That's very nice of you, but I think he meanwhile made his choice, because this thread is from July 2016.

 

Just got this baby, hell of a sequencer. Damn, sounds are mental aswell. Bit of a learning curve.
Tried layering some preset patterns with some soft synths, no comparison lol, with Reaktor 6 that is. Rm1x sounds way better.

 

Sorry about that. There are alot of new drum machines on the market though, perhaps peepz can chime in again

Anyone experience with the elektron series?

 

Arturia SparkLE can be had cheap used these days and definately within your budget.
It loads samples or you can create your own.

 

I got one for £70 on ebay about a year ago. great fun. Pretty simple and intuitive. You can easily mod to add midi out too.

 

I have a beatstep which are pretty cheap nowadays. Also great fun.

 

I was hesitating for a while because my first Octatrack menu diving experience put me totally off, but now I got me a Digitakt.
I thought I'd get me one as a high-end drum machine that allows for quick sampling inside the box (otherwise Spark/iSpark might have been my choice), but I was really surprised about how easy & quick this little box is.
And I was even more surprised about its power, I'm using it as my "live" 8-track MIDI sequencer now, in addition to the 8 internal sampler tracks of course. Hell of a box, really. I can even use parameter locks (different set of MIDI CC on every single step in a pattern) to send CC or program changes to synths, and for the first time I'm getting Korg Wavestation-alike wave sequencing sounds out of good old FM7 running on an old tiny laptop next to it.

 

Sounds nice, I want a Octratrack aswell. though alot of people don't seem to like it that much, because the menu diving you mentioned. Usually I understand these kinda machines pretty fast. Cus im a nerd. But learning a machine for 6 months to fully grasp it, is not very appealing. At the end of a long working day, I want to just jam and not study the manual.

Digitakt seems indeed a logical choice for the octractrack. Are there vital things you miss if you look back at the octratrack?

 

Hmm, in your case it's a tough decision.
If you can get friends with a workflow that involves more button presses for the same things to do but having a machine that is definitively more powerful than the Digitakt, then Octatrack might really be your better option.
It's not that many happy Octatrack users are wrong! It's just that I personally prefer simple and fast workflow over rich features.
You said that an the end of a long day, you just want to jam. YES!! My words.
I suggest trying an Octatrack first. I wouldn't bother with mk1, start with the mk2. It really feels better.
And take your time. If you see that you can get along with the workflow, then go for it!

To answer your question: Actually I'm mainly missing two things:
1) Stereo sampling
2) The Compact Flash card for storage. And after promises and promises, Overbridge for Digitakt is still not available...
There's more nifty stuff that I'd like to have in the Digitakt too but I can live with that. I'm using it for what it does well.

The Digitakt otherwise has everything I was always looking for, at an acceptable price, and it feels like the machine that has been designed exactly the way I would design it, in terms of menu structure, key mapping, button and manufacturing quality and sound.
It's a very well thought-out machine.

 

Depends what you regard as cheap. For a drum machine only device, you can pick up the Roland Boutique TR-08 and TR-09 preowned for approx £200 and the Arturia DrumBrute for about £250. Then you got the Roland TR-8 for the £300-350 range.