New black unit's os updates

Dataline · 2014-07-12T19:05:57.000Z

Hey Van, what stability issues are you having with the OT?

And what are you missing on the midi sequencer?

oldgearguy · 2014-07-12T20:53:45.000Z

""van"":

[quote=“oldgearguy”][quote=“Rusty”]^^ Which was the stable & fulfilling pre-sale promises version?

IMHO, it was 1.21B (9/19/2012) where pickup machines were added - as far as fulfilling pre-sale promises.

1.22 (12/20/2012) added live recording of note length, and
1.25 (5/31/2013) was the new effects (Dark Reverb, etc)
1.25B (10/18/2013) was the last release and it was bug fixes and other tweaks

(1.0 was released 6/20/2011)[/quote]
if you are satisfied with your octatrack- congratulations!
i’m not! i think there are some important stability tasks and not implemented features that it has to have to be a really good audio AND midi sequencer! which it supposed to be at the first place. there are lots of better samplers, lopping machines, and fx stuff on the market. compered to that elektron is a toy. but the sequncer is good, you can use own samples with abbility to sample live and has some funny fx on board.
the midi sequencer is just NOT ready!!! and how long i should wait for it?!?! elektron?
[/quote]
The short answer is that I’m extremely unhappy about a few key areas of the OT. Slaving Pickup machines to an external clock, being able to manipulate the loop and not have it drop out of recording, and a host of other apparently hard-to-fix issues that other loopers seem to be able to do.

For me, the on-board MIDI sequencer is a non-issue since I use a Cirklon as my master sequencer. However, that does mean my OTs have to be able to do everything they can do slaved to incoming clock. I do know other people have issues with the MIDI sequencing side of the OT.

The OS release discussion was more meant to show that Elektron’s interest in fixing the OT and making it the best machine it can be has slowed down. My guess is that the senior developers were pulled off for Overbridge or Analog xxx coding and the OT is being looked at by a junior person or by others in their spare time. Just a guess of course.

I want the issues fixed, I want the features to work as promised, and I want some enhancements to be made. However, for me, the OT is still usable right now; I just see how much better it could be with some updates.

BTW - the reason for owning more than one OT was to initially address the most stupid decision – a box called Octatrack; 8 tracks of samples; Only 2 (or 4) outputs. Why? I’d rather have only 2 inputs and 8 outs if they needed the back panel space. I know they felt their on-board effects were good enough for processing samples. I completely disagree. They are serviceable. I use the filtering and EQ for a lot of things, but that’s about it.

With only 4 outs (losing the Cue feature), I still have to pick which 3 tracks get effected and what to do with the other 5.

However, having 2 OTs introduces more headaches since they don’t transmit everything across via MIDI, so you can’t exactly keep 2 in sync and have them follow each other through various changes. Rusty knows a lot more about the MIDI side and can speak to those details.

To end a long post – I thought that releasing the OT with a beta OS and then doing monthly updates for a year to get it close to production ready and then pretty much abandoning it after that is lame. I expected Elektron to do better than that given their history with the MachineDrum and MonoMachine.

Dogma · 2014-07-12T22:15:37.000Z

What the OT needs is a way to deal with samples and sample management a lot easier. The sample manager that is being developed means that it will be vastly easier to do this from the computer. The OT is screaming for this. While the OT itself needs to be simplified if elektron should offer more support to this user created tool it will really help with a lot of complaints against the OT so as the os of the OT is not even close to being done the editor/sample manager means we could have a tool NOW that we know works.
Seriously guys it will make your life so so so much easier if we had something like this - it’s the best the OT is going to get this side of overbridge

Rusty · 2014-07-13T05:13:00.000Z

""oldgearguy"":

However, having 2 OTs introduces more headaches since they don’t transmit everything across via MIDI, so you can’t exactly keep 2 in sync and have them follow each other through various changes. Rusty knows a lot more about the MIDI side and can speak to those details.

For starters… OSv1.25B

Parts do not send / receive Midi; thus making it pointless to try and utilise parts across multiple Octatracks simultaneously.
[Func] + [Track] does not send Midi CC commands, whether for one or multiple tracks. Thus, can’t control slave OT audio tracks from Master OT midi tracks.

""oldgearguy"":

For me, the on-board MIDI sequencer is a non-issue since I use a Cirklon as my master sequencer. However, that does mean my OTs have to be able to do everything they can do slaved to incoming clock. I do know other people have issues with the MIDI sequencing side of the OT.

I just picked an E-Mu Command Station, so the Octatracks will be going in the cupboard for the foreseeable future, I can’t be bothered fighting them anymore at the moment.

van · 2014-07-13T07:58:37.000Z

""Dataline"":

Hey Van, what stability issues are you having with the OT?

