Behringer CAT

Thanks! Well I guess there’s only one way to really find out. Luckily I found one sale. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Yup it’s good for kicks and perc sounds.

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Great. Looking forward to trying it out when it arrives. The only thing I missed until after I’d hit the buy button was the tiny amount of travel on the ADSR for snappy sounds. Hopefully I can tweezer in some good snap. :sunglasses:

Yeah the little sliders aren’t the best for accuracy but having the mod depth controls as pots is really helpful. Likewise the keyboard CV amount is a pot, ideal for fine control of cutoff

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So, I got this thing a time ago, because it was by the one piece of gear in the shop which played very awkward in my taste. I love it when this happens and made me also buy the rev2 which I still really like.

I also really liked the sound straight from the beginning, if you add some reverb. I’m routing it through my OT and also sending midi notes from it.

And that’s where the issue started: When I’m controlling it with the OT notes get stuck (The sustain just does not work; the last note just rings indefinitely) from time to time and at the beginning, it was really hard to figure out when it does it. This doesn’t happen if I plug in my keystep directly into the CAT. This frustrated me to a point where I just stopped playing with my setup. Simply because, it was both annoying to see the CAT sitting there in the middle of my setup, either being not used at all which constantly reminded of my bad investment or dealing with the unpredictable indefinitely ringing noises which would come out and screw up everything.

Of course, I also did some research but, this seems to be a common error among the units and is just a reminder of how bad quality gear you get when you buy cheap gear. Lately, I’ve been experimenting a bit with the thing to figure out when exactly the notes get stuck. And weirdly enough, it seems to only happen, when there is no midi note sent to a different midi track other than the CAT’s. I have no idea how this is even possible, but having one midi track just sending 16ths on an unused/used channel fixes the problem. I’m also not sure if this is a quirk of my particular unit or a general problem of the cheap ass midi implementation which was good enough for Behringer to sell to its customers.

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I don’t have any problems with my CAT, it responds perfectly to MIDI input and I have it connected at the end of a chain of 3 devices via MIDI thru.

Edit: If it works fine when being step sequenced via your keystep and the problem goes away when you set up a second MIDI track on the OT, I would suggest that some setting on the OT is the cause of the problem.

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Yep, no issues with my unit either.

@ande, i’ve been having the same exact problem controlling the CAT with my Octatrack. No problems if I plug MIDI directly from Keystep into CAT, but if I go from Octatrack to CAT I get sustaining notes that won’t shut off.

I’m going to try your hack of sending notes to another track and see if that works.

it’s a bummer because it’s actually a really nice sounding synth. I’m not sure if I should return it and exchange it or not. Seems like I might have the same problem with another unit.

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It remind me something as well.
Having issue with OT and Cats, then I use it with the MPC and it works flawlessly.
So most probably this cat might need some flea collar.

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I tested it with a Digitakt and it works fine, so it must be some quirk with the Octatrack.

As my dad used to say, put it on the bill.

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The note off thing could be the same as on many other devices with the octatrack . I ended up using digitakt.

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Anybody still using Cat? I’m thinking about replacing Neutron with something quicker/more immediate for live sound design/tweaking, so knob per function and lots of hands-on modulation possibilities, but without (or limited) patching required.

I’m not interested in typical analog sounds, it’s all about weird, psychedelic, alien noises, bubbles, squelches, metallic aggressive leads etc. (think psytrance), which Neutron does really well, but needs patching to do it, which I’m not particularly fond of.

Cat has S&H (it’s a must) and quite a lot FMing/modulation possibilities directly on the panel, which seems to be right in this ballpark. Also filter, while sadly not multimode, sounds quite cool and aggressive in YT demos. Anybody tried to do such sounds with it?

Previous attempts...

I’ve tried replacing it with Monologue, which also has cool aggressive filter and some FM possibilities using audio rate LFO. Sounded great, but lack of S&H and limited envelope and modulations didn’t cut it at the end.

Current replacement is Microfreak, which does a lot and I do love some aspects of it (mostly wavetable osc and sequencer), but multi-osc concept is not great for live sound design, oscillators feel limited with just 3 parameters and encoders are not great for live tweaking. Also LFO is too slow for doing crazier modulations and mod matrix, while powerful and easy to use, is not that immediate. At the end, I also don’t love it’s sound like I do Neutron.