Anyone who needs to compare these 2 devices and say one beats the other or whatever is doing it wrong. Period.
Also, I said it once, but it bears repeating - the envelopes and LFOs on the MPC are not good. This is where the OT really shines for me. Darenager highlighted a lot of other reasons as well. I would love to see the MPC updated here, but I’m not going to hold my breath there.
Honestly it may not matter depending on what kind of music you make, but to me it make s huge difference.
Are you talking about adding effects here? The second part about automation is indeed nice. I am still messing with that.
Does the automation reset to 0 in each new sequence? So for example I could slowly bit crush a hat until it is screaming, and then in the next sequence everything will be reset to 0?
I was doing a lot of stuff like that in DAW after the fact, but if it’s not super annoying to do automations in the MPC, I will mess with that more.
There are two types of pad effects. One page full of effects called “Drum Fx” that are always there, I think you can select 8 out of a pool of maybe 16 or so. Things like bitcrushing, ring modulation, certain EQing, distortion etc.
Then there are 4 additional insert fxs per pad which you can use on top of that. All of the above is automatable.
The automation resets to whichever position you want it to reset to. When you twist a knob in write mode, it will automatically add an event at the beginning of that sequence with whatever position that knob was in before you started to twist it. So if you set it to 0 before you hit the automation write button, it would set it to 0 on that pattern.
If you jump to another sequence, it will reset to whichever state is set at the beginning of that sequence. If no automation data exists for that setting, it will stay where it was when the knob was last twisted in the previous sequence. If you don’t like that, just wiggle the knob at the beginning of the new sequence and it will write an initial parameter value at step 0 for you to modify as you wish. (A little hint/gotcha: you can’t remove that initial parameter value from a sequence unless you erase all other automation events of that parameter from the list first. If you want to erase all automation of a particular parameter from a sequence, it’s easier to do that from the Erase Events window, where you can select the specific parameter automation you want to erase.)
It’s super flexible really, and so immediate and hands on. This is how I write most of my full songs - I just make copies of a sequence, name them intro, verse 1 etc and then twist knobs live while playing the song. If I’m unhappy with one section, it’s easy enough to erase the automation “lane” for that particular sequence (the automation on all other parts of the song remain intact or course). This isn’t very different from automation lanes in a DAW, really. The key difference, for me at least, is that I rely on my ears rather than the visual shape of curves.
If you’re 99% happy with an automation but just need to tweak that one tiny glitch of it, you can even go advanced and enter List Edit, where you can filter the view to only show a particular automation and then manually edit the individual automation events/points.
I use this form of automation for two purposes: both for the gradually evolving parts of a song (eg opening up a filter over the course of 16 bars) as well as for specific glitchy parts of drum beats. You can automate just about anything, including panning, pitch, sends, effects, etc etc so with the right type of programming (or just in-the-moment jamming with the knobs), you can approximate the p-locks of Elektron sequencers. Of course, you also have access to 16x8 pads per program so if automating becomes too messy, you can always just make a copy of a pad (just hit Copy, pad x and then pad y) and completely mess up the copy. Then just transpose certain notes to the new pad or jam them out in Dub Record. It’s so quick and easy.
By the way, the previous conversation about the MPC vs the Octatrack made me realize just how much value hardware adds to music making. I keep hearing that you can achieve everything you can achieve in hardware using just a DAW, and I’ve been guilty of saying similar things myself. But the reality is that it’s simply not true. It’s only true technically, not practically.
Particularly the example given above by @darenager proves what kind of magic you can achieve with what we tend to call “happy accidents”. Could you carefully program a similar type of random-ish mangling of a drum loop in a sequencer on a DAW? Yes of course - but would you end up in the same place and would the DAW invite you to even think along those lines of adding random glitches to a drum loop? Probably not.
This is why you can certainly compare hardware on a feature by feature basis and make logical arguments for why X can achieve similar results as Y. But the reality is that X!=Y in the end: each distinct workflow will invite you to approach music making slightly different, and will generate different kinds of happy accidents.
On an MPC, I can chop up a sample/loop and play it live in unexpected ways. On an Elektron sequencer, I can use Func+All and twist a knob and end up with something I had no idea would sound amazing. And even on a DAW, I can accidentally drag two note lanes over the same mono synth and have it force itself to prioritize certain notes and play a melody I didn’t even intent to program that sounded better than each of the note parts separately.
So, happy accidents are very real parts of making music, and those accidents will look different on just about every piece of hardware (or DAW) out there. At least I find that to somewhat justify my constant GAS. 
For me it’s entirely the opposite (I own both devices). The OT is, as @darenager says, primarily a sample mangler and is intended to be played live. The MPC can only be played live if you set up a program, and then it’s the pads you can play and maybe the four Q-Links, if you have em set up that is. To me, the MPC is the production powerhouse, the OT is the instrument. (And with that I’m not talking about sampling pianos and emulating chord playing on pads — because you’re right, I’d use the MPC for that 10/10 times — I’m talking about playing a sample by mangling it).
Very unlikely, the hardware is not laid out for that at all. The touchscreen is central to MPC OS UI, there aren’t enough hardware controls on all but the MPC X to enable the sort of tactile sample mangling that the OT offers. What makes the OT genius in that regard is not its long features list (as you point out in another post, it’s actually fairly limited in its feature set compared to the MPC), it’s the way these parts integrate into a whole that can be addressed and engaged with in a relatively flat manner through the hardware UI (more so with the Mk2 than the Mk1 I’d add).
