample players, aimed primarily at melodic performance. These are supported by the familiar pattern‑based Elektron sequencing environment, where you can drop steps from the main trig keys, picking pitches from the mini keyboard; or you can play and record from the mini keyboard or a connected controller. More than with any other Elektron device, I had a keyboard controller connected most of the time.

The Single Player machine lets you pick a sample, manipulate it, and pitch it across notes. You can set a loop point for the sustain (and optionally release) stages of your amp envelope, with smooth loop crossfading that makes it easy to turn any sample into a playable instrument. The Tonverk is not really set up for playing or capturing rhythmic loops, however. You can do it but there’s no time‑stretching or bpm matching so it’s an old‑school manual pitching process.

The Multi Player is for multisampled instruments: those built up from a set of key and velocity mapped samples. This of course allows for much more dynamic, expressive and pitch‑consistent instruments, benefiting from that connected keyboard. The factory library includes a set of multisampled instruments or you can make your own using the onboard Autosampler. There’s currently no way to create Multi Player sounds from samples, or to edit the samples and mappings within a patch.

My chief issue with the Tonverk though is the lack of preview capability when browsing for sounds other than single samples, which is a flow killer when getting down ideas. Other Elektron instruments are mainly dealing with single samples or synth patches, so it’s easier to audition. With multi‑instruments and kits, a device could do with audio previews or the ability to temporarily load in place. On the Tonverk you have to load a patch into a track to hear it, so if you don’t want to lose all your track settings you need to make a habit of using the Memorize & Recall feature.

Round the back we find a power switch, twin USB‑C ports, an SD card slot, MIDI in, out and thru sockets, and two inputs, four outputs and a headphone out on quarter‑inch jacks.

Subtracks & Grains

The Tonverk also caters for one‑shots and beats, but rather than using the one‑sound‑per‑track approach of the other Elektron grooveboxes, it leverages its polyphony in the Subtrack machine: an eight‑track drum machine within any single track. When a Subtrack track is selected, the eight ‘white’ notes on the mini keyboard each host a different sample, with separately addressable sequencer lanes.

Importantly, each Subtrack voice has its own VCA, filter and LFOs. Track effects are shared, and a ‘super track’ lane takes care of automation and parameter locks for this layer. The main limitation of Subtracks is that sends are at the track level, so if you want to keep your kicks out of the reverb or throw specific sounds to a delay you need to split to different tracks.

Halfway through testing an early Christmas present arrived: a new sound machine called Grainer, along with fixes for some gnarly initial bugs. Grainer is a classic granular synthesis module providing a different way to play back single samples, with all the wonderful sound‑design possibilities granular offers. There’s a fairly deep level of control here, surpassing the classic Mutable Clouds, for example. This quickly became my favourite thing, and the starting point for most sessions on the Tonverk.

You get control of grain rate, amount and length, and can set grain generation to random, sync’ed or ‘oscillator’ mode, the last of which is good for smooth continuous tones. There’s a sample position control, with a jitter amount and stereo spread. You can set a ratio of forwards to reverse playback and shape the grains. Possibilities range from simple, high‑quality sample playback over a wide pitch range, to otherworldly textures, to sync’ed rhythmic layers. And all polyphonic.

Effects & Routing

Elektron are billing the Tonverk as a workstation and audio processor, as well as a sampler. This is largely based on the open routing system and the inclusion of a large suite of effects machines, many of which are brand new.

As well as the morphable, two‑stage filters that are standard issue on modern Elektron boxes, the source tracks have two assignable effects inserts and a choice of 11 effects machines. Many of these in fact contain multiple effects. Good examples are the Degrader and Dirtshaper modules, which offer whole pedalboards of distortion, lo‑fi, noise and glitch effects. Freeze in the Degrader is particularly fun. Tracks have two LFOs dedicated to effects modulation in addition to the two voice LFOs.

The Tonverk measures 286 x 176 x 63mm and weighs 1.85kg.

Sources can be routed to any of the four stereo bus tracks for submixing and further processing. The same suite of effects are on offer here, plus Saturator Delay, Supervoid Reverb and Warble tape emulator. The bus (and send) tracks also have a Shape machine comprising a two‑band shelf filter and amp envelope, although bus tracks can swap this out for a MIDI machine.

The mix buses have their own sequencer tracks, which you can use to automate the effects and Shape controls. A great use for this is for pseudo side‑chain pumping. While the compressor machine can be keyed from any track for classic kick side‑chaining, I love being able to shape movement manually. With the bus VCA, you can drop your own triggers and use a negative amp envelope to contour the dynamics as you please. This can be extended to all kinds of sequenced effects on the buses, which you can bypass by muting a bus’ sequencer track.

All source and bus tracks have sends to the three return tracks, which have just six effects to choose from and a single insert as they are typically used for reverb, delay, compression or chorus. These are mostly new algorithms. Supervoid Reverb is the new top‑tier ambience effect, focusing on realistic spatial simulation across a range of sizes. Rumsklang Reverb is a dark and moody large space effect.

Finally there’s a master mix bus that routes to the A+B outputs. Tracks and buses assigned to this output pass through yet another effects slot. This has access to the full set of 15 effects although it will probably host a compressor most of the time. With the other potential processing stages it’s nice not having to choose between a performance effect and a ‘sensible’ effect.

Outside Verk

The Tonverk’s routing flexibility extends to the outside world. Any track or bus can be patched directly to the two main output pairs, and the headphone jack can be repurposed as a separate output or cue. As well as splitting out tracks or submixes, you can create a hardware effects loop from any of the return tracks, adding an external send effect to your setup.

