Headphone out for monitoring; main out for bouncing

Elektron Gear Octatrack
#1

Is anyone doing this?

Any gotchas I am not thinking of?

If you want to use the volume knob to control what you hear, maybe you could do something like this if you have the spare inputs on your audio interface:

  • Send the OT’s main outs into your interface, but only use that for RECORDING OT’s output.
  • Send the OT’s headphone out into your interface, but only use that for MONITORING OT’s output.

Then you can adjust what you hear with the headphone knob and not worry about any potential audio quality issues of using the headphone output to capture OT’s output (not saying there are any; I don’t know).

That might also add some nice flexibility with the gain staging; i.e., it would allow you to keep the main output level constant despite any changes you make to the headphone level/monitor level. In that way, the headphone out can be seen as sort of a “feature.”

#2

Isnt it easy enough to just hold FUNC + Level for main vol? or hit MIX

#3

Sort of.

Long story, but when testing effects chains, I like to have my hand on the volume knob for reasons:

  • If I accidently do something naughty, which causes LOUDS, I can quickly turn it down. Yes, limiters are thing, but I don’t want to limit that low.
  • Having one hand on the volume knob and another on whatever effect knob I am adjusting allows me to manually level match, so that I avoid the “louder = better” pereception thing. Relevant side note: I am planning on monitoring my Ableton instruments through OT.

Aside from that, having the dedicated knob is just nice, ya know?

#4

Not the same scenario, but I like to ride the volume/feedback too when I’m trying out new chains in case I’m a little bad. All these synths, mixers, monitors, effects, etc have no nanny and will let you be as loud and bad as you want, and some things have INCREDIBLY hot outputs.