Octatrack MKII issue discovered

Elektron Gear Octatrack
#1

We have, unfortunately, found a nasty bug in the Octatrack MKII firmware (OS 1.30) which can cause the machine to freeze.

The freezing is typically caused by playing back complex pattern data, especially if using rec trigs, while you rapidly move the encoders and/or the crossfader. The GUI will stutter and/or freeze, and the machine will become unresponsive. This can also happen sporadically, but the underlying cause is the same.

We managed to systematically reproduce the issue here and determined that it is a software bug. Our development team are going to start working on a solution this week and should have a new firmware version with a fix ready soon.

Many thanks to those of you who submitted support tickets. With your help, we managed to notice it quickly and were able to reproduce it by reading your descriptions of the problem.

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Octatrack MKII (MK2/2nd Gen) specific bugs thread
Octatrack Freezes completely in mid set!
#2
#3

thanks Simon! thats the issue im having, happy is just a fw problem.

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#4

Thx for the honest communication @Ess !

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#5

Thank you for the openness! Does this have any impact on porting of the firmware to the MKI?

1 Like
#6

Yes, we will have to wait a bit with releasing the MKI OS.

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#7

Understandable but at least it’s not a showstopper :slight_smile: Glad the team is working out the kinks.

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#8

Fine by me. I’m very excited for the conditional trigs but I need my MKI stable for live gigs!

Thanks for being open about the issue rather than just quietly holding back the update. I work with software in my day job and I see it go through various states of stability. It happens and no one is immune to software bugs.

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#9

Great! More time that WON’T be spend fixing all the digitakt problems. Starting to think elektron bit off more than they can chew.

#10

Thats cool you guys posted :sunglasses:

1 Like
#11

Was under the impression the mk1 &mk2 were going to use the exact same OS (no porting involved)?

Anyway thanks for stepping in Simon to announce state of play.

When will Octatrack MKI users get the new firmware?
#13

I think we need to remember that elektron isnt a huge company. im sure more people are happy
than the amount of people bothered about waiting a few months for updates, once its out its out forever so surely a wait wont hurt anyone. It would be worse if elektron hadnt released anything since digitakt, the more they release the more money the company has and the more they will expand in the future. And that = faster updates. But we’ve got to remember how slim the market actually is for fairly technically complicated £1000 music boxes in a world where infinite instruments are downloadable for a fraction of the price and/or free. I think a lot of mark 2 owners actually already had a mark 1. They arent selling TVs or phones on a global scale, theyre a niche small company in sweden that make synthesizers and samplers for a fairly paticular kind of musician, amongst hundreds of other synth companies who are way way bigger. I understand your frustration but good things come to those who wait :blush:

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#14

While I generally agree, I’m still kind of annoyed at this one. I upgraded from an MK1 for a considerable amount of money and end up with a machine that for the time being does less than the one I had before?! That’s a tough one to swallow.

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#15

The state of OT MKII on its release is a joke. It has some heavy defects that make the device nearly unusable/unstable/unreliable.

Hey, it took to me one single day to discover that scene bug. That issue is a showstopper, to be honest. Other guys got the freezing issue in several days, too. And there are many smaller but annoying issues with this device. I doubt Elektron shouldn’t have fixed these defects before launching. They must have been aware of the problems.

People buy such instruments to make music immediately after turning it on for the first time. And many of them want to play it on stage and gain profit from the performances.

I have no problem with the fact that a firmware needs some patches or updates to make them nearly complete. This is how the software evolves. However those breaking issues, major bugs force people to become testers for weeks or months and make them wait for updates as well as promised but missing features and they just have to find workarounds for those issues meanwhile. I’m sort of tech man, so I’m also doing this. However I’m far from being a happy customer now :slight_smile:

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#16

Thanks for the info, appreciated.

Keep up the faith! I’m sure you’ll sort things out soon and life will go on.

#17

Are you guys new to technology or something? Things are released with bugs; it’s a given.

Elektron is good enough to open a thread acknowledging it, ensuring they’re working on it, and ya’ll just use it to throw serious shade.

Jesus. Find a hobby. Like music.

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#18

Is it that bad? Its definitely a shame, its obviously easier for me to not be annoyed when I stuck with my mark 1. Im pretty surprised actually but it just goes to show what adding minor changes to a product can cause in bugs so imagine adding whole new features, its no wonder they called it a day

#19

Not to create a wrong impression here. It’s just that my MK1 has been nothing but rock solid, while within a very short time frame I’ve had a couple of crashes on the MK2. We’re not talking maxing out the machine just playing a few samples on a couple of tracks.

#20

Maybe not the best thread to discuss the disappointment, sry for that. I just read @jb’s post and wanted to maintain the balance :slight_smile:

I also appreciate Elektron’s above statement as well as their effort to fix the issues in general. I also help them in doing so by submitting bug reports with details on how to reproduce if I can. (And yes, sometimes I’m wrong.)
On the other hand this behavior is the very minimum a customer can expect from the company he or she purchased a product from.

One more word please. While anybody may express their opinion on the products here as a customer (it’s not always useful to do it, I agree, but it can’t damage the way of feeling :slight_smile: ), I’m not sure people are aware of what hobby those posters really have :wink: Peace.

1 Like
#21

IMHO there is only one constructive way for us Nauts to make these instruments better. It’s reporting, in the most precise way you can, any feedback you have on the machine that encounters a dysfunction.

Generalizations and ranting never ever did good for the cause (this one being playing ace reliable instruments). This is my opinion.

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