For those of you with a PO-12, it’s crunchy? For those with PO-32, sample packs?? For thsoe with BOTH, what’s the holy grail drum machine???
Tl;dr Tonic or Rhythm and why?
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i’m very curious about this question too. i’ve heard lots of folks say 32 is overall a better product than 12 but occasionally i’ll hear someone mention there are still things that the 12 has that the 32 can’t do.
One nice thing about the PO-32 Tonic is that you can mute parts during a performance by holding down any of the numbered buttons: doing this momentarily mutes all of the sounds in that ‘group’ (column), letting you create instant variations.
The PO-12 doesn’t do this. The PO-33 you can turn the parameter knobs to silence a part.
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tl;dr tonic is clean, clear, and under control. rhythm is wild and awesome. i use them together a lot
coming from a po-14 sub, tonic felt huge. i got the rhythm shortly after that and the limitations were no big deal … going from a tonic to a rhythm might be frustrating idk
tonic is more “modern” sounding and fully featured: mute + solo functions, accents, longer pattern chaining, clearer illumination, and larger display info. you can edit sounds in real-time, tho once i’ve tuned a drum i rarely sweep parameters. all of the sound packs i’ve tried for it (9 or 10 of them? off of sc) have led me back to the factory settings, however i did consider getting a second tonic strictly for melodic duties. i’ve also considered tuning the drums down and pulling the lock-tab, but didn’t. it sounds super good, well-behaved, and sort of does exactly what you want it to do
rhythm is not entirely but almost completely different. it sounds amazing, gets into gnarly sonic territory as a percussive synth, and is completely unique (maybe sounds like korg rz-1?). layering sounds on it works really well. as @aeoner mentioned in another thread it has 6 voice polyphony. the effects are much more useful to my ear. i spend much less time in sweet spots like tonic, and much more time morphing though parameters. the lights are a nightmare. beat-repeats are poorly represented albeit cute as a button, and the clap is love/hate
both machines would benefit from variable pattern lengths. both machines have sounds i never use. both machines have taken a beating live. both sound massive thru a club pa system.
i usually use the two together chaining rhythm into tonic into an s-mixer into a nu:tekt … one of my alltime favorite setups is po-32 + sp-202
hope this helps!
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extremely helpful wow thank you so much. one thing i’m now trying to figure out is: i have a po12 sound pack and the new ep133 ko2; would loading the po12 sound pack on the ep133 suffice or is there yet still use in having the po12 itself? i’m mostly intrigued by the wild/crunchy/unique descriptions of the po12 and wondering if loading the sound packs would still be missing something
PO-12 has some cool punch-in effects and you can do some interesting things by real-time recording parameter changes, so I don’t think it’s completely replaceable by a sound pack.
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