if you ask me, the real question is whether buying two is a mistake
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I sold my Octatrack and am waiting for a mpc live 2,
Can’t really comment yet because don’t have the mpc,
The Octatrack was still super fun though and would have kept it
if had unlimited funds, time and room
Had both OT and Maschine+.
OT has a very different approach as a music making device. It’s sequencer is originated from the former Tracker, put into a very Elektron styled UI. It’s indeed timeless.
And this will as a unit still work in twenty or thirty years from now on.
Maschine+ is sober speaking Native Instrument software Komplete with all its positives and negatives put into a hardware box. It’s mainly designed a) as a NI Presetpack player and b) the UI is straight oriented at the music theory and what NI thinks is important.
It feels and looks like a VST player with big UI limitation. E.g the display real estate, the screens are huge, but NI wastes it to show pictures of presets instead of using the given hardware controls and screen real estate. It also needs a WiFi connection to talk with NI server on the Internet. I doubt that you can use Maschine+ in twenty or thirty years from now on.
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Then you understand incorrectly. It has a brilliant midi sequencer. Does it do the same thing as ableton or an MPC? No it does not. And MPC does not do the same thing as OT.
Its different. Different doesnt mean worse, or better. It means different. Can you do everything the OT can do with software, yeah maybe you can, but is it as fun as the OT? From my personal experience, no. It is not.
As others in this thread have mentioned, buy the gear that suits your needs. That is the only decider. Make a list of boxes you need ticked, find the gear that ticks all the boxes.
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“Dated” is a concept invented by the marketing industry. It isn’t real.
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just don’t expect to came in a elektron forum and asking anything like this and waiting that the people agreed with you…
anyway, i think that with more os less the same amount of money of brand new octatrack, you can have a digitakt and a mpc one and do a lot
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It’s the clicky buttons. That’s what makes the deal.
(I actually love them so much. Click click click)
That and disk streaming, which Akai still can’t do. You want to load up an hour’s set on an Octa, you can. Akais you’ll be doing a 45 second reload between songs.
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I’ve owned both an MPC Live (and Live 2) as well as a Maschine+.
Sold the MPC Live and returned the Live 2 and Maschine+.
MPC feels too much like a DAW, and not a very good DAW. It doesn’t give me anything that either Maschine MK3 or Ableton with Push 2 can’t do but better. I hate the touchscreen and the software instruments aren’t a selling point to me, I hated actually trying to design sounds with them (this was right before this latest update dropped). And I didn’t think they sounded particularly good either.
Maschine+ is a great piece of potential but it needs a lot of work. I love Maschines workflow, the pads, and hardware all feel way better than MPC. But its glitchy and theres a lot of stuff in it that doesn’t feel like it was thought at all for complete standalone. I hope they improve it but I don’t think its ready yet.
Octatrack is completely different than either of them though. Different workflow, different output of sounds. You can look at a spec sheet and see that one appears to be worse than the others but what Octatrack does you can’t do as easily on Maschine and MPC. You can get close, but it takes more effort. I mean, neither have three LFOs that can be assigned to any parameter like the Octatrack does.
But yeah, Octatrack cant really be replaced for what it does. And I can do everything that the force, Maschine, MPC Live does in Ableton so to that point, why buy any of that gear when the DAW is better?
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Oh no. Here comes that itch again. That ”I should just stop this nonsense and get an Octatrack again” itch.
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If what you want is all the bells and whistles of a DAW, then the OT is not the answer.
I look at it completely backwards than how you describe.
You see a lack of things, I see no need in having more than what the OT offers.
I like the FX because they have a unique quality and are not perfect, I like even exploiting the quirkiness.
When I use the OT the way is was intended, it’s timeless as someone else mentioned.
The interfacing is perfected in a lot of ways and the limitations are how things have been streamlined for the device.
To me it makes DAW’s and USB controllers seem clunky and obtuse.
The OT is a thing to learn, not make something else.
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Every since I learned about the “Plays Free” feature of the OT, I’ve been like … “Uhm … okay … never knew that and I was on the OT for years … sounds perfect for me.”
Ah, the humanity.
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When you can take a sample and transform it in a way that you never could in a DAW…layered drum loops, programmed to never repeat …variationsretriggering time per trig…scenes shifting from one moment to the next…pitchmappedtotransposition…midi notes arpeggiated in scale modulated by LFOs…chordstab+amplitudeenvelopefilter+delayprocessing÷modulation=minorpad…scene developing idea present…further lfo variations…transformations…transitions…probability repitched & retriggered…
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IMHO one of the most important points when deciding for or against an OT is to know all the restrictions of (pattern oriented) step sequencers.
While the Elektron sequencer is quite capable and provides great features you cannot compare it to a linear sequencer (like in a DAW) where you have all the freedom you can think of.
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…some love the klak klak zak zak workflow…some hate it…
but end of the day…everybody loves a LFO monster and endless p’locking possebilities…
and who’s looking for a daw…should invest in a daw…
a musicinstrument is not a daw…
anybody who ever played an instrument knows, limitation and focus are the key to unlock all sonic gates…
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Maybe we should save time and start the “is it worth it in 2022?” thread now.
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…and the answer remains the same…even in the year 2525… 
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This is a great, GREAT point. If it needs to phone home do you even really own it?
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Does it? Or is that just the initial connection / setup?
My frustrations lie in sequencing MIDI and using the OT as a mixer and FX box at the same time. I wouldn’t have these issues if I were mostly sequencing samples.
Playing in long MIDI sequences requires either chaining/arranging patterns or calculating whether the rhythm will fit into a track with a scale multiplier. And you have to do this advance of playing it in, which can take you out of “flow”.
Overlapping MIDI notes require as many tracks as you want notes to overlap. So you have to think like a string or brass arranger, not a keyboard player. I find this takes me out of flow too.
If you use an “external instrument” in Ableton, you can play in MIDI notes and tweak the track audio processing at the same time, allowing you realtime sound design across the instrument and Ableton effects. You can srt up almost the same behaviour in the OT using auto-channel, MIDI Tracks and Thru Machines, but when you toggle MIDI mode off to make changes to the Thru track or its FX, you temporarily can’t direct MIDI to the relevant MIDI Track (but can still output a sequence to it).
But honestly, the fact that I CAN sequence MIDI and use the OT as a mixer and FX box at the same time, in a small, dedicated, rugged and mostly stable box with a crossfader, is an absolute joy. The same features with a computer, controller, audio i/o, software, would be more powerful but also more complex and expensive.
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