Currently I am using AK and AR. Considering to buy OT, but I am not sure should I really buy one. I had a few year brake in playing synths etc. and now everything feels like falling in love again. So what you think should I buy OT or some other gear to make noise, ambient etc experimental stuff?
The OT is a very polarizing piece of kit. You’ll hear every argument for and against it. I’ve only had mine a couple months and for me, it hasn’t been the easiest thing to totally grasp, but I really do love it because it can be so many things
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The OT is excellent for any kind of noises, sound-mangling, and indeed for experimental stuff. But I am not sure that the OT would be the best fit for ambient compositions, because the OT, like most of the Elektrons, is optimized to work as a rhythm machine … more or less.
For ambient music I would recommend to extend your setup with a polyphonic synthesizer and combine it with FX like chorus/phaser, delay, and reverb … very much reverb indeed.
I have to disagree. OT is great for rhythmic stuff but also for ambient and slower experimental stuff. The LFOs are amazing for randomizing parameters and evolving samples over a very long period of time. You can also set tempo to be extremely slow and set different chops to come in randomly. The X-fader is also amazing for ambient and experimental.
To Op, whether you should buy one or not depends on a lot more only you will know but the OT is capable for what you want.
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I have no experience with the OT, but I am not much of a sample guy anyway… having AR and A4 I sometimes miss the ability to play/sequence big chords. So i would also recommend to add a poly synth
dsi rev 2 (desktop) you could use A4 cv to advance the sequencer steps of the rev2 (or use midi)
(I want one :-))
but you could also have a look at a novation circuit (if you dont mind using a computer for patch creation)
(I have it and it is pretty cool, I play the a4/ak in scalemode with it)
or digitone of course (but I tried it with A4 and AR and 3 crazy capable sequencers were too much for my brain…) and I felt it was wasted as just a chords machine and returned it… (2 times 
)
I did not say, it doesn’t work, I only said, it’s not the easiest way for ambience and it’s also not the most flexible.
Well this is my opinion and experience only:
- Using samples always constraints to the content of the sample. The sample might be good, but if transposed to the key needed, the sound may no longer be right.
- If there is need for a particular chord or chord progession, we have to be very lucky to find exactly that and the right sound together. For me that was always a killer of inspiration.
- Working with short samples or loops is quite easy, but it takes some experience to get short to medium long samples chopped and faded-in and -out correctly without creating unwanted noises or audio at the end of the loop. IMO the OT is not optimized for such work. This is better done in Ableton or a dedicated sampler, which is supposed to be used for exactly this.
I admit … if we find that particular ambient sample, fitting to the mood, long enough, well chopped … or we can even play back very long ambient samples from the storage of the OT, trigger them only once and apply FX … you are right … this does the job …
But from my experience I would say, using a good poly-synth with some FX will get us there much faster and with more flexibility. And there would be nothing wrong to create a best working sample with synth/FX first and then use this on the OT 
Biggest issue for me as an ambient device is pops and clicks. Even when recording a 64-length sample with a fade in set on it I still often have to go in to the raw file itself and perform a fade up, or set the Amp envelope to 1. I don’t understand why cross-fades weren’t better implemented on the OT.
It’s great fun to play with though, and a great sketchpad for ideas that you can mangle in ways that you wouldn’t necessarily think to when sat in front of a computer. I’m using it as a way of moving away from my tried-and-tested writing methods and it’s definitely providing some inspiration, which is pretty priceless really.
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That’s exactly one issue, which I was thinking of. But there is another. An evolving sound can be very different at the beginning and at the end of the sample. It might be subtle, but even if there is no click at the end of the loop, there can be still some kind of break perceivable. Searching the best position to jump back can be very time consuming. I had this too often as to recommend this as an efficient work flow.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZg3C605MfA
There are so many tools inside the OT, most videos on youtube with the OT show techno beats and drum breaks but it is capable of so much more.
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I am just considering to add OT to my set. Well the price tag ia quite high on OT. I have testes OT at local music shop more than 10 times and it has been really fun to play. Last time I was so close to buy one but something happened and at the cashier somehow I decided not to buy one. I just though is this really what I need? Btw is there going to be Black Friday discounts this year? My local music shop is selling the OT for a 1100€
Exactly. I don’t really know why so many OT videos seem to have such a limited style of music (that’s totally subjective of course). This video you posted is a nice exception. Playing with constantly shifting recorder and playback trigs seems to have enormous potential for ambient/soundscape type stuff. Look at @defenestration 's video for inspiration:
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Maybe I should buy OT, or wait little bit if there is coming discounts this year
I’d just buy a used mk1 to try it out, if you get sucked in and love it you can always sell and get a little more spendy on a mk2
mk1 has better aesthetics imo 
Is there by the way any big differences between mk 1 and 2 besides the casing and the layout of the knobs?
for me the biggest truly meaningful upgrade on the mk2 is the improved headroom on the audio i/o - whether or not the i/o actually ‘sounds better’ I don’t know, but having more headroom would be very nice (but not necessary) for the way I use the OT
All we can do here is tell you what the OT is capable of and whether we think that it will help you based on the info you give us but we cant tell you whether you should or should not buy it. My advice is that if you do end up wanting one then get a used MK1, the $ saved and resale value is worth it.
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