Octatrack external sample player options

About the SCSISD, do you need to jumper the last pins to enable format?

I THINK thatā€™s what I did but I donā€™t quite remember, I got it right before a major family medical emergency so there are a few weeks there that are a bit of a blur and thatā€™s part of them.

Oh, that actually does seem like a solid price. I hadnā€™t bought anythign from Canada in a while, I thought the exchange rate was more even so I was thinking it was more like $525 USD. $400 seems solid if it hasat least the 128 voice board and preferrably the second set of 8 analog outs because why not? RAM is off the shelf so if you can find compatible old SIMMs you could upgrade that easily enough yourself, probably for a few dollars.

You have to jump pins on the IDE header so that the S5000 thinks thereā€™s still a floppy drive installed, but I donā€™t remember having to jump anything on the SCSI2SD itself. Thereā€™s a good page about how to install it in an S5000/6000, Iā€™ll see if I can find it and post it here.

EDIT:
https://www.gee-jee.net/?p=273

And yeah, jsut seconding what roadmoviemusic said above about drum and percussion samples on this thing, even some of the fully quantized drum patterns Iā€™ve sequenced on the Octatrack sound really dynamic and live using the s5000 for drum sounds. Some of the old drum sample libraries really hold up.

the Z8 is a very nice device - I think itā€™s missing a few things that were in the S5/6k OS, like playlists. but everything else is there: huge memory, internal IDE (for an SD card adapter), SCSI & USB built-in. Nice filters & FX, multiouts etc etc. The Z4 is like the S5000 - same engine as the top model but less deluxe

In many ways, with the final OS, it functions like a sample hub: it can read many library formats across lots of external media (zip, cards, CD etc). I have a $20 DVD USB burner plugged into mine: it reads Akai, Roland, E-mu formats for transfer to card or Zip drives. Can also burn CDRs OK too.

Just putting this out there, since itā€™s pretty niche info.

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Nice, yeah, Iā€™ve heard good things about teh Z4/8 but Iā€™ve never used one. Itā€™s also only a 2u rack, right? So a lot more portable. I really love the UI of the 5000 though. The removable front panel on the 6000 is a lot less cool when you realize it only comes with like 18" of cable and thereā€™s no place to stow a longer cable so any time you take it off and want to move it more than a foot away fromt he rack you need to actually connect a different cable. Itā€™s superficial, but the s5000 has one of the classiest looking front panels of any gear out there, IMO. It would be nice to have the second floppy bay so I could have the SCSI2SD installed but still keep the floppy drive in also, so I could use it to convert old Akai floppies easily, and balanced inpts would be cool, but over allIā€™m glad I got a 5000 instead of a 6000.

But yeah, the z4 and z8 definitely have some more modern connectivity options that the 5000/6000 donā€™t have, on top of everything else.

Also, since the logical distinction between program and multi doesnā€™t exist anymore the 5000/6000 (and probably z4/8 but I donā€™t know) is REALLY easy to set up for pseudo-MPE, which is nice.

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Iā€™ll be adding a deluge very soon. I vote for that with your OT.

And that Pipes thing looks crazy cool, too.

yep 2U and with expanded memory I was using it to record & do overdubs in the machine, arranging using an MPC to sequence things (about an hour for mono recordings available in RAM). Quite old-school. I used a 3m(?) ps/2 extension cable to stretch the remote over to the mixer

S & Z series are 15-20 year old machines: the build quality is great but they do require some thinking around limitations in interfacing plus, like you said - these are for the road case, not backpack :slight_smile:

Oh I might be wrong about the RAM, you might need a proprietary board to actually add more SIMM slots, not sure.

with the full 256mb you can get about 45 minutes of mono CD audio in RAM. Not too bad.

That thing looks extremely useful.

How do you use an usb cd rom on this?

itā€™s got a single port on the frontpanel that can host a flash drive or cd/dvd - I bought a fake superdrive styled (slotload) DVD RW & it ā€˜just worksā€™ The Z8 sees it as a CDRW for reading multiformats & wrting backups etc.

I might have been lucky getting a drive with compatible mechanism/firmware(?) thereā€™s not a lot of info out there.

can you buy these old libraries anywhere online? I see CDs on ebay and such, just curious anyway to purchase a digitail download copy?

I donā€™t know any specific places, when I got the s5000 it came with about 20 discs.

