By mentioning a few observed critical limitations below, I am hoping for Elektron to consider, or perhaps may some of you with much experience already have tricks to circumvent some of them? If so, and you could share, I’d be utmost grateful - I really, really want to make it work, transcoding all my 100% sample projects accurately reproduced, but kept safe yet flexible for performance.
I love how the OctaTrack mkII is laid out, need some of its features badly (parameter grouping & scene slider I’ve been craving for ages), and even have an uncanny attraction towards its preferably destroyer grey steel hull which I would want to touch occasionally, even if powered down. However, I simply couldn’t (re)deploy my projects or use it porperly due to these, it seems:
FORCED OVER-ORGANISATION
128 flex samples 256 patterns are far from comfortably generous, but workable if I could just use them freely. However, the OctaTrack enforces a matrioshka structure that is not only limiting its quantitative capacity further, but are structurally debilitating, and a significant organisational & menu diving overhead in addition. As per guide & manual, there doesn’t seem to be a way out of this:
I’d like to & need to do the following (to accurately reproduce existing projects while maintaining their performability), but perhaps it is possible / could those knowing it inside-out advise?
FORCED LINKING OF PATTERNS TO PARTS
I think this is the big one here, and the reason why I probably won’t be able to dispose of some inner matrioshka layers to allow for freedom of movement. Music is a temporal structure primarily, yet the Octatrack has parts owning their patterns (in fairly lmited numbers, if organised this way), instead of patterns owning their parts. I’d desperately need the latter to take advantage of an otherwise allegedly great sequencer.
OTHER QUANTITATIVE LIMITATIONS
64 steps only in any given pattern. I’d need 128 at least, or widespread use of fractional step sequencing, but that’d already make it cumbersome to manipulate in realtime. 64 steps max. is a fairly primitive theme, come on.
85.5MB total flex sample memory (in a set). Okay this is actually usable, and probalby won’t ever change I realise, but considering in conjunction with a limit of 128 flex samples max. per project, let me put this into a perspective of modern uncompressed audio formats:
- 484.7 sec total (44.1 kHz 16 bit stereo) ~ 128x 3.78s samples on avg. maxing both: quality barely above “lo-fi”, but usable total capacity (128 flex samples max can still be limiting for some)
- 222.7 sec total (96.0 kHz 16 bit stereo) ~ 128x 1.74s samples on avg. maxing both: quality that’d make most engineering & hence production sense, total sample time already quite limiting here
- 148.4 sec total (96.0 kHz 24 bit stereo) ~ 128x 1.16s samples on avg. maxing both: quality standard for mastering (don’t see the point of 24 bit, but still), have to be very careful juggling tight now
- 74.2 sec total (192.0 kHz 24 bit stereo) ~ 128x 0.58s samples on avg. maxing both: quality ceiling of most modern CODECs (top notch & maybe overkill, but still), downright ridiculous, barely over just a minute?!
FORCED AUTOSAVE
Discussed a thousands times I am sure, but in a nutshell, I cannot afford patterns and parts not to be able to allow to automatically reset to their actual manually saved state, immediately after tweaked away and left. I also find the whole autosave a bit problematic, it is yet again encouraging the abandonment of all personal responsibility that ultimate erodes our freedoms. Might even use it sometimes, as lng as it only saves to volatrile memory, when jumping in between patterns to listen & compare during production (production only). Not being able to disable this completely (as in, have a theme carefull designed and saved, tweak about, move on to another theme, come back to the previous, and not find the EXACT carefully designed and saved theme without any other action required), is massively limiting. Nice as an option. Having said that, maybe an auto-reload option could circumvent this (as in: switch auto-reload on = all in any theme played automatically returns to last explicitly saved state once left, incl. playing anything else during perfomance, no menu diving or buttoning req’d whilst busy tweaking the next theme - which will also need to return to saved automatically, once left behind).