Two Elektron analog rytm next to each other

History of Techno Music - The Synths And The Samples PT III

November 3, 2026

Part III - 2000s to today

From Software Studios Back To Hardware.

By 2000 you could make a Techno record without owning a single synth. Ten years later most people did. Then, somewhere around 2013, everyone started buying boxes with knobs again.

This is Part III of our History of Techno series, covering the synths, samplers and software that shaped Techno production from the 2000s to today. If Part II was about the move from analogue hardware to digital, this decade-and-a-half is about the computer swallowing the studio whole, and then producers deciding they quite missed the knobs.

A few things drove it. Laptops got fast enough to run a full studio's worth of synths, effects and samples in real time. Plugin formats like VST meant one developer working from a spare room could release an instrument that competed with Roland and Korg. And sample packs moved from CD-ROMs on the back pages of magazines to instant downloads, and then to subscriptions.

The result was the biggest drop in the cost of entry Techno has ever seen. The bedroom producer of the 90s, saving up for a second-hand 909, could now get the same job done on a laptop and a pair of headphones.

But software brought its own problem: endless options and not much hands-on fun. So the hardware makers fought back, with Elektron leading the charge from Sweden and Korg and Roland following with affordable boxes that put the knobs back in front of you.

Let's explore the key players in Techno production from the 2000s onward.

Ableton Live

Ableton Push controller with its grid of pads

Photo: GeschnittenBrot, via Wikimedia Commons

Live 1.0 arrived on 30 October 2001, and it was built by Techno people. Gerhard Behles and Robert Henke had been writing their own software in Max for their act Monolake before founding Ableton with Bernd Roggendorf.

What set it apart was the Session View: a grid of clips you trigger live, grouped into scenes that launch together. Every other sequencer was modelled on a tape machine running left to right. Live treated a track as a set of loops to play with, which is exactly how most Techno is built and performed.

It did for the 2000s what the Atari ST and Cubase did for the 90s, and then some. It became the default for live Techno sets, and in 2013 Ableton released its first hardware, Push, which turned the software into something closer to an instrument.

Released 30 October 2001
Session View: clip launching in a grid, grouped into scenes
Arrangement View for linear editing
Real-time audio warping to keep loops in tempo
Push controller (2013): 64 pressure-sensitive pads, 9 touch-sensitive encoders

Elektron Machinedrum SPS-1

Elektron Machinedrum SPS-1 drum machine

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Released in 2001 by a small company from Gothenburg, Sweden, the Machinedrum was a digital drum machine launched just as the industry was heading into software. It became a cult classic anyway.

Instead of samples of 808s and 909s, it generated its sounds with several synthesis engines, from x0x-style analogue modelling to FM and physical modelling. That gave it a hard, slightly metallic edge that suits minimal and hard Techno down to the ground.

The real trick was the sequencer. Parameter locks let you set almost any sound or effect setting on a single step, so one track could change pitch, decay or filter on every hit. The idea has defined Elektron machines ever since. The UW version in 2005 added user sampling.

Released 2001 (UW sampling version 2005)
16 tracks
Synthesis engines: TRX (x0x analogue modelling), EFM (FM), PI (physical modelling), E12 (12-bit samples), GND (noise, sine and input)
Parameter locks on almost every setting, per step
Built-in effects and MIDI sequencing

Get the sound: Sugar Bytes DrumComputer synthesises its drums rather than playing samples, with a step sequencer that rewards the same per-step tweaking.

Native Instruments Kontakt

The rack-mounted Akai samplers of Part II were still around in 2002, but their days were numbered. Native Instruments unveiled Kontakt at Winter NAMM that January, and the software sampler went mainstream.

Early versions had their critics (Kontakt 1 couldn't stream from disk, which rivals like Gigastudio could), but NI kept at it. By Kontakt 2 in 2005 it had disk streaming and its own scripting language, and the free Kontakt Player meant sound designers could sell libraries to people who didn't own the full sampler.

That's the real legacy. Kontakt became a platform, and a whole industry of third-party libraries grew up around it. For Techno it meant pianos, strings and vintage machines that once needed racks of gear were now a download away.

Introduced January 2002 (Winter NAMM)
Time-stretching and granular resynthesis from version 1
Disk streaming and KSP scripting by Kontakt 2 (2005)
Free Kontakt Player for third-party libraries

Get the sound: want that grainy rack sampler colour on your own samples? TAL-Sampler models classic converters, and is a lot lighter than Kontakt on CPU.

Sample Packs Go Online: Loopmasters To Splice

Brainfeed Vol.2 techno sample pack by SOUND7

In Part II we saw Zero-G and Time and Space turn sample libraries into a business. In the 2000s the CD-ROM gave way to the download, and the business exploded.

Loopmasters, founded in Brighton in 2003, became one of the biggest names, signing artists and labels to make genre-specific packs. The Techno sample pack became a genre of its own: kick drums, rumbles, top loops, dub chords, all labelled by key and tempo and ready to drop in.

