Octatrack - sell it to me

Octatrack is the Chuck Norris of samplers.

You don’t try the Octatrack, the Octatrack tries you.

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the Octatrack doesn’t power off. it waits.

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The Octatrack doesn’t have only 8 tracks. It has 3 times that.

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Even if you end up not using the OT much, it’s just nice leaning back watching her.

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If you’ve come to the end of the line and run out of ideas and inspiration then hop on board. You will either sink like the Titanic or take off like Charlie in his glass elevator.

TBH … if you have no idea, why you would want an OT … then … IMO you don’t need it.

But if the OT seems to give you something, which you miss in your setup or workflow, then get it, try it … keep or sell it :wink:

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I don’t need Ableton.

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True story I once lost a whole HD of Ableton songs, my fault for not backing up elsewhere, but I’m grateful that it happened as it taught me a lesson, and also was the final nail in the DAW coffin for me, that was around Live 5 or 6.

Never lost anything on the Octatrack except unsaved record buffers and the occasional sample which has happened like twice in 10 years.

But back on topic, if you are happy with the current sampling workflow then no need for more gear, it just makes things less focussed IMHO.

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I use Ableton, Logic and recently Bitwig as sound sources and sound palette boards for an OT project with the same name. Compact setup, full power. Can take OT solo and keep working with what I have sampled already.

Full Ableton (or other daw) is too much watching, not enough listening for me.

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That’s a really good point I hadn’t thought of. An HD failure would be much more disastrous to me than losing a few record buffers.

In all the OT Threads you read about the slider, and I always thought to myself: yeah, right… a slider!

But what you can do with the slider, besides all the great tools OT also provides, is one of the most inspiring and awesome things, that I added to my „studio“ over the last months! There are some threads here in the forum, that show my journey to find the perfect „brain“ for my setup and how I want to be able to create songs with a structure, because I am not so much a performance guy. Well, since the OT joined my, I did nothing other than running single loops, maybe with second pattern, because I was not able to get the variation with p-locks alone, and perform the s**t out of that thing.
If this continues, OT shows me a total different approach, moving me from static created songs to performed ones; without me wanting to. I just need to find myself some more arms; because turning a cut off here, moving the slider there, change a pattern and unmute a track is really too much currently :wink:

I read more or less every „should I“ thread over the last year and a half, always thought to myself: I dunno, that all sounds too good. And the only thing that I cannot agree with is, that I don’t think; that the OT is overly complicated, if you don’t Force yourself I to more than you can and want to handle.

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Very offtopic

Dirty talk from a mod? :open_mouth: :rofl:

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Can your MPC act as a mixer? Can you listen to more than one input coming into the MPC at once?

Octa can do that.

Pretty obvious but all you REALLY need is a decent spec’d laptop, a DAW, and a mid controller and you can make anything you want. But you know this already. So aside from the obvious reasons of why one would choose hardware over software I think there are two specific use cases where The octatrack makes sense.

#1 - You play live shows pretty consistently (not happening for anyone right now) and want something to perform/ sample mangle on the fly with. Sequencing external gear is a plus obviously but you have the mpc which is pretty capable now. And digitakt is also great for this.

#2 - You are stuck in ableton, don’t feel inspired, have some form of writers block. Throw some stems from your unfinished songs in a flex machine along with some favorite samples and mess around with them until you get that spark back. You may come up with a new idea for a track or just come up with some ideas for finishing ones you have started.

So unless you feel like you are in a rut right now creatively or are really into experimenting not sure it will add too much for you now. Maybe you should just save for the new monomachine coming in Q1😀

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literally no one can answer that for you.

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As an experienced/obsessed Ableton Live user I picked up an Octatrack earlier in the year and sold it fairly quickly. It’s an amazing box, fascinating sampler and all-round unique piece of kit, but I didn’t find any value in slowly learning to do things with it that I do in Live with muscle memory. It’s cool to connect it to an output on Live as well as an input so you can create loops and sounds in Live, send them to the OT, mangle them with P-locks etc and send back to Live but yeah, it wasn’t worth it for me. That said, nobody can say for sure whether it will be for you. Personally I like to try everything so I have a personal understanding of every device and whether it works for my workflow, so I’d suggest getting one second hand for the experience, then selling if you don’t feel like it’s a keeper.

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octatrack sells you, octatrack is the void, you do not look into the void lest you wish to remain. Ableton can do more. Ableton needs to do more, because Ableton cannot do what OT can do. Ableton has unlimited tracks, scenes and clips, with clip envelopes, you can recreate an octatrack pattern equivalent. Clip envelope you can record a bunch of parameters at once until you have a few layers of envelopes, at grid resolution. OT layers of automation is per step of the sequencer.

Octatrack scenes (separate individual configurations of sample playback engine parameters and effects parameters, not a line of clips) and its real time internal resampling capability is its bread and butter mutant power. with OT scenes, modulate and control hundreds of simultaneous sample playback parameters and effects parameters, across all 8 tracks, modulate through one scene to the next through all the hundreds of parameters, with smooth transition between one scene to the other, at any point switching scenes on the fly while still halfway through the modulation range of the initial starting point. Ableton cannot do that, unless you mapped your entire set and all desirable track device parameters to one midi knob. That’s gives you two OT scenes, from 0 to 127 on that knob.

Octatrack arranger. Ableton equivalent of follow actions, but like if follow actions behavior were used to control Ableton scenes. More capability than Ableton follow actions. Open source customizable length, repeat, hold, start over, last, first, skip, jump up 2, idk wtf it even all can do. controlling all tracks.

Um that’s just half of it. Flip the coin. All of that 8 track audio sampler looper granular synth performance weaponry…has a midi equivalent on the other side. Each of 8 midi tracks has its own arp, which can be parameter modulated (rate, range, length, direction, etc) per sequencer step. Each midi track can have its own swing, scale, length. Something like 4 midi notes poly per step? 3 LFOs per track, assignable to wtf you want to move. LFO designer per track. I think 7 or 8 assignable cc controls per midi track, scene controllable.

no mouse. two hands. 8 audio tracks. 8 midi devices. cold grey steel. an understanding.

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Sorry, I’m not selling you mine.

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wouldn´t buy it again, but after 8 years putting time in
that little thing it´s ok enough !

Every post like this end up with a small number of people who don’t understand the machine to don’t likr it, a big chunk regret selling it and the actual owners glorify the OT like a god.

The only reason why you shouldn’t get an OT it’s because the OT doesn’t work with your brain and that’s your fault not the OT one.

Honestly I’m thinking to sell Maschine and Ableton controllers to get a second one.
MK1 of course! :slight_smile:

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