Relevant:

I know you need win 32bit to use the USB interface on the s5000 what about a mac?

No idea but my gut feeling is it will be harder to get running on the Mac than on the PC.

For me, the main reason to use USB would have been file transfer, but since itā€™s USB 1.0 it would be really slow, and you can ad a SCSI2SD for around half the price of the USB board (much less a USB board AN a hard drive), so IMO itā€™s not worth it. AkSYS doesnā€™t run as a plugin so it doesnā€™t help with DAW integration, and the UI of the actual hardware is so nice to work with that having a software editor doesnā€™t seem that useful. If my 5000 had come with USB installed Iā€™d have tried it out, but after a little research I decided it wasnā€™t even close to worth the cost of adding it.

Iā€™m glad I got a 5000 but I would definitely say donā€™t bother with the 5000 unless it already has some expansions installed. At bare minimum, the 64 voice card (for 128 voice total polyphony), maximum RAM, and the second 8 outs board (16 outs total). Anything less than that any youā€™d be getting a lot more for your money by getting an S6000. Even at that youā€™d probably end up paying a little more if you added the effects board and digital I/O board but it would be comparable enough that it would be down to whether you preferred a few more features (removable front panel, programmable soft keys, second floppy drive, balanced XLR inputs) or a smaller form factor with no fan noise. For me, size and quietness won even though a 6000 would have technichally been a better deal (especially back then when they were usually around $400-$450)

Sadly I have the 5000 with 64 voice, max ram and the usb port. I plan on upgrading the voices and getting the effects card. It doesnā€™t upset me that at the end of the day Iā€™ll pay more to upgrade 5000. 16 outputs for me is overkill, Iā€™m happy. And no interest in the digital io boardā€¦

Final note, is win7 work with the usb card?

go for an Akai s3000xl with the filter card and fX card if you can find one. About $250 or so and a good Gotek HXC USB floppy emulator and you are up and running with a killer sampler, easy to use, small rack space.

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Yeah if youā€™ve already got the USB card go for it! If you canā€™t get it working or it ends up not being that useful you could probably sell the USB card for almost twice the cost of the polyphony update.

Sorry to say I have no experience with the USB card so I canā€™t really help there.

I agree the digital i/o board isnā€™t of inteest at all, and I wouldnā€™t add the second 8 outs if mine didnā€™t come with them but Iā€™m glad to have them since it did. Might add the effects board some day.

That filter board for the s3000 looks pretty excellent. I guess it depends on what youā€™re after. the S3000 and older have limited RAM ad proprietary disk formats and stuff to deal with but they tend to have a lot of character. The @5000/6000 and Z series are a lot more powerful but also a lot more neutral sounding. The S5000 sounds fantastic but in a hi-fi, transparent way. I went for it because I already have an MPC2000xl so having a bunch or RAM and easier file exchange and all of those filters (about 24 filter types) and live resampling were more useful for me than having a vibey box sound, but every Akai sampler Iā€™ve used up through the MPC1000 has been really nice, I feel like as long as you know what you want an find the model that best fits you canā€™t really go wrong with some flavor of Akai prior to Jack Oā€™Connel buying them out in 2003 or '04.

EDIT: just to clarify, the s6000 doesnā€™t ahve front panel XLR inputs, I was thinking of the S1000.

I have used the S5000 for quite a while and have always been happy with it. This thread made me think of the Netflix show, ā€œManiac,ā€ with Jonah Hill and Emma Stone. There was a dream sequence that was supposed to be a futuristic lab I believe with lots of lights and electronics. Right away I noticed the S5000 chillin with its boot up screen!

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I love it when movies do this. I havenā€™t compiled a list or anything but Iā€™m always on the lookout. Sometimes in the late 80s through mid 2000s youā€™ll see a video editing rig , too. The best is when itā€™s in a major studio production that doesnā€™t actually need to do it to save money or anything like that.

Looks like some kind of broadcast-grade Hi-8 VTR under the S5000 in that picture, too. They were jsut grabbing stuff out of the storage closet of a post house for sure.

One of my favorites for this is that old movie Contact, where they use a full synth score/ sound design studio setup complete with Kurzweil K2500r, ADATs and a nice custom studio desk, as some kind of high tech lab used to detect alien communications or something. I donā€™t know, that was the only memorable thing about the movie.