Is Octatrack good for production?

Elektron Gear Octatrack
#1

You know the drill. I’m at a crossroads right now between DT and OT. I’ve got myself DN recently and fell in love with everything about it. Love the workflow, love the sound. I’d like to add more Elektron gear to my setup. I’ve read a couple of threads about OT and DT and I still don’t quite understand which one is better for me.

Mostly I’m interested in chopping and sequencing sounds that I create with DN, my DAW and some simple synth gear. Also I want some interesting sound design options.

Is OT a good option for that and production in general? Or is it more of a performance tool? I’m not going to use it as a DAW, but I want a toolbox for messing with and shaping sounds. I guess DT may serve this purpose well enough, but OT — a magic mystery box that can change your life or destroy you (that’s the vibe one gets after reading this forum) — is of course tempting.

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#2

If you want to chop anything, OT is the way to go.

It is an instrument. It can turn a single sample into worlds of (sometimes never before heard) soundscapes. For sample mangling and sound design, the OT is phenomenal.

The DT can also be used for sound design, but when it comes to features, flexibility and possibilities, the OT has got it beat in nearly all departments.

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#3

IMHO it is more a performance tool. Don’t get me wrong, of course you can chop and soundshape the hell out of everything, but at least with longer samples chopping can become a quite cumbersome knob twisting orgy. If you mean “production” in the sense of being productive (getting a lot done in a short period of time) than I wouldn’t grab the OT for chopping and slicing, but prepare everything in the computer and move it over later on.

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#4

I used to see OT purely as a performance sampler, which it excels at, but just in the last few months I’ve been exploring it more (in addition to performance) as a production tool.

A couple of things to bear in mind though:

I’m one of those DAW-Less weirdos, I have been for many years, before it became apparently some trendy badge of honour :laughing: and I have tried a lot of DAW alternatives, with various results.

The Octatrack isn’t ideally suited for this, but it is still very capable for production, I can think of no other hardware machine which allows such exact editing in a relatively painless way, but it only has 8 tracks, and you don’t get a great (or any) visual overview of a project. It definitely isn’t Ableton in a box, but you nor I want it to be.

So for production you can do some interesting stuff, limited only by what you can think of, you can quite easily layer stuff up, resample, send thru external fx then back in for sampling, and so on.

DT is pretty capable but I didn’t enjoy it after using OT, it has some neat tricks and sounds great, but mono samples, the 16 keys perform too many functions resulting in RGB LED eye fatigue for me, max sample time is 33 seconds, less fx. Still more than upto the job though see what @DaveMech does with it.

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#5

I think if you like the DN workflow, the DT sounds like a good idea. A lot of people see those two as a great team. Digitakt has great sound design options, especially if you use a DAW, with OB those two are made for computer integration.

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#6

this EP was produced on the OT.

I wouldn’t call my production skills world class, but it’s an example nonetheless :partying_face:
Frontendsynthetics.bandcamp.com/album/cold-wax

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#7

very nice!

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#8

thanks.

I fink the performance aspect of the OT makes producing on it more fun and involving.
its got its limitations, but if you can work with em it can lead to some interesting compositions.

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#9

The OT has Scenes and Neighbor Tracks.
That alone will transform any sound into something wildly different.
It’s stigma that it’s difficult to learn is highly overstated.
It’s SO MUCH FUN, and when I am having fun with my gear, I produce a lot of stuff I like.

The DT/DN combo is amazing, but it’s no Octatrack.

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#10

Octatrack is amazing!!!

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#11

hi,
i make music which is mostly very structured.
I’m a simple man so i’ll explain it in a very simple way. if you are going for super long loops with external instruments ‘‘which is in my case guitar with bow and vox, about 2.5 min loops’’ its not gonna shine like daw does… but if you are working on shorter loops, it’s great, becase for someone like me who comes from ableton, octa really gives you a very simplistic yet very deep and interesting and more experimental way of working on tracks which i think really makes production interesting.

here is my first track which is almost entirely produced on octa. guitar and singing is recorded in ableton because i avoid heavy ram abuse with super long loops. so i have ableton synced with octra ‘‘octa master/ableton slave’’ and i play those loops from there.
and honestly compared to my other tracks, octa really shaped this production in a different way and i’m definitely going to keep working this way till i get bored.
i recomend octa for production, but if you are not familiar with workflow it will take some time.

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#12

Thank you all for your advices! I was quite sure about getting DT a week ago, but now I lean more towards OT. I think DT could be great for my current goals (taking small chunks of sound from an external source, shaping them in some way and sequencing them for a track). But I guess I’d be getting DT just for that one purpose and I can’t quite justify this for myself. I can easily do this on a computer even if it won’t be that fun. With OT I feel like I’ll be able to do the same and also have much more tools to explore and use.

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#13

Also you can use OT arranger along with midi tracks controlling the DN via multimap for a kind of song mode.

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#14

OT every time.
And then walk away…

#15

If by production you mean produce full track in a DAW, I think DT is a good choice because of Overbridge.
Have the 8 tracks in separate channel into you DAW running in parrallele of your DN and you soundcard is really great to add FX, EQ, etc to your tracks.
I think OT is more focused on performance but in any case you can do everything with everything. Just take the time to learn and practice.

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#16

I’ll say in argument for the Digitakt it still works quite nice with say a bass loop you make and sample and then build a drum pattern around, its architecture is a bit more synth like with the filter being in the middle of a tracks audio flow, messing with gain pre and post filter on a single track. Ultimately though you will want to design songs from scratch when using a Digitakt. An OT is much more capable at translating songs into it if wanted as well as being able to build directly on it. I am a big fan of the control all work flow as far as altering and pushing a composition forward, it can be quite inspiring to mess with everything and then get a new idea and then fine tune and repeat. Page randomization is great for this too along with the new sequencer modes. Obviously OT is more capable over all, but DT certainly has its merits especially after its last update. To me at least DT is a very inspiring box, haven’t spent too much time with an OT but to me it felt a bit more like if I had some weird idea OT would let me execute on it even if in an unusual way and perhaps that would lead to some new inspiration. For me I have had the DT since launch and still feel I am finding new portions of the sound engine to abuse with different samples.

Sounds like the power of the OT is intriguing to you? It might be best to go for it then.

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#17

:face_with_hand_over_mouth:

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#18

BTW octa and DT they can compliment each other very good, because you can free up octa from drum tracks and leave it all to DT and route it back to octa so that you can mess around with DT sounds. i actually would recommend DT after you get octa, for the price it’s ultimate setup for live and studio if you ask me. and octa becomes beast when you free it up from drum tracks. i just bought my DT like 3 days ago…unless you can find AR for 600eu

P.S.
DT can change tempo with pattern change, octa can’t, so if that matters for you, you can make octa recieve clock from DT and bam you have on octa tempo change on pattern change.

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#19

To the OP. Its like anything. Doesnt matter what you got, its how you use it that matters.

So the octatrack is good for production if you are good at using the octatrack for production.

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#20

‘picks up briefcase and gets back in line for an octatrack’

then hears that octatrack doesn’t allow bpm per pattern

‘steps out of line and sits back down on bench to think some more’

hears that octatrack can change bpm with pattern

‘gets back up and into line for octatrack’

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