Octatrack Filter Sound

Ooh I have no idea what that is, but it sounds rather promising. I’ll hit the documentation, nice one.

Yeah, I get your points regarding usability. Probaply depends on expactations and preferences, certainly not an Ableton alternative like often referred to, but yeah, I totally dig the arranger.
Does so much and I can jump in and out as needed.

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Wow that actually sounds like exactly what I was looking for! I rescind my earlier statement! Thanks

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Gotta love the stupid amount of complexity built into the OT. Every single time I’ve experienced a problem an Elektronaut (usually @Sezare56 haha) tells me of another way to achieve my goals. They thought of everything!

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Haha seriously, I don’t think I’ll ever stop discovering new features! That is one of the things I love about it.

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Wait: you know there are two FX slots per track, don’t you?
So you can perfectly add a reverb or a delay to a track that already has a filter set as first FX.
Now if you want both delay and reverb, you have to use a Neighbour track (or exploit @Kacper’s trick and copy-paste a reverb as first FX).
But no need for a neighbour track in most cases.

(Edited: it’s not @sezare56’s trick and it’s for reverb, not delay)

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Say what? Is it possible to load a delay into FX2, copy the page and paste it to FX1??? :exploding_head:

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There was a whole thread about it. Somebody had just bought the OT and accidentally figured it out. I don’t think you can edit the copied effect though…

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That’s brilliant. Hax!

Not voice stealing exactly, but one of the stock MidiPAL functions will let you round-robin through a range of MIDI channels, so you could absolutely use it to set all or some of the tracks on the Octatrack to act like a polysynth. I haven’t tried it myself, I run the clock firmware on mine.

It’s a pretty easy DIY project if you want to save a bit of money.

Yeah I definitely considered this route when I had the OT, and again later when I had the DT, but it’s hard for me to settle for anything other than being able to jam with it in the same way as I would with a DT/A4. If I had more money I probably wouldn’t mind using it as a dedicated wavetable synth though :thinking:

This is why elektron need to make a poly wavetable synth box with analog filters & amps!!

Yes, I know, but the main question was: does the filter take up a slot. When I do psytrance stuff, more or less every Synth track has moving Modulation on the filter. When I want to create a song on the OT and not just use it as stem player, I would need to sample the synth pattern without filter and use the OT filter to play around with it (that is btw. Even the topic of this thread!).
So as soon as I have a filter on a track, one slot is used up, and I cannot add delay AND reverb on top of it with just the 2 FX slots.
As I had a DT for some time. I somehow thought, that the Filter is its own thing.

The more I read the posts here (thanks a lot to all of you) I get worried if it would be the correct way… I’d like to add some stuff:

  • I won’t stop producing in a daw, but as my work is heavily based on sitting in front of it, I find myself in a lot of situations, where I just don’t want to use the computer, but want to do music.

  • I hate to use a laptop away from a desk… event that the touch pad of the Mac book pro is awesome, I hate to use it, having it on my knees. On the other side, I love to be away from my desk. Currently I am on vacation and spending tons of time in and around our camping van. I am jamming on devices a lot in those situations, but I would love to do more then just jam.

  • I got a deluge for those situations, but the more I use it, the more I get frustrated about the limitations. Sample based stuff is a big pain, because parts don’t share FX, the lack of a good EQ, the problem with understanding the colors after your we’re away from a song for more then a day, the lack of being able to us external fx…

Maybe I should try a Mpc?!

Sorry for some weird typos, iPad is messing up, what I type a lot…

It also can act as another little volume boost with a little coloration. It’s a more gentle distortion than the LO-FI effect most of the time.

It’s been my experience that you can usually get away with using a couple neighbor tracks if you want more effects on you lead sounds. You only need one track for playing stereo stems, you can dedicate one track to being a synth engine and a neighbor machine to be more wet effects and eq or whatever.

This kind of makes me think you won’t take immediately to the OT either. Enjoying the OT has been an exercise in working through frustration and surrendering to limitations, only to discover new possibilities that are maybe more enjoyable than simply recording as I would in a DAW.

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Filter takes up an FX slot, correct. It is loaded to FX1 on each track by default but can be switched out for any non-delay/reverb FX. FX2’s default is delay - this one can be switched the full list of FX. So, in your case you would need two tracks: one as a flex (most probably) and the other as a neighbour. In that way, you have 4 FX slots at your disposal. Also, you don’t ‘need’ to record a static unmoving 64-step sample/pattern. You can play whichever synth into it, and have it constantly recording (and playing back in real time instantly) over and over to create something you can record to something else like a DAW, portable recorder or the record buffer of an internal track as you wish. Hope that makes sense. It does once you try it :sweat_smile:

Based on the fact that you have a deluge already, and everything you’ve said about your use case for the OT, it really does sound to me like you’re looking for more of a DAW replacement. I was ready to buy an MPC Live before I got my Octatrack, and while I don’t regret that decision at all having fallen in love with the hands on experience and the quirks of the OT, I think the MPC is more feature rich on paper and will probably do everything you want it to do, though it will feel closer to a computer than the Octatrack does.

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Sounds like a good idea

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(FYi, I only read about 45 of the posts).

I am still very new to the OT.

I have been using it to replace my DAW. There are good things and bad things about that approach. I should mention, I use the Squarp Pyramid for all my midi stuff and most compositional elements. I then record into the OT.

Good thing: it is fast to record. Good thing, I can then use the OT to shape and/or radically change the musical idea.

Bad thing: it can be a little difficult to really engineer in the OT. The eq options (including the filter) work well but are limited (compared to a DAW). This leads me to plan out my ideas a bit or eat up fx slots. Mixing down a couple of tracks works fast but then my patterns start to get messy.

This brings up another down side: trying to keep all that I have done in my memory, is difficult. I am thinking about creating a paper cheat sheet to document where and what I have done. Have not sone that so?

When it come to the arranger, at first I did not like it but then I started to click for me, when I started to just relay on copy and pasting patterns. So instead of using mute in the arranger, I just do not have trigs on that track. This leads back to the problem I mentioned above: a lot is going on and it can be tricky to remember everything.

Another downside, (it can also be a healthy limitation): back to engineering: for example, it is useful to break up drum groups into low, mid, and high, that why I can tweak them within the composition to get them to gel better. Well: three tracks out of eight gone. I think we all are used to having endless tracks in DAW. Coming from using an Tascam 8 track tape recorder, to a DAW felt very freeing back in the day. However, how many tracks does a song need to sound good? Good thing: (unlike the Tascam) “bouncing” some tracks does not seem to have any noticeable audio degradation. At least I am not noticing it in the mix.

Overall, things seem to take longer for me but it is so much more hands on then a DAW. I hated standing in front of a computer screen and click this and that. It always felt so clinical. It was like I was in the flow of music creation and then I would be pulled out to record. The OT feels a lot different.

I am still new and have to break through some learning barriers. For example, I am still stuck mostly using the OT, with the thought of it only recording four measures at a time. I have used single trigs to play longer stuff but I have to learn how to do longer quantized recording. I assume with slices, I can have 16 measures and just plock the slice.

Anyway: these are some of my thoughts. Peace

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ha. i totally missed that one.
Or forgot :thinking:
Would be not surprised if I appear somewhere in the comments lol

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hey @TRAINTRACS , there’s a nice workaround, simply choose an empty scene, and copy your existing scene to it, then xfade vol to 0 of the respective track, and instantly the audio is cut off (or you turn down the volume of it or filter it out with the scene-lock etc.) if you choose this scene for the respective arrangement row

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Is it possible to control the filter distortion via midi?