Could it cause any harm to the Octatrack if I connect Midi out directly into Midi in ?
I can’t see it causing any harm, but I can’t see it being particularly useful either… And if you’re sending and receiving MIDI clock, then you’ll most likely find that you get a feedback loop, and you’ll only be able to work at 999bpm! 
Several folks use that for the arp on the midi tracks. I could see it being useful for fills and such as well. Just always scares me.
Be careful about your channel settings and what info is being sent and received before connecting the out to the in.
I’d make sure everything was backed up to a computer, just in case.
Midi feedback loop most likely would only require a reboot, but …
edit: Damn, gonna have to do this. Rush of ideas using micro timing on midi tracks, triggering slices from the same audio track to glitch it all about.
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My care was more about the hardware side of things.
Datawise I thought it’d be the same as running midi out into another device and from there back via midi thru. I’ve tried that, and so far it seemed to work.
Syncing shouldn’t be a problem, because I set the OT to only send or recieve midi-clock.
What I were thinking about was something like triggering sampletrigs via midi sequencer and use the additional lfo’s on the audio tracks, experimenting a lot 
.
Now still would like to hear from someone who’s more affirmative about no harm on Octatrack.
Hmm, I can’t think of any real adverse effects to the hardware. It’s just MIDI.
Can it even send or receive SysEx? If it could, you’d have to be careful to not send the firmware upgrade strings but I don’t think the most recent OS versions even support that.
The only problem I can think of would be freezing the OT and losing unsaved work.
from a thread on EU.
“I’m having great fun running a MIDI cable out of the OT and straight back into it. Using the MIDI seqencer’s CCs to control the eight internal tracks effectively doubles your LFOs and gives you the ability to “beat” a control pattern of one length against a trigger pattern of another length. Jolly good fun!
Additionally it allows for the CC pattern to run at a different clock division to the trigger pattern”
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yeah, no hardware problems to worry about. one thing to watch for tho if you want to arp audio tracks is how the OT responds to MIDI notes… they control a bunch of different functions, and if you get outside of the chromatic trig range, you can start muting your tracks, messing with transport, etc. by accident. read up on appendix c.
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Isn’t there a setting to prevent feedback loops though? I don’t think it’s the Direct Connect thing but it’s something like that. The setting I’m thinking of applies to MIDI tracks that are set to the same channel as the audio tracks: it disables MIDI input for the MIDI tracks , and disables MIDI output for the audio tracks.
Lots of activity found around here 
Well, looks like I could spare the extra cable.
Thanks to all for input !
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that’s correct, which means you can still output from MIDI tracks and input to audio tracks
there’s a section called “how MIDI is routed” somewhere in the manual, which is prob worth checking out if you want to try this.
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could you elaborate on some fun tricks with internal midi?
what about the midi micro timing tip, i don’t see what the poster means?
I have been trying to do this, and the audio tracks aren’t receiving any midi from the midi tracks. I have tried lots of different configurations and can’t find what I’m doing wrong. Midi track 1 has channel 1 assigned, Audio track 1 has channel 1 assigned in the project config. Cable is properly connected midi out to midi in. No midi clock sent or received. Can anybody help me?
I think you must enable Audio CC In in the Midi Control MenĂĽ.
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well that’s if you want to use midi cc’s…for midi notes you have to find the ones that work. The range is rather narrow and beware of playing midi track trigs from internal midi = instant freeze.
What exactly are you trying to do?
If you are trying to send MIDI notes, did you enable the AUDIO NOTE IN setting in the PROJECT > MIDI > CONTROL menu?
i think it´s enabled by default
This method is great if you want to record grooves in real time including note offs, which isn’t normally possible for internal tracks. Just load in a short waveform, loop it endlessly and play it like a synth.
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Yes I had Audio Note In enabled. And at some point when trying, the Octa just freezed while producing a nasty coarse sound, and had to reboot it. Happened twice, and just stopped trying before I broke it. Btw, midi clock was not enabled, so not sure what kind of loop was going on there. Gonna try once more tomorrow.
i had a freeze too, you gotta be careful with midi notes because they trigger not only chromatic stuff but audio & midi tracks. So you could be triggering the midi track sending the trigger = loop.
The range of “chromatic” midi notes is narrow. But it works, you can have nice arps & polyrythms.
I could finally, just had to put the damn Auto Channel back in 11. I still dont get what the hell is Auto Channel. I ll have to read the manual again.
PS: Youre right, the midi seq was triggering itself, slipped my mind.