The external inputs by default feed into the main mix bus, but can be repatched into any other point in the mixing structure, including into the main tracks. This is fantastic for incorporating external MIDI modules, and is often a feature on my wishlist item in reviews. Any audio track or bus track can be used with the MIDI machine for external sequencing, with all the same functionality as sequencing internal instruments. In this mode the Amp and Filter pages switch to controlling 16 MIDI CC values.

This combo of audio handling and standalone MIDI sequencing make the Tonverk an interesting DAWless sequencing hub, and it’s in this sense that it has some overlap with Octatrack. In some ways it’s better, because you can set up a unified track that’s both the MIDI sequencer and audio channel for an external device. The audio comes in after the main VCA and filter (meaning you don’t have to mess with trigs to hear inputs) and before the track’s insert effects. Brilliant! Of course I wish there were more inputs...

Sampling

Tonverk can sample from the analogue inputs, USB, or internal sources. The USB‑C connections provide audio input from class‑compliant devices like phones, iPads or computers, but can’t host an audio connection with other standalone USB audio devices. This input is merged with anything connected to the quarter‑inch inputs. There’s a notable lack of multi‑channel USB streaming or Overbridge. This is standard on the other units, although was often added after release.

There are two sampling options. The standard recording option is like on other units: arm and record into a dedicated page, trim and save. You can allocate a new sample directly to a track, but not a Subtrack annoyingly. If you want to sample to a Subtrack you have to save your recording then drill down through the folders to find it. Similarly, for some reason you can’t copy and paste Subtracks like you can regular tracks. (And while I’m on it, some kind of slicing functionality for Subtracks would be nice).

Autosampler lets you connect to an external instrument (hardware or virtual) and automatically capture a series of notes and velocities to build a Multi Player instrument. My attitude to this feature in other instruments has often been ‘ain’t nobody got time for that,’ but I was spurred on by the fact that there’s no other way to make a multi. And it’s actually easy.

The Tonverk holds your hand through the steps, starting with hooking up and testing the connection. I tried sampling instruments from both my Mac and iPad. With just a USB‑C connection this worked without requiring any settings other than switching the output of my computer to Tonverk USB. The Tonverk pings your device and calculates the latency and the suggested sample length based on the signal it gets back. It then asks you to choose the pitch range and density for samples, the length and how many velocity layers. From this it tallies the number of samples, storage requirements and total capture time. Then you hit Go and it does the rest.

Sequencing & Performance

Sequencing on the Tonverk works much like other Elektron devices, which we’ve covered elsewhere. There are the usual modes, probability and conditionality, fill workflows and pattern structure. The excellent arpeggiator is included, as are a chord mode and a Step Editor mode that builds on the Digitone II’s Note Editor to handle polyphonic editing.

Changes include further extending Pattern Length to 256 steps. The Digitakt II only recently doubled the traditional four bar limit. With this, it’s no longer practical to have dedicated bar indicator LEDs on the panel, so this has moved to the display where I actually found it easier to follow. Longer patterns shifted the way I worked with this unit compared to its siblings. With playable instruments and the potential for extended ambient generation from Grainer, I grabbed longer noodlings rather than programming shorter beats and sequenced phrases.

With patterns up to 16 pages, and polyphony, the sequencer could use some new ways of managing and maybe visualising sequences. You can select specific pages to edit and copy/paste, but the Tonverk lacks the range loop mode of the Digitakt II, so playback always starts from the beginning.

On the plus side you get the excellent Elektron arpeggiator, and my favourite pattern transition modes (Direct Jump, Direct Start and Temp Jump) that have been withheld from the compact units. The Control All modifier beloved on those units is absent, but you do get the performance‑friendly Memorize & Recall (temp save) system, allowing you to grab and restore a snapshot of your pattern and parameters.

I mentioned that the way the Tonverk is structured lends itself to performance. Something I kept wishing for though was macro control. The absolute joy of playing with the Analog Rytm/Four and Octatrack is their global performance and scene features. The same goes for workstation peers like the MPC and Maschine. You can have a lot going on in a Tonverk project, with nested drum kits, multiple instruments, effects and subgroups. I’d love to pull out, merge and customise the key controls for a performance or patch to one bank rather than race between multiple modes and pages.

I naturally felt myself approaching it differently: less like a drum machine and more like a production workstation and playable sound module or instrument.

Conclusion

I admit that I didn’t quite get the Tonverk at first, thinking that Digitakt II users must feel a bit bruised with a slightly better sampler coming out as a new unit. But it is genuinely different, with beefed up hardware, RAM and storage to handle the potentially large multisampled instruments. I naturally felt myself approaching it differently: less like a drum machine and more like a production workstation and playable sound module or instrument, and — refreshingly for an Elektron instrument — steering towards the melodic and ambient.

I love the idea of porting over my own collection of software‑based sampler patches that I’ve made over the years, and have them in a portable form with the Elektron sequencer onboard. You can approximate this via the Autosampler, but that can lose the nuances and the careful loop‑point editing of hand‑rolled sampled instruments. There’s some support for SFZ format patches, which has potential, but ideally the Tonverk needs an onboard editor and/or a software utility.

As it’s encroaching into workstation territory with its drum tracks and mixing structure you might compare, say, the similarly priced MPCs. These are functionally more powerful and versatile mobile DAWs, but their complexity may not be to your taste if you’re looking for the more undiluted hardware interaction you get with the Elektron worfklow. There’s also the question of how Elektron build on this new platform. It’s already gained a granular engine since launch; I really hope it will grow some synth engines. I’m going to be watching the Tonverk’s development and rooting for it.