Couple weird Octatrack things (Cue as aux send, recording thru)

Elektron Gear Octatrack
1

I’m having a weird thing happen!

So I have my cue set up as an Aux send. Cue out into guitar pedal into input C. I’ve cued Track 1 and 2 (T1 being a sample, T2 being a neighbor) and I can hear the incoming reverb from the guitar pedal…But I DON’T have a thru track setup at all, and I turned the DIR volume of CD in the mixer down to 0. How come I can currently hear the pedal?

Secondly: Is it possible to record a thru track? I had Track 3 setup as a thru and made Track 4 set to recording 4 (though I know it’s not necessary) and told its source of recording to be Track 3. But when I lay down a rec trig and tell it to record SRC3 I get no sound at all. So either it’s not possible to record a thru machine or I’m doing it wrong.

Now that I think about it, I should probably just tell it to record input C–the same thing the thru machine is monitoring. Duh.

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2

Are you listening to the OT via the headphone out? If so, there is a headphone mixer, how much cue vs main gets sent to headphones.

Also when using neighbour tracks, you only need to cue the neighbour.

Yes it is possible to record thru machines. If you want ro record T3, it makes no difference what machine it is, flex, static, thru etc, your recorder will record what ever audio is happening at T3 ( not SRC3)

Hopefully that helps.

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3

Yep, that makes sense.

Cool. Wasn’t sure.

Then how come I couldn’t get it to work?

4

Did you tell T3 thru machine to listen to input C? Placed a trig to open the gate?
Or, as you said, just set any recorder track to record input C.

5

This doesn’t explain why he hears the incoming reverb (with DIR C/D=0 and no thru track).

6

Maybe you have a rec trig and a play trig on a 3rd track enabled? Something like that? I can’t figure out what else could cause this…

7

What’s even weirder is I switched to a different pattern entirely…
Again that pattern had no thru track and the mixer settings were set to 0 for direct CD.

Could that be what it is? Did I basically have the thru track still “playing” from the previous pattern? The reverb was DEFINITELY getting hit by the sample from the new pattern though.

Maybe I’ll record a video and see what’s up.

8

ah! you switched patterns. Was that pattern linked to the same PART as your ‘working properly’ pattern?

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9

Uhm I think so? I never changed parts at all so probably? But on the new pattern there was still no thru track or volume from input C

10

Actually you have been changing parts, you just didnt know it. You are always using a part. All the settings for all the track pages are saved in a part, not the pattern.

So if you switch patterns, but the parts are not the same, you get all sorts of weirdness.

Check your parts. :slight_smile:

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11

I worded this wrong:

I actually went to a whole new BANK and played a pattern there.

Spooky, huh? I’ll record a video very soon.

EDIT: I just tried going Main out instead of headphone out and the same thing is happening. My shoddy little video is being uploaded to youtube as we speak.

Is it because I have the gain of input C at 0 instead of -64? When I change it to -64 then the sound goes away.

Why would they design the Octatrack like that though? Seems a little silly.

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12

Bingo. New bank = all new parts. So your track page settings are not the same as in the previous pattern.
I dunno, its in the manual I think. A setting of zero neither boosts nor attenuates the incoming signal. Negative values attenuate, positive values boost. Seems quite reasonable to me.

13

I could’ve sworn that on previous projects if I turned DIR to 0 and left GAIN at 0 then my signal went away unless I had a thru machine…

14

I’ve had weird stuff happen when switching out THRU machines. Like ghost machines… Some things OT just doesn’t like. Sure there is a lot of user error but it is also buggy af. Track recorders and thrus sometimes just ignore you. So far i’ve had nothing that I couldn’t tweak away. If you get it to stop happening, count yourself lucky and move on!

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15

This could explain why I had trouble recording the thru machine in the first place. Like…I really have no idea what I did wrong. I’ve recorded stuff on the Octatrack a ton and I’m good at troubleshooting it. It was all setup to go…I should try again.

16

Yeah, definitely try again. Power cycle can fix a lot of things.

17

So you’ve switched parts (pattern from different bank => different part). That’s the essential info required to solve the mystery.

The thru machine of the previous part is still active until a new trig on that track gets executed which forces the new machine into existence.

About recording from SRC3 and simultaneous playback:

You need to either move the REC trig back or the PLAY trig forward a little bit (with microtiming) to hear it.

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18

If you have ghost audio from another pattern, double pressing stop usually shuts them up. I think it has to do with the the release time of the thru machine being set to infinite.

Edit: this even applies if you switch bank, cause it has to do with the thru amp gate never closing

19

So now I’m confused again. Was the problem a ghost track or was the problem the fact that my gain was set to 0 and not -64?

20

DIR and GAIN on the mixer page are completely different settings.

DIR specifies how much from an input pair gets directly mixed into the outputs. With DIR=0 nothing from that input pair gets mixed into the outputs.

GAIN on the other hand is used to boost or attenuate the incoming signal from the corresponding input pair (before the A/D converter). It has nothing to do with DIRECT monitoring, beside that its the first gain stage (a kind of preamp) and influences also the signal level when sampling from an input pair.

Compared to a channel strip on a normal mixer DIR would be the fader and GAIN the input volume knob.

Setting GAIN to -64 will mute the incoming signal completely. Then you can neither sample from it nor mix it directly to the outputs.

About ghost audio from a previous pattern:

With START SILENT in the pattern settings you can configure if audio from a previous gets muted. But this works only reliable when switching patterns that share the same part.

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