Hi!
Just wondering.
I recently got myself an OT and the overall impression is great, and im happy as a canary.
Now after a week i start to have some questionmarks about the design/decisions on this unit.
I have for 4 years been a happy user of the Yamaha RS7000 (I still have it) and allthough its an old and ugly beast it still does some stuff that OT will not for some wierd reason do.
Ex. I sample a long note from a Monotribe and the RS default to polyphony. Instant gratification!
To get it to play as a mono-instrument one has to do some tweaking.
Is there any real reason that OT is mono per track or is this just some design-desicion they made? RS is from 2001 and full sample polyphony on 16 tracks.
The soundquality is on other hand far superior on the OT.
I just noticed that this bugs me a little bit for some reason. I dont se it as a ârealâ problem.
Read the part in the manual about the background of the Octatrack. It explains that since thereâs lots of other gear and software that does this easily the OT was designed to do different things not found in said other gearâŚ
Second time I read someone quoting that spiel recently in relation to polyphonic tracks. Doesnât really make any sense to me as a reason re lacking polyphonic tracks. Kinda nonsense tbh. Option to do what OT does but polyphonically if you wish could only be a good thing, and still something that no other machine before had offered⌠Unless thereâs a polyphonic OT out there that I missed? Pretty sure there are probably a bunch of samplers with monophonic tracks tho? Doesnât really make sense
You can emulate poly on Ot with a midi splitter such as Midipal. One channel per note.
I know a former RS7k user who âforgotâ it, now he has 4 Elecktrons.
I donât know, I did read it from @PeterHanes in whatever thread and thought it might be a good answer to a question that comes up a lot since its stated by ElektronâŚ
Try not to think of OT as just another sampler. Youâll discover it does a lot of things other samplers canât, just as other other samplers do things OT canât.
OT excels as a sample mangler thatâs best at deconstructing sampled phrases and reconstructing them into something new and unrecognizable.
Other samplers are mostly about chopping up what theyâve recorded and replaying it through filters and effects. Some like the RS can play a sample polyphonically.
Horses for courses, as they say.
By the way, I also have the RS7000. Love it. I also have other samplers for different uses: Microsampler, SP808, SU700 and the iPad. Thatâs overkill for many people, but I like using each for what itâs best at. Not trying to lecture, just offering a different viewpoint that youâre free to ignore.
I never think about these things people miss and what not but very much like to read the forum, itâs nothing personal to anybody but for me itâs just kinda annoying to read the same gripe all the time so if I can come up with something especially an Elektron reference that might help end the reoccurring gripes, Iâll give it a shotâ:wink:@Sprottenkopf it wasnât annoying to read your post, other times it comes up more negative feelingâŚ
Thinking about this a little more as my analog gear warms up for an evening session, I imagine it has something to do with the way ot utilizes ram for flex, it is highly mailable but since it does so much there is only a little ram available probably to not tap the cpu. For large poly it would need a lot of ram that doesnât need to be as âflexibleâ and more cpu in the end making it cost more, pretty pricey machine anyway so I imagine they did it to keep it âaffordableâ and able to do something other things canât. But thatâs just my speculationđâŚ
I donât think so at all. There were many, many samplers from the 1990s that had less than the OTâs 85 MB of RAM and yet could still play samples polyphonically over multiple timbres.
Earlier in this topic you alluded to the design philosophy of the OT, born out of the MDUWâs sampling capabilities and described on pages 2 and 3 of the OT manual, which goes out of its way to say that it doesnât try to compete with the kinds of samplers that do copious polyphony.
The OT is like a phrase sampler, effects box, and DJ mixer on powerful stimulants. Itâs an unrivalled sample mangler for stereo programme material.
Back to @Sprottenkopfâs point, Iâve had an RS7000 for many years and am unlikely to get rid of it any time soon because itâs capabilities are complementary to the OTâs. They are very different instruments, because of very different design decisions.
I wasnât knocking OT, I love it for what it is. What it does do is pretty incredible. But from that spiel in the manual it sounds like if there was a meeting and they decided âletâs not have any option for polyphonic tracks because other samplers can play chords/drum layers/have a drumkit on one track/not have notes chokeâ?
