Your use case makes sense, but there is a risk of the OT tipping the balance toward making your setup feel too complex. There’s a lot of mental overhead that gets added when using the Octatrack in conjuction with other gear, and you only have two hands. I know when I was using the Octatrack, A4, and my 7U modular it started to feel like I wasn’t playing the modular anymore and instead I was babysitting elektron boxes. I’ve since switched to just the OT and modular for this reason. The other thing to keep in mind is whether you want to spend weeks (or more realistically months or years) learning its eccentricities and fitting it into your workflow.
That said, it’s a deeply rewarding instrument and a shapeshifter that can perform many different roles in many different configurations. If your goal is to take pre-recorded sounds or live sample sounds and rearrange how they’re played on the fly then its hard to find something better than the OT.
I would recommend the MKII, get one used to try it out and if you don’t gel with it you’re not out much money. At first glance it doesn’t seem like the OT MKII is as big of a change as the AR or A4, and that might be the case. But the UI is easier to grasp on the newer version, the encoders have a more fluid pot-like feel, and most importantly for me - there’s far greater headroom on the inputs. On the MKI I had to always be careful to make sure I wasn’t clipping the inputs, which sounded terrible and was hard to avoid due to the total lack of metering. On the MKII there’s still no metering but I’d have to really make an effort to clip the inputs which frees up my mind to focus on the music.