Lol, my main reason for checking in here regularly as well 
someday, the much fabled 3.0 will drop, someday… 
I think this is the key! The kind of music people make and the process by which they make it. And I agree with you, battling out which one is ultimately better globally speaking is probably missing the point entirely. That said, I think it’s really important to be clear about the strengths and weaknesses and their applications when discussing these devices — after all, our discussions become reference points for others who research these devices & ultimately spend money on them.
I smoked some weed last night and played an egg shaker like I have never before played an egg shaker in my life lol. The sounds and rhythms that came out were amazing, I basically was watching my body doing its own thing, can’t even lay claim to the output, it was pure feel and probably the Goddess of the Green guiding my body from note ti note. For me, I want my electronic instruments to have that immediacy and that physicality to it so that in a moment beyond premeditated cognition, my body can respond to what is coming out of the speakers and just do its thing and surprise my thinking mind. That’s a form of “happy accidents” that’s essential to what I like to do and for this, the OT has been the glorious crown jewel of my setup ever since my wife got me one.
And the most important component is the brain we bring to them, and every single one is wired differently, but at the end of the day all of these instruments are about interfacing with it in a pleasing & productive way. It’s a great thing we all like different ways of working, it means we have plenty of choices on how to twiddle knobs.
FYI Octatrack can do (useable) -8 octaves* down using rate set to pitch, and 24 semitones range using pitch (+12/-12)
*Actually upto -32 octaves if you want to get extreme, although not too useful unless using very highly pitched samples.
Rate/Octave
64 = 0
32 = -1
16 = -2
8 = -4
4 = -8
2 = -16
1 = -32
I love ya Darenager but before you decided to define sample mangling as an ‘only realtime affair’ all was peaceful in the world of mice and men 
if you sample via this looper method you don’t have to stop the sequencer if I’m not mistaken
Great post. I was automating a lot of things in the Daw post MPC export, and I really prefer not to.
This all sounds very doable for me. My workflow that I am developing right now is basically migrating from making complete tracks in the MPC to offloading the sampled synths, vocals breaks and loops to the OT. For example I can mess my 303’s internal sequencer and get something going there and then sample in a different take for each Part on the OT. Then chop it up and resequnce on the OT. For happy accidents, there are a lot of directions to go - random trigs that the OT generates, LFO on the sample, LFO on delay or envelops…etc.
Its pretty incredible the transitions you can make on the OT. So when people say it is a live performance sampler I agree 100%. It is very much an instrument in that regard. But I will say that many times when I’d see “live performance” I would think of someone playing a gig somewhere with the device instead of thinking of how that translates into studio work. Definitely a mistake on my part, since more and more of the elements of my tunes have live automation throughout. It really adds something when you can queue up a song on the MPC with it’s own movement and then jam out on the OT and capture it in a live take. Thats why to me, they are such an amazing combo.
I used to do this on the older MPCs and I’d record my synths live into my DAW. But I find that the new MPCs don’t slave to a DAW nearly as well so I just go DAWless now into a multitrack. And to be honest, I really prefer it.
well to be fair a mangle is a hand crank operated device, and the OT is often hailed as a ‘sample mangler” due to crossfader. Virtually every sampler since the 80’s can edit samples, loop short sections, filter, envelope, LFO etc - which I would not call mangling, but editing.
I always thought the use of the term sample mangling traditionally came from applying effects to samples in realtime or otherwise which both the octa and mpc can do? You can run samples through the mpc FX in realtime or static time… the strict definition of how the octatrack mangles samples came later because before Elektron existed the term sample mangling existed
This was why I got involved in the discussion too.
Anyway, I’ve already made my point that each piece of hardware has its own workflow which contributes to the end result. I can certainly see how someone owning an OT and basing a lot of their song/rhythm/sound design on its unique capabilities would using it and finding it superior to an MPC, which honestly is a producer’s tool first and live performance instrument second, where the OT might have it the other way around (note: I have never used one).
It’s why, despite absolutely loving my MPC One for its sheer power and immediacy (compared to a DAW), I’m still curious about other random machines like the Model:Samples, the SP-404 MKII or even the Microcosm. I’m thinking that, as limited as they are compared to an MPC on a feature-per-dollar level, they bring a certain element to the music making process that I can’t quite achieve on the MPC alone.
Seems like mangling is a bit of a vague or not clearly defined term
There is every possibility that my definition is wrong but I don’t consider any of the other samplers I have as manglers (nor the DT) but as editable/tweakable. The OT can have 16 multi parameter, multi track scenes all switchable or interpolatable in realtime, which is rather more than editing/tweaking to my mind, hence mangler.
The problem with OT is that if I don’t use it for a month or two, I need the user manual on hand if I want to do something other than midi sequencing. That’s why I use the OT only for midi sequencing, the effort to remember how it works or how to do that thing is too much. I restart from scratch with the OT learning once every 2/3 yrs
Oh well, not related to the OT but I finished another track on the MPC Live, and I think this is one of my best mix to date, or at least, a better mix than my usual standard: Stream Punishment by Automageddon | Listen online for free on SoundCloud
Atari ST beats both the MPC and OT.
Sinclair ZX spectrum beats them all.
au contraire mon fraire, Opcode StudioVision kills’em all
Nicely done! All elements are very defined, and well placed in the mix, including a punchy and deep sounding kick. The stereo placement of all elements and balance is also very good!
Thanks for the listen!
I noticed that having all I need for a mix on the Mpc helped me a lot. I can even compare the mix on monitors, headphones and Mpc speakers to have an idea of how it translates.
Defo a positive side of an all-in-one machine