October 21, 2015
OK, it’s been some time…
Got to love the OT the way it is… i still don’t have the latest os installed… have some problems but I adapt and soon find a solution which is even better than what I wanted in the first place… I love when I hit a brick wall and start to work my mind and enjoy this love-hate relationship…
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Good attitude to take I think
it was in October last year - after all the crazyness with the AR and A4 - that i needed to take a breath and do something fresh, something new again. After round about 5 years i put my OT out of the cupboard again, started jamming right away - and said to myself: WHY COULD I EVER LIVE WITHOUT IT FOR THAT LONG ???
Its older, yeah - no Trig Conditions, no Midi-CCs that could be assigned to a scene … but it works so damn great and totally stable that i dont know if i want Elektron to change something again. Not after such a long time with no one touching its OS code. who knows? maybe they are not sooo deep into its code structure anymore and adding just a few new features would mess something up in other areas? if that happens they had to go over the code again and have to fix it again - this would take ressources and would probably delay the Digitakt … nah, i think its OK the way it is. Elektron will most likely not risk opening up a new jobsite since the OT’s OS is stable the way it is. So we should rather argue what the Digitakt could get instead. As the Octatrack lite it could make up for the stuff we miss on the OT 
Octatrack is very nice as is - my feeling is why not make it closer to perfect? Instruments that are no good can die as-is. Great instruments deserve that final last touch up to let them live long! I had given up hope until Elektron confirmed the developer is still there. Yes, it can be hard even for the original developer to go back to old code. If anything I would hope that perhaps Elektron and artists who are friends with Elektron might want a few final fixes just for their own personal use.
Of course if the parts are still easily available to continue to making the Octatrack it is also a wise business decision. Make some updates, write a press release and … more sales? Look at Clavia and the Nord Lead - they sold it for a very long time. New products are nice but money from existing designs is ever better!
When I get paid to work on someone else’s code I try to plan it out as best as I can in advance. One can save a lot of time by making sure you have a good idea of exactly what you are doing and the shortest way to do it while touching as little existing code as possible (ie. do not introduce new bugs!)
My goal was to ponder easy OS changes but perhaps the better topic is “slightly hard but big “wow” factor changes” that would apply to those that don’t already own the octa?
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I thought like that in the past as well. Maybe some guys in this forum remember my complaints about the Rytm because of similar reasons back at that time - as i still called myself subbz2k 
But … if you think about it, it does make sense to not touch a machine that is close to perfect:
a) Close to perfect means: It is not perfect and other machines in a future Lineup could fill the gap. Leading to more sales. Because: More sales are usually generated from new stuff, not from updated old stuff. Look at the Virus TI for example. If Access would still exist (not be a placeholder company anymore) and would put out a new OS for the Virus now: No one would buy a Virus just because of that. Because it became irrelevant since plugins like XFer Serum already sound better than it. The OT is a Sampler in the end and a lot of people do Sampling in Ableton Live because its faster and suits their need better. And the People looking for a Hardware Sampler would buy an Octatrack anyway because its simply the best Hardware Sampler on the market today Even in its current state. Maybe this might change when the new MPCs come out, but their workflow is different - so not everybody would hop on that train automatically.
b) a perfect product sets a benchmark for a company. If a product is too perfect, the company has a hard time creating a new product that holds the mark or even exceeds it. Elektron is still not the biggest company out there so they have to think about their decisions twice. They dont have a budget like Roland or Yamaha has. A product that fails is a worst case scenario for Elektron. And products would fail if a company has one product that is perfect. The Machinedrum was so close to perfect, that people not just hold back as the Rytm came out but rant a lot about it as they bought it. Because they obviously compared it to the MD and the Rytm cant compete with the Machinedrums pure Synthesis Madness. Its always a risk, so why increasing the Risk and make another product perfect if you have plans for the future? Does make sense a little, does it?
[edit] and c) Elektron has employees that want to get paid. And an update for an exisiting older product would primarily target those that already own it. Those that dont have it and want to buy it cant tell from the patch notes that it is THE killer feature they just added. If they even read patch notes. So no, constantly updating the Software would definitely not create new sales automatically. New products on the other hands do. And the employees are happy that their salary stays high and they dont need to switch to another company
Sorry to be a complete bell, but isn’t easy subjective?