Then the model changed again. Splice launched in 2013 and opened Splice Sounds in 2015, letting producers pay a subscription and download individual sounds rather than buy whole packs. Loopmasters followed with Loopcloud in 2017.

It's a mixed blessing. The sound quality available to a beginner today would have been unthinkable in 1995. But when everyone downloads the same kick, a lot of records start to sound the same. The producers who stand out still layer, resample and process until the sound is their own. Some things never change.

Loopmasters founded 2003, Brighton
Splice launched 2013; Splice Sounds subscription 2015
Loopcloud launched 2017
Shift from boxed CD-ROMs to downloads, then single-sample subscriptions

Get the sound: our own Techno packs are made the old way, on hardware and in the studio. Brainfeed Vol.2 and Deep Dub Vol.2 are 44.1kHz, 24-bit WAV, all labelled with key and BPM.

LennarDigital Sylenth1

Sylenth1 Trance Essentials Vol.1 preset pack by SOUND7

Released in 2006 by independent developer LennarDigital, Sylenth1 is proof that you don't need a big company to make a classic.

It's a virtual analogue synth with no frills: four oscillators with up to eight unison voices each, two filters, envelopes and LFOs. What it did well was sound big, sit in a mix without fighting everything else, and do it at a low CPU hit at a time when laptops were still struggling.

It lost out slightly to the high-end analogue emulations in pure sound quality, but it won on character and speed. Its wide, bright leads and pumping basses became the sound of Trance and progressive in the late 2000s, and a lot of Tech House and Techno producers kept it in their template for stabs and chords.

Released 2006
4 stereo unison oscillators, up to 8 voices each
2 stereo filters: low pass, band pass, high pass at 12 or 24dB, with drive
4 ADSR envelopes, 2 LFOs
Arpeggiator and 7 effects (current version)

Get the sound: Sylenth1 - Trance Essentials Vol.1 is 64 of our presets for it: leads, plucks, pads and rolling bass.

Native Instruments Massive

Released in October 2006 and designed by Mike Daliot, Massive put wavetable synthesis in front of a generation of producers. Three wavetable oscillators, each with its own position and shaping controls, gave it a much bigger tonal range than the virtual analogues of the day.

The modulation was the clever bit. You drag a modulator onto a knob and it's assigned, which made complex, moving sounds easy to build. Daliot himself described it as "bass in war mode", and that's what it became famous for, powering the dubstep and bass music boom of the late 2000s.

In Techno it found a home in rumbling sub basses, growling mid-range textures and sweeping FX. Its 2019 successor, Massive X, carries the name on.

Released October 2006
3 wavetable oscillators with independent position control
Drag-and-drop modulation
Performer and Stepper modulators for rhythmic movement
Successor: Massive X (2019)

Get the sound: for modern wavetable sounds at a low CPU hit, u-he Hive 2 is fast to program and sits in a mix well.

u-he Diva

u-he Diva synth plugin with free SOUND7 sound packs

By 2011 software was good, but most of it didn't sound like analogue. Diva changed that. Released by u-he in November 2011, it modelled analogue circuits component by component, using zero-delay feedback filters built on methods from industrial circuit simulators.

It's a mix-and-match of classics: Minimoog, Jupiter-6 and Jupiter-8, MS-20 and Alpha Juno oscillators and filters, which you can combine in ways the originals never allowed. The result is warm, slightly unstable and very hard to tell from the real thing.

The catch is CPU. u-he admit it has "quite a high CPU-hit", and the top-quality Divine mode needs a powerful computer. For dark Techno pads, acid lines and analogue basses though, it's worth every cycle. Diva set the bar for every analogue emulation that followed. Full disclosure: we design sounds for u-he, but we'd say this anyway.

Released November 2011
Zero-delay feedback filter modelling
Oscillator models: Triple VCO (Minimoog), Dual VCO (Jupiter-6/8), Dual VCO Eco (MS-20), Alpha Juno
Filter models: Ladder (Minimoog), Cascade (Jupiter-8), Multimode (Jupiter-6), Bite (MS-20)
Quality modes up to "Divine" for final renders

Get the sound: our u-he Diva bundle comes with free SOUND7 packs, and Diva - Noize Vol.1 is 64 Techno presets for it.

Elektron Octatrack DPS-1

Elektron Octatrack MKII performance sampler

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Released in January 2011, the Octatrack is Elektron's performance sampler, and the machine that brought the sampler back into the hardware studio.

Eight audio tracks play, slice, loop and resample anything you feed it, live, with eight MIDI tracks to drive the rest of your gear. The party piece is the crossfader, which morphs between two scenes of parameter locks, so you can sweep a whole track from one state to another in one move.

It has a reputation for being hard to learn, and it's earned. Have we mentioned the manual? But for live Techno, where you're mangling loops and building tension for an hour at a time, there's nothing else quite like it. It sat at the centre of many a live rig through the 2010s.