And what are you missing on the midi sequencer?

i actually don’t wanted another feature requst thread. please look at the whole OT feature requests out there and issues:
f.e. flex machines, or repeat delay( + i think scene or bank change (i’ll post it in a own thread)) causes prolems. thru machines couses problems while you switch to another pattern and the thru machine should shut up ( the thru machine freezes and makes noise/sound)

midi: where are the midi p-locks??? why i can’t access repeat delay in the midi page? and so on…

global things like naming stuff or organizing stuff(merging banks(patterns etc) it’s supposed to be the brain of your setup, right?

there are tons of such requests and i understand that there are limitations and elektron can’t implement all of this because of limitations and because of time problems (small company), but i think i can speak in the name of all of us:
it would be facillitating to know what can be done, what can’t be done and when and if and etc. the silence that this company has as strategy is just more then frustrating!

sorry for bad spelling.

cheers!
van
p.s. and don’t even think about a new OT v2 or something like that until the current OT is not finished!
[url=“dict.cc Wörterbuch :: facilitating :: Englisch-Deutsch-Übersetzung”]

Dogma · 2014-07-13T09:50:21.000Z

As it’s supposed to be the centre of your setup and the fact that they have deliberately hobbling other products so that they will buy an octatrack and then to make the octatrack pretty much impossible to be the centre of your set up - if they can’t almost completely re-write the OS so that humans can use it - if your not going to let us do it on the OT itself then give me the tools to do it on the computer.

GovernorSilver · 2014-07-13T18:47:01.000Z

I would also like to see a new OS update to fix the Octatrack bugs.

One longstanding one is lack of stability with the slave pickup machine when more RAM is used. That is why Anders never seems to have any trouble with his pickup machine looping - he always set the max recording time of his pickup machines to 32 or less. Whereas I and others run into problems when recording time is set to MAX on the master pickup machine and the slave is set to a multiple of the master’s time.

It seems that the closer one gets to the RAM memory limit, the more likely one is going encounter the dreaded “Dub Rec Aborted” error on a slave pickup machine, which to me would suggest a memory leak or memory management bug somewhere in the code.

van · 2014-07-15T11:50:54.000Z

…so, and now what, elektron?! any wise words??

Rael · 2014-07-15T12:37:06.000Z

OS update would definitely be very welcome,
there are as discussed hundreds of suggestions, and at least 10 that come up time and time again

Personally, little things like SLICE functions, it would be great to beable to choose to slice the peaks in the waveform, instead of just time divisions
Also i find Sliced loops often have pops and blips,

The ability to move patterns and banks between projects (easily) would be a major plus for organising live gigs, as it is i tend to stay in my live project all the time, cos it would be too much hassle to move a new project into the LIVE one…

Also names per pattern or bank would be useful, i manage to get around the banks in live situations, but sometimes its hit or miss

Tempo per pattern or bank, would also be a much reclaimed and useful addition,

Pitch more than ± 12, time stretch faster without changing bpm
(i know workarounds are possible)

As mentioned the LOOPER side of the OT is pretty much work in progress, it in no way feels finished, and perso i stopped using it,
The looper is not my prerogative, but the OT was marketed as a looper machine, and i think the current state of affairs is embarrassing (to them)…

MIDI crossfader,and MIDI scenes, would be great, but i guess its not gonna happen,
Yet another fantastic potential let down…

As an OT owner,despite loving my machine, and being able to do loads of amazing things, i still feel let down by Elektron (if there are to be no more OS updates, ) by the short lived investment in the OT, now the emphasis is on the new Analog machines,
At least communicate your intentions, its frustrating to be in the dark,

Aside from gripes, id like to state some positive things already implemented

Scenes - excellent invention, dont know how id play live without them
Parameter Locks, - all elektron machines have them, but they’re just great
freeze delay, - fantastic
master track - very useful
New reverbs, tasty
Lo fi fx - dirty
samples locked to tempo,- real time - time stretch, never had this with any of my other samplers

It is just brilliant, and ive never used anything like it, but still not quite finished, you can feel it could be just that much better, and because we’re accustomed to Elektron constantly updating their products, we’re always left waiting for more, and i hope there is more, but if there’s not, then Elektron please just come out and say so, instead of pretending there’s nothing wrong with the octatrack
Then we could just get on with what we’ve got, and stop wishing…

Yours sincerely
A 3000€ indebted electronic musician

oldgearguy · 2014-07-15T12:59:23.000Z

threshold sampling is another big omission.

I’ve pretty much given up any kind of live sampling except in situations where I don’t really care what I’m grabbing from the input.

99% of the time I use the one shot triggers and quantized recording. Sure it’s easy and convenient, but I basically use it that way because I have to.

On a computer (for example), if you pre-record, it’s no big deal to zoom in and either manually choose the start or have software auto-truncate the silent portions from the ends. Doing that kind of work on the OT can be done, but it’s tedious and it should be unnecessary, especially given the relatively small amount of memory available.

It’s all of this “ok, we’ve used the product for a while and now we really have a handle on what the user needs” kind of update that is missing.

