hey guys, i did a nice track yesterday with my octatrack connected to my prophet. Midi out of OT into Midi in of Prophet and the other way around. i saved all the samples onto my cf card and saved the project. after ,i turned off my prophet while my song was still playing on the octatrack (stupid idea apparently). the moment i switched it off all the tracks of the OT went silend except track 4 for some reason. i could see all the samples and all the trigs but i couldnt even preview them on any of the tracks except track 4. i didnt use scenes yet so that cant be the problem. i checked if it had anything to do with parts but i dont think so. did this ever happen to you!
grateful for any advice, thank u !
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Did you have a saved version or did you lose some of your work? Which unit is the sync master and which is set to external sync? There is some amount of power that goes from the MIDI out (which is why it can power a WIDI jack) depending on the unit, so it could have been a surge when turning off the Prophet.
And now when you only power up the Octatrack, what’s going on?
Did you accidentially change or reload the part on the Octatrack?
The only way a synth connected via midi should be able to do anything to the Octatrack is via midi cc or program change.
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What happens when you turn the prophet back on?
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All midi in ports are opto isolated so no power surges. The only thing the prophet could have done is send some pc or cc data as @Schnork said
Most likely the OT wigged out in some way when it received that data packet
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You could check if/what the Prophet sends over midi when you switch it off (freebie midi monitor software/plugin if your DAW doesn’t have one). I can’t really think of anything that could happen that could destroy a project on the Octatrack.
The Octatrack won’t like it if you switch it off while it’ s writing to the card, that’s why there’s a card activity LED on the frontpanel, but switching off a synth connected via midi shouldn’t be able to do any harm.
You said you switched the Prophet off while the song was playing - is that the sequencer or song mode/arranger?
And was the card activity LED still flashing when you turned the synth off (was it within 1-3 seconds after you saved the project on the Octatrack)?
Are you using the og Elektron power supply?
Are you the first owner, no one has opened it or tried to repair anything?
My Octatrack doesn’t like it when I save parts while a pattern is playing, a couple of times it did crash while saving. It’s really rare and I haven’t figured out what might lead to it crashing as most of the time, saving parts works just fine and seems like I’m the only one with that issue. At least I haven’t seen anyone else mention it. So Octatrack can be a bit finicky under certain circumstances…
Please describe your audio routing. In detail.
Are we 100% sure that the tracks didn’t stop playing because they were midi tracks and were still playing the synth live, with audio routed into the inputs, at the time that you shut it off?
Maybe you took samples but did not actually change any track info other than the 4th track which you mentioned?
What is on the 4th track, a prophet sample? Or some other sample?
nothing changed, the project is still screwed. i actually was working on a new part , but never had any issues like this when changing parts…
i have all my gear routed seperately into my fireface800 that i control with totalmix. i connect one output of the interface into the OT and keep monitoring off for the inputs. at the moment i switched off the prophet all the midi tracks on OT were muted and im 100% sure that it was recorded audio and not coming from the synth. On track 4 i had just a percussion one shot on a slot machine and as i mentioned when going into the sample pool i actually could preview all of the samples i used in the project BUT ONLY ON TRACK 4!
thank u, i will check when im back at the studio! it was just the sequencer playing… about the LED im not sure, wasn’t really paying attention to it at that moment. i use the elektron power supply that came with it my OT MK2 and im not the first owner, so maybe theres a possibility it was opened once. but judging from the outside i got it in really solid condition.
nothing. that was the first thing i tried…
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Did you reloaded it ?
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in your setup synth(midi) >> OT >> synth(midi)
when you turn off the synth there are multiple scenarios possible.
a) midi ignored immediately, no in, no out. nothing happens
b) midi not processed, no out. nothing happens
c) midi not processed but passed along. <---feedback risk
A synth sending a turn off message is unlikely and for certain not implemented on DSI (prophet).
But a synth allowing to pass out received midi when turned off is a high likelihood.
On top Octatrack does not respond to any Sysex, intentionally - to prevent scenarios like yours.
That means midi signals capable to mess up a OT project are also limited to the pure midi specs of OT.
First thing to look at if suspicion of random midi is assumed: OT track solo settings.
Solo is not mute, despite has audible same effect.
- Parts can not be changed by external midi,
- Project Settings can not be changed by external midi,
- Page Options can not be changed by external midi,
- Trigs can not be changed via midi unless you where explicit recording a track,
- Page settings can be changed via midi, indeed,
- Mutes, Solo and Volume can be changed via external mid.
- Track Select can be changed via external midi
now explaining special cases:
-
if Sysex ignoring
F0...F7went wrong.
in that case no value in sysex pack can technically exceed values above 127, impossible, in particular on DSI devices who use packed sysex format with data of0x00 .. 0x7F(0…127). When such data set would accidentally be interpreted by skipping the entry messageF0then you should see many values in your project set on their max range boundary. If thats not the case then you can exclude this scenario. -
if NRPN midi was send back into OT.
NRPN consists of 4 distinctive serial cc messagesCC99, CC98, CC6, CC38, only properties of the OT following those cc would be able to have changed and then also only on that track the nrpn midi channel was given on an external device like DSI. Looking at the OT midi table the values of … are
99 ignored,
98 ignored,
06 ignored,
38 Audio-Track FX1 param5 || MIDI-Track param CC#3, -
if Notes were send & received and accidentally interpreted
pitch 0..96
they all correspond to manually hitting a trig where ever the sequencer is positioned at that moment. With an exception forpitch 60..71which correspond to Track recorders as explained in 1st page of Appendix C-1 of the manual. Not much should have happen if received apart from messed starting or stoping recording of the running session. If it was still recording and you even accidentally saved that messed up recording, it should have been audible immidiately that is was not save-worthy (sorry if this reads blunt worded). Note pitches above 96 have no effect.
that leaves very narrow space for other error prone scenarios.
I hope this list helps you restore your project somehow.
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The way the Octatrack handles midi, there shouldn’t be anything happening outside of user input. Maybe switching a synth of in such a constellation could cause a hanging note, although that would require the synth to send notes in the first place.
Maybe it’s coincidental? Is the project screwed after you’ve reloaded it? Can you reload the part? Reload the bank?
Writing/reading data can fail on the Octatrack, but switching off a synth shouldn’t do anything under normal conditions and if the electrical wiring in your house is somewhat normal…
Midi loopback, no?
OT midi out to prophet midi in.
Prophet midi out to OT midi in.
When you turned of the prophet midi data is passing through from OT back to OT… ?
Just a thought and sorry if I’m repeating something someone already pointed out
UPDATE: it happened again but this time without me turning the synth off! also just realised that track 1(last time it was track 4) keeps playing even when im muting all tracks
Assuming that you’ve confirmed this issue exists across multiple projects and that you aren’t still working in the project with the original issue, one of the first things people recommend for most octatrack problems is “have you tried another CF card yet?” so if you haven’t tried another CF card yet maybe there is some merit in trying one.
If you aren’t doing anything to trigger the issue and this is just randomly happening and it’s not localized to a single project, I think that it’s worth a shot.
I’d also bet on a midi problem…
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i recently changed to sandisk extreme 64GB. could this really be the problem? because thats what most OT users recommended…
I think that’s the recommended card. Unless your specific card has a problem then I would say no. If the card is defective, anything is possible.
It’s usually the original OT card which causes the issues, for my understanding.