Released January 2011
8 audio tracks, 8 MIDI tracks
Crossfader morphs between scenes of parameter locks (16 scenes per part)
4 audio inputs for live sampling
64MB sample RAM, Compact Flash storage

Korg Volca And Roland TR-8

Roland AIRA TR-8 drum machine, angled view

Photo: David J, via Wikimedia Commons

By the early 2010s a whole generation had learned to make music on a laptop and wanted something to touch. Korg answered in 2013 with the Volca Beats, Bass and Keys at £119.99 each. Tiny, battery-powered, analogue at heart and cheap enough to buy on a whim.

The Volca Beats was mostly analogue drums with a 16-step sequencer, and the Bass had three analogue oscillators feeding a filter derived from the miniKORG 700S. They synced together with a single cable and a lot of people's first hardware jam was a stack of Volcas.

Roland followed in 2014 with the TR-8, part of its AIRA range. Rather than samples, it used Roland's Analog Circuit Behavior modelling, analysing the original 808 and 909 circuits part by part, with input from the original engineers. A 909 on a Techno producer's desk again, new, and at a sensible price. Enough said?

Korg Volca Beats, Bass and Keys: 2013, £119.99 each
Volcas: battery-powered, built-in speaker, sync and MIDI in
Volca Bass: 3 analogue oscillators, filter derived from the miniKORG 700S
Roland TR-8: 2014, AIRA range
TR-8: Analog Circuit Behavior models of the TR-808 and TR-909

Get the sound: D16 Drumazon 2 and Nepheton 2 model the 909 and 808 circuits in your DAW.

Elektron Analog Rytm

Announced in January 2014, the Analog Rytm took the Machinedrum's sequencer and paired it with real analogue drum synthesis. Each of its eight voices has an analogue drum circuit, an analogue filter and overdrive, plus sample playback you can add on top.

That mix is the point. You get the punch and weight of analogue kicks and toms with samples layered in for the click, the noise, or anything else you fancy. Add twelve pressure-sensitive pads, parameter locks and performance modes, and it's a drum machine that plays like an instrument.

The sound is thick, punchy and slightly dirty, and it suits Dub Techno, warehouse Techno and anything with a big low end. We've made several sound packs for it, so we know it well. The MKII followed in 2017 with bigger pads and an OLED screen.

Released 2014 (MKII 2017)
8 analogue drum voices, each with sample playback
Analogue multimode filter and overdrive per voice
12 velocity and pressure-sensitive pads
Parameter locks, Scene and Performance modes

Get the sound: we make kits, patterns and samples for it. Dublicious III, Analoc Tekno and Fractious II all work on the MKI and MKII.

Xfer Serum

Serum Neuromorph Vol.1 drum and bass preset pack by SOUND7

Released in September 2014 by Steve Duda, co-founder of Xfer Records with deadmau5, Serum is the wavetable synth that took over the 2010s.

What made it was visibility. Every waveform, every modulation and every warp is drawn on screen as you move it, so you can see what the sound is doing. It has a proper wavetable editor where you can draw your own or import audio, real-time warp modes like FM and sync, and the same drag-and-drop modulation Massive made popular, done cleaner.

The sound is clean, wide and precise. Some find it a bit clinical next to an analogue emulation, but that clarity is why it cuts through the midrange on everything from Techno stabs to Drum & Bass reese basses. In March 2025 Serum 2 arrived as a free update for existing owners, adding sample, granular and spectral oscillators, a clip sequencer and an arpeggiator.

Released September 2014; Serum 2 March 2025 (free update)
Wavetable editor: draw, use formulas, or import audio
Real-time warp modes: FM, AM, ring mod, sync
Up to 16 unison voices per oscillator
Serum 2 adds sample, multisample, granular and spectral oscillators

Get the sound: our Serum packs work in Serum 1 and 2. Try Explorations Vol.1 for ambient and sci-fi textures, or Neuromorph Vol.1 for heavy bass.

Eurorack Modular

Doepfer A-100 Eurorack modular synthesizer in a rack case

Image: Doepfer Musikelektronik (press image)

And then it went full circle. Doepfer specified the Eurorack format in 1995 and shipped the first A-100 system in 1996, but it was the 2010s when modular went from niche to a full-blown scene.

Small modules, a standard size and 3.5mm patch cables meant anyone could start small and build a system one piece at a time. By 2013 there were over 80 makers; by 2022 there were more than 15,000 modules from over 600. Moog even built a Eurorack-compatible synth, the Mother-32, in 2015.

For Techno it's a natural fit. Generative sequences, evolving modulation and sounds that never quite play the same way twice are what a lot of modern Techno is built on. It's also the most expensive hobby in this whole series. We're not trying to recreate Mike Oldfield here, are we?

Format specified 1995; Doepfer A-100 shipped 1996
3U module height, widths in HP (1HP = 5.08mm)
±12V power, 3.5mm mono patch cables
15,000+ modules from 600+ makers by 2022

Get the sound: u-he Bazille gives you patch-cable modular synthesis in a plugin, without the bank loan.

From the 808 in a Detroit basement to a laptop and a Rytm on a festival stage, Techno has always been shaped by whatever gear was cheap, available and a bit misunderstood. The tools keep changing. The best records still come from people pushing them somewhere they weren't designed to go.