Thank you!
Also I’ve been trying to set up the OT to act like the Rytm/A4 in direct mode so thst patterns change as soon as I change them (and not the end of their pattern length).
Is there a global setting somewhere that will have all tracks switch at the moment when I switch the bank/part?
This would be super duper for the way I’d like to perform - dropping things in time.
Thanks in advance.
Reading this makes me want go mostly use static for backing loops and the flex for one shots.
Thank you Rusty.
I’m just a messenger.
Hey again, is there an easy way to have the OT act like the Rytm in Direct Mode - in terms of changing sounds?
Project -> Sequencer -> Chain After
Also something to mention about Flex machines … to do any form of editing in the Audio Editor Edit screen, only if a sample is on a Flex machine slot may it be edited.
Audio Editor Edit doesn’t work with Static machine slots.
P17, MKI manual
A single Static sample can be as big as 2 gigabytes.
Pretty old thread and I hope I’m not beating a dead horse here. 
But I was wondering the somewhat inconsistent wording in the manual. As it has been pointed out, the manual explicitly says that “The track LFOs can not modulate the STRT parameter of a Static machine”. I have a Mk2 and I checked that the same paragraph can be found in the Mk2 manual. However, after playing around with Marcos Carvalho’s generative ambient technique, I just can’t get this out of my head.
Applying Carvalho’s method, I used Ableton Live to create and export a certain scale I chose, from A to A, that’s 9 notes, with plenty of space between the notes to let a long release completely disappear. Then I copied the sample to the OT, assigned it to a static slot and sliced it into 9 slices in AED. Then I placed several triggers here and there and added conditional locks with probabilities of 9-25%. And finally I set SLIC to ON and assigned a random wave LFO to the STRT parameter. It works without a hitch (although you have to carefully adjust the LFO depth in order to get all the slices to play) AND I could do this on five tracks using static machines and five different samples. Absolutely no problems whatsoever.
So, it’s understandable that with very long samples the card reader would start lagging, causing playback glitches and whatnot. But with sliced samples, reasonable in length, it does seem to work.
What puzzles me is the manual’s choice of words. Is it just a precaution because it’s highly probable that you could face some issues - but you’re still free to do it if you’re brave enough?
Yes.
Thanks. I’ll sleep my night better not wondering about this anymore. 
How long can a stereo sample be (in seconds) and you still able to use it with FLEX?
Depends on sampling rate, mono or stereo etc…
Stereo at highest quality?
Basically OT as a fixed amount of ram avaliable, you can play any ( format compatible) file, whatever its length as long as it doesn’t exceed said ram…I dunno what it could be in term of duration…
Should correspond to max available recording.
RAM : 85.5 MB
Reserve Recordings set to None, only one sample in a Flex slot.
16 bits: 508s -> 8m28s (stereo)
24 bits: 339s -> 5m39s (stereo)
Try these durations.
Can be doubled in mono.
(OT records stereo files only, but it can play mono files.)
Of course if you want to use several samples, you have to limit durations accordingly.
Confirmed. In Flex slots you can’t load a stereo sample longer than max recording length, 508,586 s, 10172 steps at 300 bpm, 22 428 672 samples…
Yo, I’d just like to shout out to everyone who’s dropped useful information on this thread -
Thank you!!
Since getting my OT I’ve stuck to Flex tracks for their chopping and editing flexibility, and had led myself to believe that static tracks could largely be ignored.
Stumbling across this thread and reading from the top has made me realise that I can actually use Static tracks in a way that works for me, and that means I can stretch those precious 84MB further!
Thanks again.
Man… 85.5MB isn’t what it used to be! Gotta use those static slots.
The idea behind the static machines is basic looping/playback of long audio files during a live. The flex(ible) machines are there to “perform” with on top of the static machines. The Octatrack is an advanced stereo loopstation and an audio mangler with some MIDI tracks thrown in. When it came out it was the only hardware alternative to Ableton Live. In the studio I’ve never found a use for the static machines.
