I’m kind of surprised it took me so long to figure this out conceptually, but it should be possible to greatly expand the variety of effects on the Octatrack to include things like distorted echoes, modulated reverbs, and even shimmer effects by simply creating a duplicate track with the same sample and setting the mix to 100% wet. Has anyone tried this?
For example:
Track 1 plays drum loop A through compressor and EQ
Track 2 plays drum loop A through delay and filter but with delay 100% wet
Track 2 LFO modulates filter width
Instant sweep echo!
I feel like this opens a lot of sonic territory, especially with the Lo-fi effect applied to delays and verbs while keeping the original signal clean. Am I just really late to the party?
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I didn’t wait for you for that ! 
With 100% wet (DIR 0 in Delay page 2) Feeback = 0, Send = Max, Time = 1, you can modulate Time with crazy results, with fast or slow lfos, slides, etc…
That way you can add Fx to Master Track T8 :
T7, recording 7
Recorder 7 Src3 = Main (or Cue)
Interesting with Cue too, as an effect send.
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I like routing a loop through multiple neighbor tracks, applying up to 8 effects simultaneously and using p-locks to mess with the different effects on the different neighbor tracks. It’s also a roundabout way of getting chorus > delay > reverb.
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^what he said. neighbor tracks are the ticket.
OT routing isn’t as flexible as on the MnM, but you can also put the same loop on multiple tracks that run through different neighbor tracks, then mix them with volume, panning, etc. might also experiment with running the cue outputs into the CD inputs for longer efx chains.
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I was already doing the neighbor thing, never thought about duplicating it though, cool idea.
Duplicating and hard panning is also a good solution to something I was going to tackle this weekend: using one of the cue outs as a mono aux send from a stereo track for using external effects. Duplicate the stereo track, send the duplicate to cue only, hard pan it, and then use a pair of inputs as the return. If there’s a more elegant way to do that (sending a track in stereo to the main outs and in summed mono to one of the cueouts at the same time) without sacrificing a track I haven’t found it, but I’m pretty new to the OT so there’s still a lot of stuff I haven’t tried yet. Either way, thanks for the suggestion!
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A delay trick I use to simulate double-tracking is to pan the sample hard left, set the delay time to 2 or 3 with ping-pong enabled, and put the feedback at zero. Then I set the delay volume and the sample volume to unity to get a really wide stereo spread, and modulate the delay time a tiny bit for a manual phasing/chorusing effect.
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Nice. I used to do something kind of similar on the MPC2kxl by linking two pads but modulating the start time of one of them with velocity just slightly, so there would be a little bit of phasing that was slightly different every hit.
Sorry to bump an old thread.
Are the phaser, flanger, and chorus actually 100% wet at max value? No dry signal mixed in?
I am not 100% sure, but if you push the settings you can be pretty close to 100%. Especially with Flanger.
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Thanks!
I’ve been trying to use the Chorus as a vibrato. There are a bunch of settings, but I figured I could get there. Here’s the purest I could get:
Taps: 1
FBLP: max
DEL: 0
DEP: to taste
SPD: to taste
FB: 0
WID: 0
MIX: max
Unfortunately, that attenuates the signal. On OT I realized that “1 tap” is actually two taps, despite the labeling. The manual even calls the chorus a “2-10 tap chorus”! I think the two taps interfere with each other, attenuating the signal. Moreover, for vibrato I’d really only like one delayed signal.
TLDR: I had thought it was Dry signal that was causing the attenuation, but I think it is two copies of the wet.
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This is on a track that is reading/writing a recording buffer. I was hoping to avoid any microtiming stuff that’s needed for that approach.
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I see. You may not need microtiming if you start vibrato with a decreasing pitch (triangle) but I am not sure…
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Using the Delay and a custom LFO might be the best I can do to get the vibrato effect I want.
Delay is on Tape mode with Direct signal on 0. X, Sync, Lock, Pass are all off.
Time: 1
FB: 0
Vol: 127
Base: 0
Wdth: 127 (though I do like to lower this)
Send: 127
I then make a custom LFO. I typically go for a triangle wave that ranges from -4 to 4. Point that to the delay time with low depth and speed to taste to get the vibrato sound.
Is it perfect? No. Really high notes get artifacts from the LFO interacting with the delay. A pure sine audio signal can get really crunchy. Lowering Wdth helps tame that if you don’t want it.
The delay also slightly attenuates the signal, even with no filtering or modulation. That eventually fades my loop out if the delay is on the feedback path. Not the end of the world.
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I didn’t go with this because I was getting clicks at the loop point. And it was tough to get the vibrato subtle.
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Yes, I gave it another try yesterday, some caveats…
Im glad you did.
I now posess the new AND ancient knowledge, which is exactly why i come here.
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I was playing around with this some more trying to dial out some of the noise and to A/B compare some of the different approaches. I do think the delay line approach is the best vibrato I’ve achieved, with the caveat that I’m rolling off the highs.
In A/Bing with other approaches I did realize that the delay causes drift in my application since I have it in the recording buffer path. To compensate for that I ended up using a longer delay time and moving the record buffer’s playback trig. I think I arrive at putting the play trig on 9 and using the delay at 128. That’s for a 16 trig long buffer.
That keeps everything in time, adds vibrato, and adds a nice lo-fi character that evolves.
If you’re willing to dedicate two tracks to this (one for the buffer, one for the vibrato), then you can achieve similar results with either a neighbor track or a flex track. It is possible to get an effect that is less evolving if that’s your preference.
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And perhaps resample that one, etc… 
