Octatrack minimal possible pitch increment is only 0.2?

I haven’t found any topic related to this.

I’m a happy owner of OT MkII for about 2 years. And I love it! But for few months I also own Digitakt and since then I find that the minimal pitch increment on OT, which is 0.2, is a major flaw.
On Digitakt I can tune the sample with the precision of 0.01 !

The same goes for lfo. On Octatrack i can set an lfo from the range of 0 to 127 and the values are integer only. It’s a shame comparing to Digitakt in which I can set the dep values from -64.0 up to 63.0 with the floating point precision of 0.01!

This prevents me from applying a simple pattern, that I actually love, of detuning the sample by lfo to create a vintage / tape like effect. On Octatrack the precision is just not enough for this…

I’m a bit confused because having 3 lfos on OT vs 1 lfo on Digitakt is such a huge benefit. And in the same time the tune and lfo precision on OT is such a huge flaw…

Guys, what are your thoughts about this ? is it onle me ?

Literally found out this same thing yesterday while I was trying to tune a sample. In the end I left it defined slightly and it sounded interesting. Maybe the machine is capable of higher precision than this? It’s doing time stretching too and it’s quite old hardware now?

I’m not sure if there’s any work arounds.

1 Like

At least it’s not only me… I’m sure OT is capable of more.

Maybe we shall put some pressure on Elektron to update the firmware :grin:

You can get better precision with scenes, also a square wave lfo (mode=trig), speed 0, applied to pitch can be used.

For negative modulation OT has negative lfo wavs. Also some lfo waves will do unipolar modulation.

Also better precision with Lfo designer. Also does some neat things like sine wave which OT doesn’t have etc.

6 Likes

Thanks for the tips! I haven’t heard about them.
Since those are workarounds I still think we should insist for an update :slight_smile:

1 Like

And its things like this That i argue should be the reason for a final Octatrack update.
The thing is riddle with small nuisances like this.

And for the life of me I can’t remember a single one now :joy:

That’d be a huge update to be able to go down to hundredths of precision.

1 Like

The octatrack is what, 10 years old? And it has been said many times by Elektron that the cpu is now maxed out so any more feature updates are quite unlikely.

Where it might lack in some areas, it excells in others… the OT arpeggiator, 3 LFOs per track! Custom LFO designer, neighbour machines, the list goes on.

6 Likes

… and not to forget two FXs per track which is the most cpu taxing feature compared to send FXs only on the master.

Just by checking the MIDI implementation (not a single NRPN) it’s clear that the precision is nowhere near the other, more recent machines.

Sorrily that’s nothing a minor update could fix, because calculation precision is one of the basics which influences everything within an engine and is tightly coupled to the processing power of the hardware.

So even if someone takes up the challenging task to overhaul the complete firmware the end result wouldn’t be very pleasing (i.e. only 4 audio tracks instead of 8 or some other heavy reduction in capabilities).

3 Likes

For sure i wouldn’t expect enybody to increase the internal precision of pitching the audio.

To me it just looked like a design or ui decision to make the increment 0.2.

When i apply the minimal pitch lfo i can hear that internally the pitch changes are smooth.

And also since there are workarounds for making the precision better it could mean that the machine is capable.

But it’s just how it looks from the user perspective. I have no idea what’s going on under the hood. Probably theres a good reason for 0.2.

Just a guess: the OT’s pitch “range” is 2 octaves (24 halftones). 24/128 is roughly 0.2 (24/120==0.2).

5 Likes

Must be able to do it because you can get all the values between with LFO or the cross fader

Use the LFO designer to have a very slight LFO on pitch. Now you have a resolution of 128 values over that small range.

2 Likes

They’re workarounds, sure, but setting up a scene just takes a sec and if scenes are used for other tasks, we can use an lfo (or vice versa if we need all three lfos on a track). It’s also possible to p-lock the lfo depth on certain trigs for (de)tuning samples with fine resolution and there’s always resampling.

2 Likes

Samplers from the 80’s could tune to a higher degree, it’s not the age.

1 Like

it can pitch in the range you wrote but as in most classic samplers you have also “RATE” which allows you to pitch even lower.

PTCH -12.0 x RATE +32 == -24.0
PTCH -12.0 x RATE +16 == -48.0
PTCH -12.0 x RATE +8 == -96.0
PTCH -12.0 x RATE +4 == -192.0
PTCH -12.0 x RATE +2 == -384.0
PTCH -12.0 x RATE +1 == -768.0
PTCH -12.0 x RATE +0 == silence
and so on…
depending on the needs of course you can also turn off TSTR (transient based rate) and play a down pitch like any playrate algo without artifacts (apart from those of the wav quality)

Dont forget you have not only LFO for qirks, you also have SLIDE for more fine tones inbetween fixed values.

2 Likes

Yeah, I just use the rate knob connected to da Fader. :notes: And the trigs w/slides when I’m P-Lockin’ Son!

I’ve abandoned time stretch entirely, unless I just happen to get lucky w/how it sounds doing a whole track as a sample since it’s pretty hit and miss on one shots. Aside from having that on your just changing the rate of playback anyway.