OCTATRACK // uses / tips / tricks //

[marcus_fischer]

I am wondering if it is all just cosmetic. No mention of a new operating system or any Overbridge support.

[n_ev]

it is confirmed that the os will stay the same… kinda weird. the old design looks way better to me

[marcus_fischer]

WTF? (20 characters)

[papernoise]

I’m kind of glad that this is mostly an update to the “mechanicals”. The couple of added buttons sure would be handy, but they won’t make my MK1 OT look old!

Not that I would have bought a new OT anyway. I like mine as it is!

But the people on Elektronauts will be raging!

[marcus_fischer]

I’m glad that hopefully it won’t effect the resale value of my octatrack (as much as a true overhaul) I ALMOST listed it for sale last week but loaned it to a friend that needed a back up

[LLK]

Isn’t it a bit disappointing though that they’d release a new model that’s mainly just a redesign with no OS changes (which also means the OS won’t take any advantage of the redesign, which, to me, is extremely bizarre, as it makes the redesign rather dull). Also, and I think a lot of us had that thought, it’s in a lot of ways less pretty than the Octatrack, as I think this design direction works far better on the Digitakt, which feels thought that way, when here it kinda feels like they just “stucked” the new look on the Octatrack and called it a day. Any way, very weird update to one of their flagship product. I’d still buy the updated version for the convenience if I had to buy an Octatrack again, but if it’s what it seems (meaning no change to the chip, no change to the main functions etc.) I just can’t help being a bit disappointed.

Still I love the OT and will probably have to buy one again at some point.

[Toaster]

Still I love the OT and will probably have to buy one again at some point.

I’ll sell you mine.

Apparently the redesign comes with a few more dedicated buttons to make the menu diving a little less onerous. I’ve never groked the thing, though have occasionally used it in performances.

[LLK]

I would be delighted (because really, the old design is prettier and it matters) but right now my situation as a fellow representative of the poorer part of the western population forbids ANY purchase, new or second hand. Thanks though!

[cmcavoy]

The OT is the shark of ‘performance samplers’. It’s fully evolved, impossible to improve on.

I’m available for copywriting if anyone here is from Elektron and they want some clever lines to toss out in the upcoming series of OT related press conferences and White House briefings.

[lijnenspel]

Please tell me they still didn’t change the red/green leds for mute and active, so I don’t have to buy one (again). #colourblind

[scanner_darkly]

kinda glad it’s the same OS. my worry would be they would stop supporting mk1 OS and all the new dev would be done in the new version, which hopefully shouldn’t be the case.

[Myles_Avery]

On first blush, I wasn’t very impressed or at all interested. Same beast, different clothes.

But after coming back to it a bit later in the day, I think that the extra buttons actually might be worth the hassle to upgrade. Exposing some of the deeper functionality from beneath several layers of menu diving and multi-trig setup (hi pickup machines ) is a really nice touch, and keeps the mk2 familiar and intuitive to current users, yet perhaps even quicker to use. The real question is the change of muscle memory. (Also how those new buttons will work with rumblings of an OS update…)

No way to know for sure till it shows up in shops and we can get our paws on it. For now, mk1 is still amazing.

[papernoise]

The one thing I’m really glad about with this MK2 release is that a) the OT isn’t deal, which by itself is already great news and b) there is a faint chance (albeit very faint) that given this updated release they might finally squash some of the really annoying bugs that still plague what is the best (and probably) performance sampler around. Though they might do the nasty thing of making the update available only for the MK2… with the bad excuse that it would not work due to the new buttons, which would earn them my eternal disappointment. But I’m thinking positive

[qype]

Continuing the discussion from the Performing Modular Live thread

What you can do is the following: you slice the sample in say 16 slices. then create 16 trigs and have each play one slice (going linearly from 1 to 16, which you can do from the slicing menu using the “create linear locks” command).
Then you set up a random LFO and assign it to modulate the start parameter. Assign the LFO amount to a scene and off you go!

That’s what I currently do, but when LFO amount is set to 0 you get a click at the start of each slice, right?

I haven’t found a way to get rid of this and my current solution is to use one machine for smooth playback, one for sliced and use the crossfader to move between them. It works but takes 2 machines which is somewhat annoying.

[marcus_fischer]

Setting the fade in time doesn’t help?

[qype]

It helps for the first slice, but it doesn’t help with the rest.
This is what I’m talking about.

https://soundcloud.com/qype-dikir/octa-click/s-FL3tR

Recorded a 32 step loop with the modular using a flex machine and had another flex machine pointed at that buffer already sliced with linear trigs. No modulations and I just crossfade between the two.

From what I’ve read around it seems to be unavoidable (for live use at least), just curious if anyone is using a workaround that’s not lowpass filtering it until it’s workable.

[papernoise]

If the material is very homgeneus (is that spelled right?) you get small “ducking” effects when using fades/envelopes. Since the OT is monophonic it can’t crossfade

but @qype are you slicing with or without zero cross detection? I found not using zero cross detection to work better for such cases. theoretically if all slices’ start- and endpoints are on the exact same sample you won’t get clicks. Of course you’ll get clicks when randomizing, but you can remove them with a bit of an envelope (which can be controlled via scene)

but I should mention that I like to make the OT click so maybe I’m the wrong person to give advice here

[qype]

I mostly don’t use zero crossing, but tried it just now on the sample from the example above and didn’t notice a big difference to be honest.

It seems to me that theoretically the click shouldn’t be there for the reason you mention, but the consensus over at elektronauts is that there’s no easy way to avoid it in live use I believe. Just wanted to see how everyone else was dealing with it.

Clicking when randomizing is not a problem, I use it as part of the sound, but clicking when using continuous slices makes me “waste” a track or low pass the clicks (which doesn’t work well on a lot of material). Oh well, can’t have it all, right?

[wolfgangschaltung]

Performing Modular Live

I never use the time stretch feature. I disable it on every machine and really wish you could turn it off on the pickup machines. That and the ability to turn off the auto BPM feature would be by top two requests for a firmware update

I also struggle with these points, but was able to overcome the auto BPM feature by preloading the recording buffers of the Pickup machines with empty audio files of pre-defined lengths. Avoids unwanted tempo changes for me.

[papernoise]

I also struggle with these points, but was able to overcome the auto BPM feature by preloading the recording buffers of the Pickup machines with empty audio files of pre-defined lengths. Avoids unwanted tempo changes for me.

What I do is set up the recording buffer at a defined length (eg. 64) instead of MAX, so it does not change the BPMs. but more often than not 64 steps aren’t enough, so I’ll try your trick! How exactly are doing it?

@qype regarding clicks, I need to test that again. had done some tests with sine waves in the past… but that was a long time ago