So i been looking at getting a Boss RE20 delay and a nice old Chorus unit (Boss CE300) and a distortion pedal for drums. Basically ive been spending too much time on the gearslutz forum. Am i being a bit silly thinking about such items as the Octatrack basically has all these effects. Or is getting nice (and relatively affordable) effects justified?
Definitely worth it. I’ve said it many times, the OT’s effects aren’t it’s strongest point. I have a very cheap 90’s multi FX unit (Zoom 1201), which sounds WAY better than the OT’s effects. It can’t be really about computing power, as surely the OT has a more powerful CPU than a 90’s budget effect.
Yeah, the OT chorus doesn’t do much for me. Wish it sounded like the A4’s!
It depends on your personal taste.
I have outboard effects myself - couple of analog delay pedals, couple of fuzz pedals, and an overdrive pedal. I’m not a chorus person so I can’t comment on the chorus effect in the OT.
There are things that are done on analog delays that are difficult or not possible to do with the OT’s delay - things like cranking the repeat to induce oscillation, pitch shift induced by tweaking delay time, etc. Not everything I do with delay needs to be synced with the OT. That’s why I and other OT users have outboard delays.
Regarding fuzz and overdrive - I play guitar, among other things, so I get why the distortion in the OT’s LoFi Collection effect might not be everyone’s cup of tea. I do enjoy using LoFi, however, because I like the ring mod as well as its distortion.
I love the OT’s filter and dark reverb.
I tried to scale down my live setup, started using OT as a mixer with thru-effects for my analog synths (yeah, sounds stupid spectrewise)), but today i have listened to some sketches and decided to implement back my analog mixer and big effect boxes, they bring too much tastiness to ignore it.
One thing missing from outboard is the OT scenes manipulation power… & if no midi on external fx, then no p-locks or lfo action. Also only 4 outputs on the OT is a big limitation with wanting fx per track. Hopefully Elektron will add more fx via OS updates as time passes.
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For affordable, thumbs up to the zoom g3 which is awesome, really nice amp sims, modulation fx & delays/reverbs, been really good for some old synths. Based off that, I just ordered the Zoom MS-100BT (Zoom MS70CDR good also but doesnt have amp sims, distortions or bluetooth upgrades) for stereo inputs & even smaller footprint. Will be used via the OT Cue outputs going into the MD for resampling there, then back into OT.
In saying that i have an external portable rack that goes everywhere with my elektrons. No modulation fx but much post processing.