Analog Four acting up when slaved to Octatrack

Daisuk · 2014-06-02T09:57:26.000Z

I used my OT as the clock source, and had it send transport and clock to the A4, which in turn had the MIDI thru going to a Machinedrum. Did a few jams with a couple of friends, but stumbled on some very, very annoying problems.

Every jam would basically just stop at some point because the sound of one of the voices of the A4 (usually the active one) would just muffle or turn to shit. At one point it sounded like the LFO went way out of hand, yet when I tried to figure out which setting had been edited, it didn’t seem like any setting had been changed. From that point on the sound of the active track either went completely silent or just sounded like shit (like a muffled fart in a can). This happened on three occasions, and always when I was operating the Octatrack.

Has anyone else experienced this? What could be causing this? I wasn’t sending any MIDI from the OT, just transport and clock (and possibly program changes, although I don’t think I did). The A4 project I was using was completely blank, and I have the latest OS installed.

We were thinking of using this setup live, but can’t really do that until we figure this one out.

Any help much appreciated!

subq · 2014-06-02T19:52:55.000Z

there is a confirmed bug when sending clock from OT to A4 (as far as having issues with trigs on the A4)…not sure if your issue is related to that or not

Rusty · 2014-06-02T23:09:59.000Z

Good news is that you are not alone… bad news is I haven’t figured out why this is happening, or how to resolve it yet, but I am having the exact same problems. Have a set up like the below:

Octatrack #1 Midi Out -> Midi Splitter
– Midi Splitter -> Analog Four Midi In
– Midi Splitter -> MachineDrum Midi In
– Midi Splitter -> Octatrack#2 Midi In
– Octatrack#2 Midi Thru -> Shruthi Polivoks Midi In

Everything appears to be working perfectly fine, A4/MD/OT#2 sequenced internally, Polivoks from a midi track on the master Octatrack.

Off the top of my head, Octatrack #1 is sending Clock, Transport and Program Change, for the basic requirements to get all boxes synced up and playing nice together.

One moment everything can be fine, the next, possibly after a pattern change the A4 sound turns to complete arse, not even closely resembling the way it is supposed to sound. I think it may be limited to the active track on the A4, but I haven’t done enough testing yet.

Obviously reloading the Kit/Sound resolves the issue, but that is not a fix. Like you, thinking about using this setup live, but until the problem is resolved that isn’t a potential option.

I’ll try and do some testing when I get some spare time (lol), and write down my exact settings, and try and pinpoint when/how exactly this occurs.

Daisuk · 2014-06-03T09:10:16.000Z

""Rusty"":

One moment everything can be fine, the next, possibly after a pattern change the A4 sound turns to complete arse, not even closely resembling the way it is supposed to sound. I think it may be limited to the active track on the A4, but I haven’t done enough testing yet.

Obviously reloading the Kit/Sound resolves the issue, but that is not a fix. Like you, thinking about using this setup live, but until the problem is resolved that isn’t a potential option.

I’ll try and do some testing when I get some spare time (lol), and write down my exact settings, and try and pinpoint when/how exactly this occurs.

Well, it’s good to know that it’s not my particular box, at least. The third time it happened during our jams (which was when I was paying close attention to it), it affected the second track on my A4 (which was the active one), while I was operating the second track of the Octatrack. I’m pretty sure I was editing the ‘Rate’ parameter on the OT.

Yeah, it sucks to have to save kits all the time to be able to reload them in that case. It’s not something I’m doing when I’m jamming, anyway, so the sound that got away (which incidentally, usually was the lead of the whole thing) just halted the jam to a full stop. Very annoying.

Elektron - you reading this?

Daisuk · 2014-06-03T09:17:58.000Z

""subq"":

there is a confirmed bug when sending clock from OT to A4 (as far as having issues with trigs on the A4)…not sure if your issue is related to that or not

Yeah, I did have trouble with trigs as well. I needed to push some of them several times to turn them on or off.

Uturunku · 2014-06-03T09:43:51.000Z

Try to make A4 as a master device and OT as a slave. I didn’t have issues like you described in such configuration.

By the way I decided to make A4 as master device because it has only 8 banks compared to 16 in OT. And according to the rule that says that the speed (number of banks of A4 in our case) of the slowest device in the system will define the averall speed (number of banks) of the system. I didn’t check behaviour of A4 in case when OT is master and you change current bank to 15th (in example) which doesn’t exist in A4. But I desided not to risk with this on lives.

Daisuk · 2014-06-03T10:31:48.000Z

""Uturunku"":

Try to make A4 as a master device and OT as a slave. I didn’t have issues like you described in such configuration.

By the way I decided to make A4 as master device because it has only 8 banks compared to 16 in OT. And according to the rule that says that the speed (number of banks of A4 in our case) of the slowest device in the system will define the averall speed (number of banks) of the system. I didn’t check behaviour of A4 in case when OT is master and you change current bank to 15th (in example) which doesn’t exist in A4. But I desided not to risk with this on lives.

That’s a good suggestion - thanks! For some reason, I’ve been thinking the A4 can’t function as master since it doesn’t function as a MIDI sequencer, but of course it can send MIDI clock and transport controls. Not a very conscious thought, but one that has been in the back of my head. Thanks for the suggestion, I’ll just do that!

Rusty · 2014-06-03T12:51:43.000Z

""Uturunku"":

Try to make A4 as a master device and OT as a slave. I didn’t have issues like you described in such configuration.

Yeah, that won’t be an acceptable solution for me…

Anyone else having similar issues?

udenjoe · 2014-06-03T13:22:34.000Z

Turn off sending Midi CC #s from the OT. Also make sure Audio channels are not sending CC #s. I used to see the problem you are having.

You can also check that each device has a different midi channel, but I don’t think this will make a difference.

tsv · 2014-06-03T13:35:44.000Z

As a side note my AR won’t slave to the OT consistently either. It will invariably just stop after a minute or so. Using the AR as master works fine but this is not my preferred setup.