I just personally think that was a bad decision if thatâs really the case. Theoretically and in practise thatâs not a good/creative limitation, at least for me/my music. Forces tedious workarounds/compromises here pretty often. For example compare it to Push 2 sampler in terms of the depth/convenience the polyphonic element adds when thatâs what youâre looking for. Obvs YMMV.
Tbh I think itâs possibly more likely they didnât add polyphonic sample track options cos it would have been a lot of code hassle/headache. Especially if OT was born from existing sequencer code. And hence polyphonic sample track options still being absent on their sequencers going in to Digitakt eraâŚ
Haha, dunno, guess I should have just wrote Ableton However you want to look at it, I like some of what it does Its all code and casing end of the dayâŚ
Considering that the OT is already so crammed full of features, I think itâs fair that they chose to prioritise and leave out certain things, even if just for interface reasons. I personally canât see myself burning 4+ precious OT tracks just for some poly stuff when itâs so easy to do that on other gear or a computer.
It would however, be super nice if the OT could sequence other poly samplers a bit better. Recording midi chords with notes that begin and end where you want them t0.
Yeah, I totally agree. Iâd love to see it there but I have other gear that does poly sampling when I need it, just without the OT voodoo Was just saying that the reasoning in the manual for not having any poly track options seems kinda nonsense. âcos other gear does itâ⌠Like OT wouldnât bring something new to Poly sampling⌠It clearly would
As i mentioned, its not really a issue, rather a small annoyance. OT has a wast array of other soundmangling capabilities that not many hardware samplers have. And that makes up for a âlackâ of poly.
Ill just keep my RS7k if i feel like sampling synths.
Btw. reference to the manual was unneccesary. It docent state anyhing other than the obvious. âWe just felt like doing this. Take it or leave itâ
Yeah for sure. Just saying would have been better with poly options onboard instead of long workarounds/having to link gear etc. And that âcos other gear already does copious polyphonyâ reasoning is laughable Doesnât take away from what it âcanâ do tho, killer box, keeping mine til itâs worn to dust. Just would have made life easier/less clutter/faster workflow/increased possibilities
Think Iâm in minority to care much about it tho, pretty heavy majority of techno/acid/edm genre users on this forum and poly seems more integral to pop/psych/experimental/ambient heads and âplayersââŚ
By the way, welcome to the forum!
Sorry if I stirred things up on your first thread, I should probably just stay out of OT poly discussions âŚ
Happy ing!
Edit: the ot might not be polyphonic but since it likes to hook up with lots of other gear, I suppose itâs at least polyamorous âŚ
the OT sampler side is more like a digital tape-looper ⌠kinda like the REX player in Reason, where you slice up samples⌠it has very large variable length - and if you stream samples from the card its as long as you want (hours?) of sample time⌠its just not designed like a multi-sample instrument ala PCM stuff, which is generally using samples of extremely short fixed lengths
the other reason it has a mono sampler voice is almost certainly due to the per track FX engine, which is quite good DSP-wise (as in completely different reverb or delay per track⌠which takes a lot of CPU) and has many parameters that are all able to be automated synchronously at the per step level to a very detailed degree
what im getting at here is that the technology (cpu + ram, as well as basic code structure) was most likely specifically leveraged more towards the DSP fx and modulation/sequencing rather than the sampler playback module, which was limited to timestretching alone
while i would certainly appreciate a âmultisamplerâ instrument for tracks, i just dont think the OT was ever conceived of going that direction - simply because of the technical limitations in implementing that kind of design alongside everything else they wanted to do with it
given the abilities it has, and the technology of the time period, its quite apparent that the intent behind the instrument is much more experimental and âall-purposeâ type utilitarian rather than most other sampler/sequencers which are usually focused in one area to the exclusion of all else
Was just saying that the reasoning in the manual for not having any poly track options seems kinda nonsense. âcos other gear does itâ⌠Like OT wouldnât bring something new to Poly sampling⌠It clearly would 
ing!
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