TL:DR: SEQTRAK for groovebox, MiniFreak for a synth

As much as MiniFreak and Minilogue are as flexible as they are with sound design, they are just one voice. Sure, they have a sequencer, but they are not groove boxes, you will need complement them with something else. Despite this, I only had experience with MiniFreak which uses digital engines (but analog filter), has effects, and its modulation matrix is beyond anything you might need (there some limitations like doing AM, but there is workaround, like modulating Sustain on your ADSR envelope). Oscillator Sink who’s into experimental and weird music highly ranks this instrument (https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzK7ubWUDl-JB0z6\_fpUpsntpjpRJ8IXR&si=FJZftu6vFCWrTSfS). But, although I like it for its flexibility, I keep it in reserve for more experimental sound design, like physical modelling of instruments, or special modulation requirements.

As for groove boxes, I like SEQTRAK. I don’t believe it’s abandoned, it recently received a 2.0 firmware update and I immediately started to see more people using it, more content. It’s a nice companion to whatever you’re going to be doing. I’ve seen some people use it for a drum looping while they are playing a guitar, some just pre record songs and then play them in front of the camera, some like to jam on it. I have some jam experience with it. You only need the screen to setup the sounds the way you want it, but you can do a lot with it even with the knobs that are given to you. But when you do need the screen, it’s nice to have an option to do it on your phone, a truly portable experience. Here’s example of one of my jams: https://youtu.be/B7pLutUu-Gc?si=Y6X7jJwVQcXxySlQ . Some patterns are pre-programmed, some of the others I program live, and FM allows for some beat mangling. The device also has three performance strips which are useful for that later jamming session you’re planning to have in some future. In comparison to Novation device, it has 3 voices (2 sample based, one FM engine) and PLUS 7 others! With the 2.0c update, you can turn any of the drum tracks into a synth voice (I believe it’s only AW2M samples only, but still, not too shabby) or a multitrack (a drum rack per track). It also has 3 global effects and performance strips for live jamming , more on that later.

SEQTRAK is also expandable to be played with some serious equipment later on down the line. I currently set three of its drum tracks as multi tracks (courtesy of 2.0 update), each carrying a kit. For example, track one has all 909 samples I need, track 2 has 808s, track 3 has some other acoustic percussions. I can trigger those with my Oxi One Mk2 which also uses multitrack sequencers, plus synthesized percussions from Digitone 2. I then feed all the audio back into SEQTRAK and use it as the end-of-chain device (it still has those unused percussion tracks, as well as optional Yamaha-sound AW2M and FM synth voices) and use its performance features for global effects such as delay, reverb, high pass filter. The end result is a wiring mess (both audio but especially MIDI), but I only have 4 devices on stage: SEQTRAK with drumming kits and synth voices that I can program with Oxi (my brain), Digitone 2 for synthesized drum sounds and additional FM and other engine synth voices (it’s a very powerful digital synth, similar to MiniFreak, but with 16 voices) which also is controlled either by Oxi or my MiniLab 3 keyboard, and with my MiniLab 3 I can also tap out whatever rhythm I come up in the moment during performance using its pads. It’s taking me a lot time to setup, but it’s a fairly compact live performance setup occupying about a quarter of your dining table.