I rubbing against the limits of the DT. I still love the machine, but starting to feel limited a bit too much. I know there are tons of post about this and I went trough few of them, but as I clarify my workflow I got a few questions on my mind.
I do field recording that are very long and in stereo. I normally transfer them to the VS-1880 (I don’t use a computer in my setup). The problem is that I can’t recall a recording easily.
I read the OT can only hold 60mb of sample, but it can play directly from the CF card, does that mean I can play any length of sample? I like leaving a running sample in the background of field recording (beach sound or urban scape) which can be 20 minutes long at time…
I use a ditto x4 for a looper. It can take up to 4 loops + over dub of very long loops and can sync to Midi clock. It’s a solid solution, but doesn’t offer loop manipulation after they are recorded. I like how simple and live it is though.
Does the OT live looping tools offer similar solution? How long of a loop can I record? Does it have to stay within the 60mb?
I have a few effect pedal from the Avalanche Run, to the Zoia and Boss delay, does the effect on the OT on par with some of these pedal? I also have a tons of effect on the VS-1880, wondering if they are comparable to the OT.
I really like improvising when I play, pulling samples as I go, sampling a synth sound that I use on a track right away - I’m worried the OT might not be as improvisation prone, but I also think that if I setup a couple of live looping track, a couple of sample based track, and setup my midi track then I can simply play and get in the zone without having to step back into ‘setting up’ the OT. Not sure if that would work in this workflow.
Anyway - I probably should simply get an OT and test it out for a few months to really know what it’s all about, but it’s an expensive move.
An that take 1 of the 8 audio track right? And I can keep it playing while other tracks are looping? My ideal would be 1 track for long soundscape, 1 or 2 audio live looping + 3 or 4 percussion samples based track. Then using a few of the midi track to control 2 or 3 synth. Still figuring out the best plan of action.
Each track can either play from RAM or from the CF card. So you can stream up to 8 different stems from the CF card in parallel if you want (without any hiccups).
Yes. There is not much difference how you can treat streaming samples from the CF card. You can do almost everything you can do with samples in RAM.
The differences are:
you can’t destructively edit their content in the audio editor like adding some fades, because they don’t fit into memory (but you can view them, change their properties, slice them)
when using fast modulations on start position like jumping around wildly they may glitch from time to time
I believe the limit is a 2gb sample, which is a couple of hours depending on bit depth. 20 minute files are no problem.
I think live loops are limited to the maximum buffer size, which is about a minute since it is split 8 ways.
Of course! They complement each other.
I am obliged to say this is really more a problem if you are using the buttons to play live. If you have the trigs on the sequencer I don’t notice any clicks and if I am playing long field recordings there is no click apparent.
Glad you included this, this is a disclaimer often made.
I recently did some tests to see if I could get those glitches to happen via LFO and scene fading. The goal was to test if my 133x CF card would do any worse with such actions as my 800x CF card.
I loaded up the same four, 24 bit stereo static .wavs (two were short chains, two were longer 15MB stems), and put them across all eight tracks. I LFO’d the start point on every one of them, and assigned the start point on every one of them to the crossfader.
To my surprise neither glitched. Not while modulating with both LFO and crossfader, all eight tracks simultaneously.
And in trying to get the speed of modulation up high enough to hear any glitching, the actual action of modulation itself was so wild and erratic that glitching from slow file access would sound no different. The result of the modulation was glitchy by design (it sounded the same with them loaded in Flex).
So, a random side note that is worth knowing… the speed of the card is plenty.
For such actions, even the slower 133x that shipped with the OT some 10 years ago.
But I think it also shows that we can ignore the caveat that Flex is better for such actions. My tests, and I invite others to repeat them, have shown me that start point modulation intentions can be ignored when I am considering what to put into Flex and what to put into Static.
Where as these should be the primary concerns for using the Flex slots vs Static:
and
For these and other reasons, I work to fill my Static slots first, while putting only my smallest and shortest samples in the Flex slot list. And these are rare, because I usually end up compiling those into chains that wind up in the Static list. So the result is a Flex list containing mostly snippets I recorded into the OT from the inputs.
Yea I used both the 4GB Kingston 133x and a 64GB Sandisk Extreme 800x (120MB/s max read)
I was very surprised by the results, and it has changed how I keep my OTs’ slot lists organized. Soon after, I took 64 loops I had in the Flex list out and re-warped them to the same tempo in Live and made a chain that takes up 1 static slot. Free’d up 30MB of Flex RAM. These were loops I don’t slice, so obviously this action isn’t ideal for all samples. I still timestretch them in the OT, however.
In my testing, I didn’t include live trigging of slices via MIDI or step buttons, as you mentioned. Those are things I just don’t do with the OT. But I can totally see why some folks would, and for that Flex would be ideal.
I just tested with the Extreme, plocked slices randolized by lfo, or played normally.
Some clicks can occur, not perfect, but it’s not that bad, encouraging to test more.
Not click/glitch free imho! But totally usable if you already have hihat sounds!
The OT has some pretty flexible options with the 80mb. You can basically reserve certain amounts of it per track and this can increase your looping track length dramatically. Pickup machines are great looping tools also, that can take advantage of this. You can easily do some 64 or 32 beat sections of loops, with other odd times scattered over the top. Sounds like for the kind of work you do it’s definitely worth giving the OT a go and seeing if it works for you
