My first OT was the MK1. I got it for a good price, and it served its purpose for me, but it’s been years since I had it. I have had a few Mk2s, and I typically sold them because I had too many samplers or was using software.
I refined my setup since and it’s been pretty stable - I have a few drum machines and use one of those. 1 synth, a Rev2 or a Virus, a mixer and a sequencer (Hapax). I live perform and record that.
I have been using the MPC sample as my stereo sampler and what I notice is the sampler just plays such a huge role in my music. What I typically do is trigger some texture sounds to run in the background, I chop up some vocals to be the main hook and I trigger all that stuff on the hapax. I will also trigger chord samples on another track and would very much prefer to modulate them with LFOs so they don’t sound static, but I can’t do that on the MPC Sample. Then I have one bank of sounds on the MPC that just has FX and random sounds, and I live play those from the MPC pads while I record, just hitting pads when I feel like it. Most of my performance is done on the mixer, but the OT of course has the cross fader that opens up possibilities.
MPC Sample is pretty limited for this type of work. No MIDI CC’s besides triggering pads, no LFOs, Only 1 pair of stereo outs and you have to resample a lot. It’s actually an awesome workflow for standalone, but using it as my sampler connected to a bigger system, I am missing a lot of the stuff I listed above.
It’s been a few years so I am just making this post to see if I am missing anything here. The Octatrack can time stretch beats and slice like the Sample. It gives me the extra pair of outs so I can separate some sounds into a mixer channel. It can do a ton of filter modulation to a chord sample, which is a big part of the sound I like. It can chop vocals, pitch, timestretch breaks. It can be controlled by the Hapax, while also letting me live trigger some sounds at the same time (Pretty sure at least?). What I want to do there is make some chains with FX samples, send them through the effects and mess with them, and then just trigger them in the moment as ear candy type sounds.
The Mk1 form factor is awesome. Obviously older and they go for ~200USD more than they used to. I prefer the mk2, but would like to save 4-500 dollars and I believe the main difference is there are more buttons on the Mk2, so its a little easier to navigate. Correct me if I am wrong. I am pretty comfortable on the OT, so I feel like the muscle memory could kick in for me.
I don’t want to sell my Sample, but that could get me the difference in cost for the Mk2, so just weighing the pros and cons there and making sure everything I listed above can be done. Appreciate any advice. It’s crazy to me that this sampler is still the top tier after so long. I’d consider the digitakt 2, but I really want to have multiple outs and not mess with overbridge.
Edit - it’s crazy how after I made this thread that an offer I made on a mk2 got accepted. So maybe the dirtywave m8 mk2 will be my sacrifice here, but I was able to get an OT mk2 again.
