I’m a new member of this forum. After 3years of watching octa videos and tutorials I overcame the intimidating reputation of this maschine and pullednthe trigger. The octa will be here in days.
I play guitar and will like to connect my gear to the octa, but after reading the manual and drawing sketches for my live setup decided to ask octa users.
Pedalboard with fx ane boss rc500 looper
Tc helicon play for vocals
Digitakt
Novation bass station
What will you be your suggestion for audio and midi cable routing since octa has “only” four inputs?
And how you will start preparing a live set in 2022 with these?
My first goal with the octa is making transitions from song to song, playing guitar thru and triggering vocals.
Because of the 4 inputs was thinking of use it one for each: digitakt, guitar, bass station and vocals
I’m a solo artist but on the upcomming gig will play some ambient music with a narrative vocal guided speaker.
Digitakt was for now my center brain (after the firmware update) played guitar and vocal thru it (boss rc500 out in to the digi) and also bass station midi slaved to the digi.
I will be glad if the octa on the long term will save me bringing extra maschines to gigs, but for now I think will play guitar out from the rc500 as a thru maschine and midi slaved to octa or digi
Bass station will mainly be sequenced or sampled before.
If you want to use the Octatrack hands-free for looping then I recommend getting a Morningstar MC6 (or 8, depending on how many macros you need on hand). I use one for mine which lets me sample and overdub my bass and guitar, reverse playback direction and control pitch, etc etc.
It has two expression inputs that you can map to the crossfader of the Octatrack or whatever else parameter you need to adjust. Nice for immediate parameter sweeps if you have expression pedals on hand.
Since you already have a 505 i would practice and try to get the best out of what you already have. Practicing with the OT for looping is not that hard (one button press to loop in the coming bars for example).
When you absolutely need your hands, the 505 is great and i’m not even sure i would pass it thru OT. It would allow you to change project for instance without having the sound to cut and you could put it on the CUE out to loop mangled stuff after the OT with your feet.
I’m a huge advocate for keeping a small and flexible setup until it shows its limits (or not).
I have the rc500 which is the floor unit
Used to have also the rc505 which was cool in combo with te digi.
You’ve ment just to use it without the octa or what?
I meant you don’t need to put it up from the OT in the chain but after CUE outputs so you can send and loop whatever is in the OT…
You need to try what suits best for you, i was ust giving ideas.
That’s a very vague question with all the possibilities. But within this lack of framework, Í would connect probably something like this:
First setup is simple to learn OT:
BS2 into input A (on a Thru track)
nothing in input B
Send-Return fx chain in input C D (Thru track)
Set up Cue for send FX.
Output into mixer / speakers
Use midi to clock or sequence the BS2.
I wouldn’t use midi for my pedals
And use a couple of OT tracks to play some drum samples.
Should be a good start.
Still leaves one mono input it you want to connect more. The rest of your instruments will have to go through the mixer.
For someone new to OT I wouldn’t recommend trying complicated routings (mixer bus groups or aux sends) and stuff to route éverything potentially to the OT.
People will - for good reason - also advise often to first start with OT solo for a couple of tunes. Learn the basics.
For guitar, I’ve never personally had good luck direct to the Octatrack, with or without a DI or preamp, but I’ve been getting great results using an amp with a homemade isolation cab. Live I’d probably use an amp with one mic patched direct to the house PA and the other to the Octatrack via a preamp and direct monitoring disabled on the pickup machines. But whether that makes sense for you would depend a lot on how you’re planning to use it.
I would say be prepared to need some kind of amp or speaker emulation or something in case your specific guitar, pedals and playing style don’t work well with a direct-to-Octatrack sound.
You can make a really nice microphone clamp for a few dollars and all you need to do is drill one hole in a piece of plastic and then screw everything together, can’t recommend it enough:
Mine cost more like $18 because I made it during lockdown and didn’t have any practical way to get to Harbor Freight so I had to order the bar clamp, but even then it was worth it compared to the commercial versions that cost a LOT more and don’t look any better (worse in some cases). It’s one of those things like an amp stand that cost a lot to buy but are cheap and easy to make, and usually what you make suits your personal setup better than an off the shelf product anyway.
Thank you for the idea!
Maybe will try that but for now I’m using dsm simplifier for electric and fishman aura for acoustic guitar
Both work very nice in my tiny enviroment
Hope that will work nice especially the aura on one big stage that I will play in month. Today I noticed some little feedback when I engageed a bigger reverb preset on the big sky
I’ve had good luck with acoustic pickups into the OT, it’s just DI electric that never seems to sit well for me, even though I use DI guitar for other things sometimes. I’ve also got an old, 80s Barcus Berry acoustic guitar pickup mounted onto a mandolin, and when I’ve run that through an acoustic preamp straight to the OT it sounded better than the in-room sound to me.