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Yes, easy is very subjective - especially when none of know anything about the code and implementation details. The idea was to collectively think through the suggestions to make sure everything is clearly defined and all hidden conflicts resolved. If possible, we could :
- remove those suggestions that seem “easy” but aren’t.
- Make the list “easier” by clearly defining the best way to implement a desired improvement.
It may never happen but a list of requests that is well reasoned has a better chance. I admit I usually laugh at people petitioning a synth company to make updates (and I would not start a petition) but I would be interested to see what people would suggest.
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All these threads about asking for more features from an instrument that’s six or seven years old. Look elsewhere for what’s missing. Keep looking in the OT, and you’ll never find it.
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You know that you can email feature requests to elektron?
I’ll be a broken record by saying how about one or two(to fix the first one:wink:) more last hoorah bugfixes 
Edit: no new features at all, just lingering issue fix, if they break more stuff, can always stay on E or H…
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Can you summarize the lingering issues? If anything becomes of this I will send it all to Elektron.
Maybe in a few days, my head hurts just thinking about it…
The best thing for everyone to do is submit bug reports, if Elektron confirms it, it will be added to their list. I have submitted and got confirmation for three bugs…
I did a quick summary here:
But these are just my major ones, there’s more smaller ones and plenty that other people have found…
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Since Elektron stated (did they?) they won’t further develop the OT, I wonder how would they feel about someone making a custom os / os overlay adding new functionality?
(think: jjos or the happy experiments over at operator-1.com late last year)
I think we’d have to bribe a dev to retire …
As crazy as it sounds, if we had a very tight, organized list we could perhaps offer to pay for the dev’s time. At some point it would be worth everyones time and money to make a few last changes. I would guess that some of the people at Elektron use the Octatrack too and would be happy to have a few small things done.
This is why I would like to have a very organized list with all the details worked out. Make sure all the key combos are defined and all conflicts resolved so that the work could go fast.
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The best and only thing the community can do is be coordinated and vigilant about actual known/conformed issues, anything that’s already in there and isn’t working quite right is a legitimate target for resolution, but unless it’s something critical it’ll likely suffer the wait behind all the other development for new products … but as long as we know what’s unresolved and keep that in one place we’ll know what to look out for (eventually, hopefully) and what not to keep reporting to Elektron … i.e. i think these kinds of initiatives make sense for everyone if expectations are realistic, it’d be pretty hard to justify leaving this unresolved for too long
There is absolutely no way that money will ever factor into this, so that notion should be dropped, it wouldn’t be necessary; but the end users will need to dip into their patience wallet, that much is clear … esoteric issues on the OT will be way down the pecking order compared to issues getting OB sorted and so on, this is a hard truth … especially as there also seems to be lots more devices coming along supporting this … obviously any known issues that are more critical you’d like to think there will be some more urgency to get those fixed … that would probably only be aided by a community working together to keep the issues in some sort of focus. like here … the last endeavour lost some steam, but that had a different remit … a concise readable list of known bugs is really a no-brainer win for both new and established users, but there may be some disagreement about what constitutes a bug and what is a quirk of functionality as for as Elektron are concerned
fwiw … these slow fermenting threads have a tendency to get locked automatically by the forum software after a while, so the opening post will become uneditable by normal users, so it may be best to organise via a Mod or we can sort some wiki type post out
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We did one to DSI for the Tempest and it worked, but we had 2 very skilled driving forces,
Roger Linn and John the Savage. Between to two they compiled and confirmed all the bugs.
Now a great % of them have been squashed. Much of that was achieved by R L obviously having the “cant be bothered to fix bugs on older machines” Dave Smiths ear.
I put the OT in the same boat as the Tempest, A great idea with decidedly poor original software, that has never really been finished.
aS i often do, repeat myself, the original overbridge disaster killed A LOT of machine development particularly
for the OT.
And why I dont consider new Elektron gear anymore, only second hand and after all the issues have been raised. An out of pocket beta tester I will not be.
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I think it’s the same for all company… not relative to elektron and from my point of view : at least with elektron I have joy for the new addition which is not promised or due, and offered for free… I can speak about so many company who launch product with 60% ready, or asking for money to upgrade etc…