Octatrack vs Deluge

no Coke a 4 pack of Erdinger

Yes, she is a weapon.

and I thought that the OT had a cryptic looking tiny screen! Well the Deluge does have the cool flashing lights disco ball vibe over the cold stoic looking OT.

I had a unit from the second batch which I ultimately sold:

  1. The VA synth is a little hard to control due to lack of dedicated knobs, not a deal killer though
  2. The VA synth is on the basic side
  3. Sample management is a little subpar due to the lack of screen
  4. You need to know the synth very well to move fast because of all the shortcuts (could be thought of as a plus)
  5. The paging / zooming / unzooming on the sequencer was not super intuitive to me, but again this could be fixed through really getting to know the system

Overall, this is a much better Electribe, but I feel like the Monomachine or Analog 4 have a lot more character and are more straightforward to use, although those machines have less breadth of capability due to limited number of tracks and differing sound capabilities (eg the monomachine cannot play samples at all).

Audio examples?
Seems totally exagerated. Filters are good, canā€™t hear clearly aliasing on the reverb. Stepping on the filters without pressing the knob?
Sorry for you if you couldnā€™t use Octatrack creatively. FX are not the best for sure, but I think filters, comb filters, compressor, eq, delay and totally usable in many ways, I would miss them a lot without.

That said, you canā€™t say sample mangling / sampling / resampling is not efficient, and for me thatā€™s the top quality fx part of it. You can use it for pitch, tremolo, reverse, phaser, chorus, granular fx, top quality delay, all fx based on multiple delays, etcā€¦with incredible real-time control.

Really sorry for you if you missed that. If you just want to play a sample with static settings fx without using all creative arsenal available, of course Octatrack wasnā€™t for you.

4 Likes

The LFO creator on the OT is pretty amazing and I donā€™t think that feature exists in many other sequencers/samplers/synths!

4 Likes

Yep I especially like to use a Lfo Designer with specific musical values (delay, comb filters pitch, retrig timeā€¦) with Hold setting, and modulate its speed with another random lfo.
Random specific values a every trig.

There is a 8 step lfo editor for Micromonsta.

1 Like

Closest thing I can think of is the MIDI CC transfer table thing in the old Quadrasynths, where you could build a table to remap CC values, so that, say, as you moved a mod wheel from 0 to 127 instead of the value increasing linearly it would move through the values in the table, for a kind of pseudo-sequencing effect. Something I really wish more synths had. The Octatrackā€™s LFO designer is pretty similar to what you would get if you fed a MIDI sawtooth LFO through a 16 value transfer function, except in the OT there is a finer level of control and you donā€™t need an external CC modulation source to make it cycle, but on the other hand thereā€™s no way Iā€™m aware of to manually sweep through it.

1 Like

Deluge realtime looping will came soon:
Deluge live looping

Maybe itā€™s time to make a new comparison when that update arrives -> OT vs Deluge .

3 Likes

There is also a sneak peek video from Cuckoo about it available:

With the streaming to and from the sd card itā€™s virtually unlimited regarding loop length, so it can also be used as a fancy recording solution for very long sessions.

(+100 for the @cuckoomusic vibes ā€¦ just lovely)

6 Likes

i watched all the new firmware 3.0 videos I could find.

Deluge 3.0 will be (for me) like an Octatrack with virtually unlimited ā€˜pickup machinesā€™ and still virtually unlimited flex and static machines.

itā€™s crazy. i have to buy it.

octatrack can be Deck A and Deluge Deck B, so to speak. joyous days ahead

1 Like

Looks like itā€™ll start to be able to loop but the ol OT can realtime slice, dice, make patterns with the recorder buffer placeholders before you even sample into them, add plocks to the buffer patterns for all manner of warpage, use recorder trigs with multiple per step source locks, scene control, etc. ,etcā€¦ Looping is one thing, Octatrack is anotherā€¦ :smiley:
Deluge certainly looks like an awesome device though. Just saying it like it is on a ā€œvsā€ thread in regards to realtime sampling, hard to beat an Octatrack. Seems like a lot of fun though with a neat interface, like the light show, has a good soundā€¦ +1 for looping, knock on my door again when they add pre slicingā€¦ :smile:

3 Likes

I enjoy using them both together. And Iā€™ve sampled from one into the other depending on what I trying to achieve. Works well.

1 Like

I donā€™t think the OT is great as a looper (I have a love/hate thing going with Pick Up machines), but when you factor in what the OT can do with rearranging/mangling/chopping those loops it still canā€™t be touched, it surpasses other options.

2 Likes

I have both, and they are very different beasts with much less in common than the huge amount of differences.

Taking samples on the Octatrack for me is much better in almost every way, you can easily and quickly (once familiar with basic operation) take a sample, normalise it, trim it, cut bits out, reverse parts, add or subtract gain, etc etc. You can easily retake a sample again, quickly save it and or multiple variations of it.

Deluge sampling is a bit more basic, everything is automatically saved since it samples direct to card, no destructive editing possible on the Deluge, I also find it a bit to easy to accidentally mash play and rec and inadvertently start sampling, a real pain when not wanted. The upside being that it is super simple to record a whole song direct to audio.

Playback of samples: Both sound excellent, Octatrack is by far the better mangle the bejezus out of your sample or juggle them around or realtime manipulate etc, but Deluge has polyphony, better pitch range, multisampling, kit sampling, and as many samples loaded as you could reasonably need, it also handles large samples.

Sequencing: Octatrack sequences samples in a much more comprehensive way, full control per step over pretty much everything, midi sequencing is much more basic than the Deluge though, the Deluge grid makes rapid experimentation of note and position super easy and quick.

P-Locks and trig conditions: Both handle these on about par, though the OT makes it easier to view what values are on a step.

FX: OT has more variety and better sounding FX, Deluge has more simultaneous FX.

Building a song: Both very different in the approach but both very capable, Deluge arranger is very good but can suffer from a bit of LED fatigue when things get complex, OT can be a bit fiddly if wanting to do complex arrangements, both though seem to give good compromise between power and usability given their interfaces.

Performance: Quite different in the approach again, OT has scenes and crossfader, trig modes, fills etc. Deluge focusses more on moving between sections, muting and trackwise or all track manipulation of parameters. OT can realtime resample, mix external, and so on, Deluge can use line in and realtime repitch and generally filter and fx incoming audio but obviously only on the 2 inputs.

It will be interesting to see how the Deluge looper is implemented.

22 Likes

I have both also. @darenager pretty much sumarized it. The octatrack is much more cappable from a sound design perspective. 4 ins and outs, can serve as a mixer, very deep sampling options, complex routing options, a very robust FX section.

Deluge is an incredibly well crafted composition machine. To me, it has Many implementations that are just genius, and Iā€™m puzzled as to why they are not the standard in the industry. Infinite tracks, with infinite resolution, and infinite lenght, to me, is just basic, and almost no one does it as good as the Deluge. Triplet implementation is great. Synths, sampling and FX, are just Ok. Not the worse, not the best, some good sounds can be acchieved, but itā€™s not the most inspiring. You can always multisample, and I think Deluge works best when you load it with your own curated sounds.

In the end, itā€™s not really an apples to apples comparison.

2 Likes

Yes and I think they complement each other very nicely, as they each seem to have strengths where the other has weaknesses, and they both handle the same sample format which is handy.

1 Like

Woah is that monomes angry son ?!

Hi! If u use Deluge as sequncer, how would u say it compares to Ableton piano-roll?Any limitation?
Thanks!

Iā€™m not familiar with Abletonā€™s piano roll, other than that it allows you to add notes.

Does it do any thing else?