I mainly use Octatrack for my Electro-Pop band live. Making loop and sound from Logic pro ,Alberton Live and then put them in Octatrack for live playing.
I’ve just read the whole manual of Octatrack yesterday. Since I bought it last week. Now I’m going to do my live set. And I’ve got some question.
I still don’t understand.
FLEX & STATIC Machine, which one I should choose to use for which types of sample?
Does anyone has some suggestion?
Thank you so much.
static vs flex boils down to:
static = unlimited sample length (ie. can load entire songs as static samples)
flex = limited by the Octatrack’s meager 84 megs (it’s 84, right?) of RAM memory. Said amount is the TOTAL, it’s not 84 per track so if you load up larger samples and/or use higher bitrate and resolution, you’ll run out of memory quick.
static = sample is streaming from CF card
flex = sample is preloaded into RAM and played back from RAM
thus
static machines have limited editing capabilities (if you open the audio editor on a static machine some features are missing) whereas flex samples can be edited to a larger extent.
also RAM playback is is more stable - say you have a longer sample chopped into slices and want to do some wild tricks with it. with a static machine it is possible playback will choke, wheras with flex it shouldn’t happen at all
soooo
if you want to load up entire backing tracks for a live show or DJ with the OT, you should use static tracks.
if you use the OT as an instrument in a studio enviroment then i’d recommend starting with statics and use those up to the point when some heavier manipulation of the sample is required. then switching to flex is easy.
Nice and complete story… but… one thing is puzzling me
what did you do to make your octatrack choke on your static samples?!?!?!
i really tried hard to make my octatrack puke and give up… but failed…
Nice and complete story… but… one thing is puzzling me
what did you do to make your octatrack choke on your static samples?!?!?!
i really tried hard to make my octatrack puke and give up… but failed…
well i messed around a bit with a large sample, had it sliced and assigned playback rate and sample start to the xfader and that - coupled with a high number of trigs - did the trick
NOTE: this can also be an error of attribution on my part, because now that I think of it, a couple of days after this ‘experiment’, the transcend CF card I got with the OT died. So maybe it wasn’t the extreme processing that made the OT choke but a faulty CF card all along!
Thank you a lot, twardowski
I’m still a newbie for Octatrack.
And I still have no idea about how to play those wild tricks. I don’t know what to do with the slices. So I think I will start with basic STATIC machine using.
With a faster CF card, say 400x it’s pretty hard to make streaming choke, though I can do it easily with the stock CF card.
In terms of functionality, the only thing that flex can really do that static can’t is have an LFO or xfader scene assigned to Sample Start (Slice select). It MIGHT work with the static slots, but guaranteed to work with flex samples.
what do you mean by that? I use only static and make scene selection to sample start (slice) all the time without any problems…
one thing i have noticed lately is that sometimes there is a phasing / tempo issues with loops. i think to check if there is a problem with flex as well.
anyway, the biggest issue i have so far is when a last fragment (portion of sample) is looped - never had a luck to make it looping in sync. maybe it’s a static machine beauty as well?
sample start trick works with static but when scene / crossfader is changed new slice doesn’t play instantly. sometimes it takes a second or so…
"It MIGHT work with the static slots, but guaranteed to work with flex samples."
I think I might be having an issue related here.
I chopped a complex arrangement into a series of 24 and 8 bar sections (there’s a 4/2 phrase in the middle of those) in order to use slice grid to make slices. I made a huge arrangement in OT (A1-C6) in order to play the song through.
I had 2 static machines for playback; one for drums, one for music. About half way through the song, the slices are triggered late. If I use another static machine to handle the problem slices. they’re right on time.
Anyone have ideas what’s going on here? I’m using the stock CF, should I upgrade it?
Follow up; got faster card, no more problems.
great info! I run into this CF Card problem yesterday…
having 3 to 5 loops running from the static machined, all loops around 20 sec. to 4 minutes long… probably no surprise 
but having an external controller to change volume of all changes at the same time it made the whole OT choke and jump in bpm, resulting in running out of sync.
I’m sure this has already been discussed, so if someone can lead me to the thread that would be welcomed.
What can be done with a flex that can’t be done on a static? Not having tapped into this leaves a beautiful terrain of untapped potential just waiting to be explored(outside of recording live samples)
flex machines utilize the 80MB onboard RAM whereas the static machines stream the audio from the cf card. Therefore the static machines have much greater access/read latency than the flex machines (some modulations will not work as fast as with flex), but the static machines will not steal precious RAM from the recording buffers.
For me the choice is simple, I run out of slots on the static machines, so I’m moving on to fill the flex ones…
I’d agree, but also think the lack of editing options once a sample is assigned Static is a bigger problem to my general workflow. No idea why you can’t make destructive edits to the sample itself - that shouldn’t matter whether it’s Flex or Static.
So my understing is that theoretically the only difference between flex and static machine is that LFO modulation of sample start point (or slice selection) as well as quick manual changes applied with crossfader on the same parameters can easily be unstable with static machines. Otherwise the two machines work in the same way, including timestretching.
This way static machine can be used in the most cases and only those samples have to be loaded to the flex slot list which are intended to be used with heavy start point modulation (except parameter locking which stated to be working well with static machines, too).
Is this interpretation right?
Yes.