I don’t save them. Part settings are saved with the project, in bank files. No risk to accidentally reload them, time saving.
I’d probably save them for a live project in order to reload them in live conditions.
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Most complicated thing about the OT = how complicated do you want it to be?
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Just had a look through the manual. It didn’t really sell me on it, if I didn’t have the MPC I’d get one though. Synced recording is nice, can you use those record trigs to record random snippets, just out of interest?
8 recorders.
Record can be the 4 inputs, or internal (Tracks 1-8, MAIN, CUE)
Rec trigs can’t be set with conditions or random parameters. But their recordings can be played randomly on any track, up to 8 recordings on 1 track, and a recorder can record its own recording while playing it.
With CUE recording you can add feedback and make any incoming audio totally crazy.
You can activate recorders randomly and play their recordings with midi notes, random arp, lfo on notes, trig conditions…
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I think you have to practice OT to realise its potential.
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Most complicated thing about OT?
Make a Megabreack of Doom slices reorganization inside maybe? 
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I know why people keep sustaining this myth. It keeps the Octatrack awesome and mysterious. You can do crazy complicated stuff with it, yes. But come on already. It’s a sampler. You record or load samples into your project. You trim and chop them. You put them on steps.
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Yeah, but we like our Octa, our mysterious Octa.
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Nah it’s a Dynamic Performance Sampler! 
If you use it as a Digitakt, it’s not complicated.
But if you want to master every aspect and use it’s full potential it can take a lot of time.
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that‘s why people call it complicated. They think they have to use it like that but get frustrated when that doesn’t happen in the first 2 weeks.
Making simple beats and mangle loaded samples is super straight forward. Sequencing other gear via midi as well.
The real time sampling - manipulating stuff and midi loopback crazyness is where it gets complicated.
But how many users really take advantage of these things?
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and you can do a lot of very complicated stuff in ableton, but nobody compares it to Cthulhu and Azathoth
much deeper than OT for sure
That’s why its called the Octacult. You’re either in or out. For life.
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Don’t kill me, i won’t say those things ever again!
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No I can’t. Not while performing.
I can do it with OT though, improvising and messing with sampling and sample in real time.
Can’t say where the difference lies, most likely in my 5 years of using OT whereas in Ableton I’ve been only mixing recorded tracks. Would take me some practice to live resample and mess with the sample, retrigging and plocking retrig time + filter cutoff.
Whereas with OT I reach such point in a few loops and build on top.
I just can’t go there with Ableton. And if I would, it be less fun nonetheless I guess.
I wasn’t comparing OT and Ableton like that, they do different things. Very different and very complex things.
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Indeed.
Where OT shines is it makes simple things complicated.
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that was the point.
People are not complaining about ableton being complicated cause many use it for simple stuff and are happy with that.
Doesn’t mean you can‘t go deep as crazy, but you don’t have to.
Same with OT
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The most complicated thing is setting up a project/pattern/part to do what you want because the OT can do so much and everything is tied to how you set up your tracks/machines.
I’d advise everyone to thoroughly read the manual about the structure of a octatrack project (what are banks, patterns, parts, scenes, the sample lists, all the different machines and how they are related to each other?) There is also “Merlin’s Guide” floating around the web which explains the OT structure nicely.
After that I would make a standard starting pattern with a part (rtfm if you dont know what “part” means 
) that has every track configured the way I want to work, for example this is mine:
T1-5 = flex machines
T6 = thru machine for Input AB
T7 = thru machine for Input BC
T8 = mastertrack
(If you want to have this “part” to be your default across the whole project you need to copy this part to the other three parts (overwriting them) and do this for every bank because every bank stores four different parts)
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This is the one for me, if you don’t use it regularly I often find I come back to it and can’t work out why something is silent or whatever and it can take a bit of digging. Once you are in the flow with it, it’s not too bad a lot of the time. I’ve not used mine for months and I’m kind of scared to turn it on as I’ll be back to square one