Greetings & Welcome!
Happy to hear you’re thinking about a Pyramid.
It’s become the one device I’m most passionate about currently.
Apologies in advance if some of my responses are rather nebulous. I’m not trying to be adversarial or difficult, there’s just SOOO many options it can be overwhelming.
Plus as Electronic Musicians we have such a wide range of options for our workflow. This is good, and this is bad because no one solution works for everyone.
That being said, here goes:
Same software, different (updated) hardware, most notably the blacked out buttons. All hardware versions run the same PyraOS and as far as I know, the only difference are a few hardware cosmetic things and possibly where they’re built and/or who built them…(?)
Sorry. This is where it gets frustrating: It could be. Or it could not be.
I can say it’s generally easier to understand than an Elektron device (read: much more digestible learning curve). But if you have limited experience with MIDI there are some concepts that might be painful. At least those concepts are universal in MIDI, so you’ll have to learn it sooner or later (although you probably already know all that stuff if you are familiar with your current gear and how to sync it all).
I’d suggest reading the manual and pondering how you’d set things up and how you’d control them, understanding that once you get ‘hands on’ you may likely change your mind.
But truly to do “a thing” there are many routes to get there.
Maybe someone who does that already can pipe up, but the Pyramid sends out MIDI. If those things can listen to MIDI, then you can control and automate them. The homework is left to the user.
There are 16 Channels per port in MIDI. 16 Channels is a limitation of the spec. The Pyramid has 3 ports (2 DIN + 1 USB‡) so you have 48 Channels to work with.
The Pyramid has 64 Tracks. If you think of Tracks as a destination for MIDI Data, that means you can, and most likely will, use more Tracks than Channels. It’s a common technique to use multiple Pyramid Tracks to send data to a single MIDI Channel, such as Notes on one Track, CC Automations on another.
But again: 48 MIDI Channels divided into 16 over 3 Ports.
‡ Using the USB as a Port gets trickier since that is also where the Power goes. I personally operate the Pyramid connected to a powered USB Hub, which is plugged into a BomeBox, so the Pyramid is powered by and sends & receives MIDI via the USB Port. So…Your Mileage May Vary.
Hopefully that was enough info for now.
Perhaps someone with better social skills might chime in with better info.
Again: I’d suggest reading the manual, watch a few videos. There are plenty of us Elektron users here (I use an Octatrack currently) to assist you with setups and stuff if you run into problems.
Enjoy!
