Octatrack Master Track 8 Send Effects

Elektron Gear Octatrack
#6

That’s exactly what I did. I do that a lot with inputs and have never needed microtiming to make it work, but I tried adjusting the microtiming a few different ways (nudging the play trig later, nudging the record trig earlier, etc) and I never got it to actually play even though it should have. I’ll try again tomorrow night, last time I tried I was running 1.35h and now I’m running 1.30c, shouldn’t make a difference but you never know.

I’m using all four inputs already but if I wasn’t that would work, I used to use an OTO BAM on the cue and returned into inputs C and D in studio mode as a send effect and it sounded amazing but I needed to free up the inputs. If I can get this to work finally it will go a long way to making up for not having the BAM in the live rig anymore. I figured it was just one of those things that should work in theory but in practice didn’t because of mysterious Octatrack reasons, but knowing that it works for you means there was something going wrong here, either something I missed or something weird about my OT (the firmware or the project I was using or something, who knows).

#7

As @glaciertree mentioned, it works with cables too. You don’t need microtiming for realtime playing for inputs.
But for SRC3 recordings you need +1 microtiming on Flex trigs for realtime playing.
It works for me with 1.25C 1.25E 1.25H 1.30B

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#8

Thanks @sezare56. This works for me. However, I need +1 microtiming on the sample trig and not on the recorder trig for it to function properly. Otherwise playback stops after 8 steps and continues when the pattern loops.

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#9

Makes sense :slight_smile: the sample doesn’t exist until it’s been recorded.

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#10

Edited, that’s what I meant (Flex recordings +1) but it was confusing.
You can add - 1 microtiming on rec trigs instead but it won’t work for first play.

No microtiming if you record INAB/INCD.
Disable Timestretch if the Ot is slaved.

#11

I’ll mess with it again, I’m sure there was something weird about my project at the time that was messing it up. Definitely tried a bunch of different microtiming combinations including the one described and none worked at the time. If I had inputs available I’d most likely go back to using an external reverb, but right now I’m focusing exclusively on working on my live setup so I can get back to playing out regularly, and in that setup all the inputs are already full. But thanks for confirming that it should work.

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#12

Neighbor masterisation > new part > adds + variations & mix with part 1 + add of reverb etc > Part 3 etc… Is a possible way ?

Can a part record other parts ? Recorder buffer 1 stay recorder buffer 1 no ? So maybe you can use this. I know this isn’t a new tips here but since 20h I want to write it :wink:

I think this “recording to another part way” is a great way to use for live projection with OT

#13

Well, I’ve got no clue what the issue was before but it works exactly like I thought it should now, so that’s fantastic.

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#14

This really makes me want a Faderfox UC4 now, because it’s just begging to be treated more like a conventional mixer with seven channels and one aux send returned to channel 8. If I had instant access to all of the main and cue levels from an external controller then it would be possible to do dubstyle mixes entirely in the OT.

Even as is, on top of being able to do stuff like keeping the main volume on a track down and just bringing up the cue it’s also like getting a third fx slot on every track, since I almost never have to use a slot for reverb to fill out the mix this way, so both slots can be used for effects that are there as part of the sound sculpting process rather than part of the mix.

Also, I haven’t messed with it yet but you could definitely use multiple trigs, retrigger, LFOs, microtiming, and feedback to get soe really interesting stuff going on. Using multiple playback trigs and then using track 8’s cue level to feed it back into itself should make a tempo-synced, multitap delay with both FX slots in the feedback path and the ability to plock parameters on every tap (and, since the play trigs would all be later than the record trig, that means pitch and speed should work, too). All kinds of possibilities, basically anything you could do with a thru machine, except instead of being applied to a live input it’s a send effect with a feedback loop.

I owe this whole thread a beer for making me try to get this to work again, and succeed.

EDIT: I just tried that last thing, and in about a minue and a half I’d set up an 8 tap delay with pitch shifting on some of the taps and an additional flutter delay (done by plocking RTRG) on tap 8.

The more I use the OT, the better it gets.

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#15

strong rec to get a UC4! it’s also really nice to be able to map its buttons to a (-64, 0) range on each track’s AMP parameter so you can mute with fx trails, map the encoders to affect track and midi parameters within clamped min/max ranges, and trigger sampling even faster. makes me feel more at peace with my OT mk1’s less expanded interface.

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#16

this is awesome, thank you !

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#17

You’re welcome. Just wanted to add that you can use Flex Master with T7 and use T8 as Neighbor, in order to have 4 master FX. You can set a master fx delay with Delay DIR=0, plock recording, pitch it, add feedback increasing Cue on Flex Master track.

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#18

Or you could have your Flex Send on t7 and set t8 to master in the project settings, that way you have an aux send and stereo buses effects, which is about as close to conventional mixer architecture as you’re likely to get in the OT.

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#19

Yeah but I think I need a second OT for FX only ! :smile:

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#20

6 tracks for effects in parallel/series with one for send effects and one on the master would be one hell of an effect unit even without all of the sequencing and modulation possibilities and four assignable inputs and the possibility of using the cue outputs for external effects or quad mixing or whatever (obviously bearing in mind that you wouldn’t be able to use the internal send track and cue outputs independently) and the possibility of MIDI feedback and real time sampling…

The more I use it the more I finding myself using the OT more for its effects and sequencing than for playing samples.

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#21

I haven’t had the time to make real use of this (haven’t set up cue level faders, or made a template for mutes that leave fx trails) but if you have iPad this could be a cheap alternative to faderfox etc.:

#22

That would work but I don’t have an iPad and generally want to avoid screens as much as possible. But for someone else that would be fantastic.

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#23

Oh, one of those things that should be obvious but was easy to overlook and took me longer than it should have to track down:

Don’t forget to go into the mixer and set your headphone output to main only if you do this. It defaults to an equal mix of main and cue, and that means you’ll be getting a bit of extra dry signal in your headphones when you turn up a track’s cue level to send it to the aux track, and it messes up the way your mix sounds in the headphones.

I was working that way all week (I usually don’t use headphones but I’ve been working late this week so I ended up with them on a lot so I wouldn’t drive my neighbor crazy) before I realized and all of the mixes I set up in the OT were wrong because of it - send effects were too hot because the cue in the headphones was masking the effects, compressor settings wrong because I was hearing the cue signal also and it made things sound thicker and fuller than they actually were, etc.

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#24

it would be great if any of you had the time to make a video showing this feature - I don’t think there’s any around…
considering I’m using one track for resampling and another one as master, I can’t afford to loose another track - but this does seem interesting for future projects, even if i don’t fully understand it yet :stuck_out_tongue:

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#25

I don’t have a good camera but I’m just waiting on a smartphone tripod stand to show up in the mail and then I’m going to make a couple videos, one for this and another demonstrating a technique I came up with last summer for doing true (if a bit limited) Karplus-Strong physical modelling synthesis on the OT using two tracks and a patch cable from one of the cue outs back to one of the inputs.

EDIT: if someone else wants to do an aux send video in the mean time by all means go for it!

EDIT 2: yeah, this still hasn’t happened for various reasons.

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