1.25b as an inital release is fine. Now that folks have really been using the OT in interesting and different ways, a handful of issues/bugs/enhancements can be addressed. Sure there will always be more that can be done. However, if Elektron looks through their open bug reports, user requests, the various threads on the OT forum, and collects them into a comprehensive list, they can find a core set of things to be addressed that would make the vast majority of users very happy.

analogback · 2014-07-15T13:31:32.000Z

""oldgearguy"":

After the release of OT OS 1.0, Elektron released an update every month for about 12 months. Then the release cycle has been 2 months for a release, then 3, then the last 2 updates were 5 months apart. It’s now been 9 months since the 1.25B update and counting.

I did not look to see if the extended release time coincided with the start of Overbridge work or the Analog series work. I just had some time at lunch and was poking around archive.org

yes numerology appears everywhere, i believe its a coded message to the ‘elektron elite’
if you can compress numbers and think about the magic ‘7’ you are on your way to understanding the OT OS update cycle and ultimately what will become of the worlds ultimate sampler… on the 20th of July 2014, all will be revealed

Regis · 2014-07-15T19:41:03.000Z

Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

van · 2014-07-16T00:42:56.000Z

""Regis"":

Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

very funny… you just won the golden pants…

Rank31 · 2014-07-16T05:59:28.000Z

Impossibilty to manage LSB + MSB banks changes of other gear is a midi sequencer bug for me

midi retrigs and midi crossfader a wish

Elektronot · 2014-07-16T23:45:20.000Z

""tonight"":

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omg

van · 2014-07-16T23:52:57.000Z

""Elektronot"":

[quote=“tonight”]
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omg[/quote]
this one also won the golden pants…

Elektronot · 2014-07-16T23:57:09.000Z

""analogback"":

yes numerology appears everywhere, i believe its a coded message to the ‘elektron elite’
if you can compress numbers and think about the magic ‘7’ you are on your way to understanding the OT OS update cycle and ultimately what will become of the worlds ultimate sampler… on the 20th of July 2014, all will be revealed

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxBsv-ng7YU

sign_cowFart.jpg578×540 164 KB

tonight · 2014-07-17T01:28:20.000Z

""Regis"":

Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Did you change your avatar just for that quote?

jonah · 2014-07-17T07:52:56.000Z

these aren’t requests as i’ve built solutions to most of this in max or with other gear.

midi:

entering midi notes/values is not all that dynamic or performance oriented imo. for me it’s missing the nice details that makes the audio side of the octatrack so useful.

compare to monomachine. for instance, it’s great how the arp in the monomachine pops up on top so you can still get ready to jump into the next thing you want to do as soon as you’re done w, or you can hit function + left or right while entering notes to jump a whole octave.

it’s not common that dialing through midi notes 1 at a time will be musically useful for me. being able to skip +/- 2,3,5 or 7, etc. would make changing notes on the fly more performative, i think. if you could do something like assign “skip values” per note you could really zip around. i mostly use the notes to trigger patterns or tracks on other machines or for drums because dialing notes one at a time isn’t that fun for me.

midi cc mapping could use “machines” imo. with 8 tracks that aren’t as mutable as the audio, sometimes i’ll devote multiple tracks to one device to use different lfo settings, p-locked values, one shot tracks. if i start with a blank pattern or project i have to dig up an old pattern that has the same ccs mapped or re-learn it or dial them all in again. if i copy a track i have to mute the destination, clear the trigs, clear the lfos, clear the arp just to use the ccs. it’s stuff that you’re better off preparing for rather than thinking up and then doing.

why can’t we mute/unmute midi tracks with the crossfader and scenes? it’s like if i’m doing a lot on the audio side, playing scenes, locking values, working the crossfader i can’t be jumping over the to midi side or the mute page that much, so the midi tracks can end up kinda static. i can get way more going with only permutations of 4 midi tracks at a time if they’re reactive and i can switch it up than i can with 8. it’s a hassle to deal with midi feedback by patching the crossfader midi out to something and translating it back to mute the octatrack’s midi tracks.

if you could use the crossfader to adjust midi track lengths or tempo multiplier or shuffle trigs left or right or adjust swing… basically, i don’t care if it doesn’t smoothly morph through p-locks, make it do anything on the midi side at either end of the range and i’d figure out something cool. i’d gladly give up parts on the midi side if i could use the crossfader and scenes to do a small amount of that kind of switching.

lack of function snapping on the midi side is a pain for transpose and pitch bend. chances are transpose is going to go through a bunch of notes i don’t want before i get it to where i want it.

as it is now i have to switch patterns about 8x more often for MIDI than audio and the MIDI side takes longer to program. i could use parts, but…

not midi:

changing the total pattern length to 2 steps usually causes the ot to freak out or crash for me. might have to do with # of flex recorders and independent track lengths as well. with scenes/parts it’s crazy what you can do with 2-4 steps.

ime part reload needs and idiot/safety mode, when you’re working in a dark, busy environment, live it’s just too easy or i’m too stupid not to accidentally reload. it’s frustrating because i really like parts, especially for MIDI but probably only use them 1/8th of the time and mostly to do something and quickly reload because i don’t want to accidentally reload after 30+ minutes of work as the track’s mutated to where it currently is.

van · 2014-08-01T09:28:56.000Z

…