Hi guys! I have been a digitakt/heat owner for about a year now. And I love the elektron workflow, Its exactly the workflow that I like. And I have gotten so used to it now I want to buy more gear. So, I am considering a new toy. or 2. . and heres my noob questions. I welcome your answers.
STORAGE. The MAIN thing I struggle with consistently on digitakt, Is storage limitation. This alone is almost reason enough for me to get an octatrack. But, Some of you are probably AE owners and have the ‘magical mythical’ 32GB card, So, I want to ask, Given I am such a sample hoarder, (And own pretty much the whole back catalogue of loopcloud and splice libraries offline. (seriously, I have so many sample libraries)
Is there a way to get ‘more storage’ out the standard OT mk2? (Even if I have to use multiple cards, Is that expensive? can I use a sandisk or does it need to be other/proprietary ?)
While 16GB seems like a lot, I really think 32GB is probably ‘just right’ for my needs. But, If there is a way to get more, please let me know!
I really wish I was able to buy an AE, And if I found 1 for sale would it just for the extra storage. Storage is so important in my decision buying.
How similar or dissimilar is the Octatrack workflow to digitakt?
and finally,
Apart from overbridge, What benefits would their be to buying an analog Ryyyyyytmmmm, over an octatrack?
thanks.
Storage - just buy a bigger card. And I’d buy a new card no matter what you get anyway, the Elektron supplied OT cards have been having lots of problems recently. Sandisc are fine. [This](SanDisk Extreme 64 GB UDMA7 CompactFlash Card - Black/Gold https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00NUB2RPW/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_TZ3389FT4763KTCRN3TB?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1) was the one I bought and worked great Do a little search for what CF card to use and there’s a thread on it somewhere with examples.
Workflow - quiet different. If you watch a bunch of videos you’ll soon see this. It’s had updates, but it is 10 years old.
All of this really depends on what you want to do with it? Rytm and OT are miles apart.
Edit to add, depending on what you want to do with it, something like a 1010 Blackbox might be worth investigating.
Depends what you want to do and how you want it to do - workflow on AR is incredibly fast imho (I never owned any of the smaller Elektrons, but from all the big boxes, AR is my favourite in terms of working fast and getting stuff done), but also flexible enough. Samples sound incredible through AR (just add a tiny bit of distortion, a little filter env and master comp sauce) and the dual vco sounds amazing, but there are no note slides, parameter slides can be used if you p-lock the tune parameter, but that means you can’t just record in chromatic mode (the idea behind this is, you tune the synth and/or sample and then play chromatically, so in this sense it’s very flexible, it’s just more difficult if you want to do sequences with slides). It’s an amazing all-in-one groovebox, but some things require workarounds.
OT excels as midi sequencer and in everything sample related that requires tight control. Capturing a perfect loop is super simple, you have access to all those different effects and the four inputs/four outputs are very flexible.
You get three lfos per track and the amazing lfo designer!
You can also setup each track to do a different job, if you want. Quite a different concept compared to AR.
Lfos work a little different compared to Analogs. On the Analogs (and other boxes IIRC), you can p-lock on which step the lfo retrigs, this combined with the different modes let you control the lfo in a very precise way.
On OT you can only p-lock lfo speed and depth, all other parameters are on the setup page (non-p-lockable parameters). You have to choose a trig mode and the waveform on the setup page - for instance, sync trig mode lets the lfo start from step one and then run freely, hold and free mode are also there, as well as trig, one and half mode, but there is no per step control of all these parameters and no phase control or fade in/out. You get three lfos, though…
tried to replace my AR with an Octatrack (i think AR has very similar workflow to DT)
as much as i wanted to love it, it never felt as immediate
imho it requires much more prep
the feature i missed the most was the sound browser
it felt cumbersome to load a single sound whereas with the AR it’s like 3 clicks away
just to clarify, the anniversary edition doesn’t have more storage. just a different paint job. everything else is the same. like others said, the SanDisk Extreme 64gb is the way to go.
funny you say that, I started with an OT and bought an AR about a year and a half later, and my feelings were the opposite. Way faster/easier browsing for samples on OT. I guess it’s just about what you start with/what’s built your muscle memory…
In general, I agree, but in some areas OT feels much more immediate to me. Especially everything related to recording notes and sequencing.
Also, once everything is set up, OT feels very much like and instrument imho.
No sounds and sound browser, yes, but you can use parts as a sort of preset library.
Loading samples feels faster on OT for me. On OT it’s much faster browsing samples with left/right arrows, yes and no buttons. You can easily jump to any folder and back.
I think one really has to test both, it’s very subjective, isn’t it?
Similar workflows but different - they’re different machines made by the same company. One is bigger than the other. The sequencer works the same.
OT plays back samples in stereo. The Rytm does not. The Rythm has synthesis, the OT does not. One is bigger than the other one but they both have the same sequencer.
OT has swing per track, on AR swing applies to the whole pattern (although you can exclude certain tracks if you remove the swing trigs on it afaik).
OT has sample trigs/midi trigs and one shot trigs which AR does not have (although you can use fill for that, OT is more flexible with fill and one shot trigs)
OT has trigless trigs and trigless locks and you can setup amp and fx how they react to trigless trigs) on AR you only have trigless locks. AR has trig mutes, which OT does not have.
Also OT has a dedicated slice mode, slot mode amongst other modes - so recording sample locks or slices by playing the trig buttons is easy.
On AR the mutes are on the sequencer level, on OT the audio is muted (which also means fx tails are cut. Workaround would be to use amp volume).
AR also has modulation for velocity, pitchbend and aftertouch with up to four parameters for each which OT does not have.
The Arranger in the OT is also very flexible and can be used to transform patterns in various ways - it’s not only useful as a song mode.
So one of the reasons I’ve gone all in on the OT, despite making tracks I love on Rytm and Model:Samples, is OT’s sample capabilities.
Twice the sample slots as Rytm/DT. 128 flex, 128 static.
I use chains in both and heavily lean on static.
This has, for the most part, made worrying about sample time limitations a non issue.
That said, being a sample hoarder is not as conducive to hardware devices, the way it is on a computer. You save a fair bit of time keeping things well organized, curated, and culled. So whatever road you go down with hardware, start with a plan early to stay organized. And try to keep it all killer, no filler. It will save you time and energy in the end.
Yeah that was another thing I was wondering. Kit managment, I mean, I guess, if I had to choose, one for studio use, id choose rytm, bit for live act stuff, which is probably more my area, I think the octatrack. I didnt know storage was so fairly straight forward. The only thing left is to buy one. And see how I go.
Thanks for your response, and everyones reply much appreciated
much appreciated