Octatrack Wishlist for next OS update

My 2nd week with this amazing machine and loving it a lot, but I can’t help making a list of things along the way that I’d like:

  1. An option for metronome to sound ONLY during recording.
  2. An option for headphones to monitor either Cue, Main, AB or CD.
  3. A hot-key to toggle quantising On/Off for Live recordings.
  4. A hot-key for quick Solo-ing of tracks.
  5. Able to Undo Live recording.
  6. Able to Undo Pickup Machine recording.
  7. Option to confirm with Yes/No for loading of Projects.

Or is there a way to do the above already that I don’t yet know.

Import Patterns from other Projects, with a prompt to either use original sample slots, or load imported samples to first available slots, or something like that.

Dream number 1322-1328? :smiley:

This and the old forum are full of ideas for improvements. Search for workarounds and enjoy the things that the OT can do! :wink:

A work around would be to have the CUE outputs go to a small mixer that you connect your headphones to. Or if you have available sends on a mixer then you may be able to route it there as well while using hardware you already have.

i would appreciate

Synthisizer (wavetable ?)
Drumsynth
Midi scene

if they come with audio over usb anyway…

what about mastering options in octatrack.

It will create a fantastic combination with the ar and a4

You can solo by pressing cue+trig 1-8 corresponding to the track, when you are in Mixer view or are using the “Quick Mute” trig mode. And regarding the metronome, it’s very easy to toggle on/off, I think automating the behaviour would be more annoying than having a manual control over it.

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Synthisizer (wavetable ?)
The single cycle wave forms pretty much solves the need for a built in synthesizer. However I would love a simple machine to help configure these in an easier and more intuitive manner. Maybe provide a folder of the single cycles and it helps configure how they will work. But for the time being check out these free samples and the tutorial. This guy is also on youtube which helps walk you through the setup.


Drumsynth
This is a Machinedrum or Analog RYTM. I can’t see this ever happening. Not to mention you can load up drum samples and call it a day.

Midi scene
THIS!!!
Out of all the would be nice to have features, this is the single one that keeps me up at night.

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Midi scene
Naming the cc in midi
Velocity in audio when recording
Midi slide
Live Recording triggers and p-locks for more than one channel at a time. In both midi and audio. It will be a lot easier to record polystuff then.
Poly

[quote="“JSZ”"]

You can solo by pressing cue+trig 1-8 corresponding to the track, when you are in Mixer view or are using the “Quick Mute” trig mode. And regarding the metronome, it’s very easy to toggle on/off, I think automating the behaviour would be more annoying than having a manual control over it.[/quote]
ahh cool! Thanks.

I guess it would be impossible for the USB socket to put out voltage to power a USB light for playing live in dark clubs…?

Ability to create a song on the fly using pattern mode with scenes, live knob tweaks etc. Similar to how Ableton does it.

Export song to Ableton set.

… plus midi scenes obviously!

I think the two most important things would be:

  1. Make the quality of the FX considerably higher. Even some 20 year old samplers (say, an Ensoniq ASR-10) had much, much better FX. Even my Zoom 1201 (a 90’s budget multiFX unit) has better FX quality, I’m pretty sure Octatrack has more processing power than that, it’s just a question of the programming chops of the algorhithm programmers.

  2. Mutes should be note level, not audio level.

Bonus: Not sure if it’s possible without considerable rewriting of the code, but FX would be better were they per pattern, not per project.

FX settings are per Part but that’s probably what you meant. You can kind of have Part per Pattern if you only use 4 Patterns per Bank, you’d have 64 Patterns with their own Part each.
I guess what people usually mean by wishing Part per Pattern is 16*16= 256 Parts per Project… it sounds terribly messy to me, especially if all Parts would be available on all Banks, like the Kits on the MD for example. I for one have no problem with the way Parts are handled on the OT.

I agree with you about the Mutes, I think there should be an option to toggle their behaviour though as sometimes the current mode can be preferable.

[ul]
[li]Midi scenes +1[/li]
[li]Polyphony (keep dreaming :))[/li]
[/ul]

Other nice to haves:
[ul]
[li]Save slicepoints with samplesettings (slice a sample once, use it in multiple projects)[/li]
[li]Send FX. For instance, on the master channel you have a delay, and other tracks can send audio to that master delay. This would enable the idea of more than 2 fx per track, or delay and reverb on a single track[/li]
[/ul]

Otherwise I think the OT is quite complete. There are a lot of sequencer features I actually miss on the analogs, like individual track length multipliers, the possibility to open a new bank and start with a fresh part, arp p-locking etc

I guess that’s why the OT is so interesting. Everyone has a different way of using it and different priorities.

My view is that I’d rather have all bugs fixed first, then if there is a shortage of processing power to do things like sync to incoming clock, allow pitch changing overdubs for Pickup machines, etc, I’d say gut the effects section - remove the reverb and cut back on any other processor-intensive effects.

As you say - pretty much any outboard sounds better and rather than have a 10-in-1 tool that does everything kind of OK, I’d rather have the OT do what it does best and then apply dedicated FX that do what they do best.

Sure, on-board fx are convenient, but adding more is mostly just making an adequate feature more adequate. A reverb algorithm crafted to use whatever free CPU cycles are available inside the OT will never beat a dedicated box (or even many dedicated plugins), so why waste the code space and CPU on it?

Again - the ways I use my OTs are probably different than the ways you use them, so I can see Elektron never pleasing everyone since there’s so many thigns that the OT can do, but I’d rather have a complete bug fix, improve mostly broken features release before any new stuff is added.

It’s worth a shot: http://www.circuitstoday.com/usb-lamp-circuit

This really caught me off guard after spending so much time on my MD and I really like the effect from having a running melody with reverb, then killing the sequence but still having the sound fade off. With the OT it is just such a harsh cut off. I would love to see an option PER TRACK for the mute to either cut audio or mute notes only.

A mono/stereo FX send using the CUE outputs would be great. Stereo because the Kaoss Pad has stereo in. Mono would allow for two mono FX sends. Just make an effects option that routes to the sends and inserts from selected inputs so we can combine internal and external effects.

Also a note on CPU power. From what I gathered, the OT has one main CPU and two three DSP chips. Now granted they are from a generation somewhere around 2008 - 2010 if I am not mistaken. But damn that should be a lot of power for such a tightly integrated unit.
EDIT:
The OT specs on their site actually say triple DSP… so yeah that is crazy.

[quote="“Automux”"]

This really caught me off guard after spending so much time on my MD and I really like the effect from having a running melody with reverb, then killing the sequence but still having the sound fade off. With the OT it is just such a harsh cut off. I would love to see an option PER TRACK for the mute to either cut audio or mute notes only.

A mono/stereo FX send using the CUE outputs would be great. Stereo because the Kaoss Pad has stereo in. Mono would allow for two mono FX sends. Just make an effects option that routes to the sends and inserts from selected inputs so we can combine internal and external effects.

Also a note on CPU power. From what I gathered, the OT has one main CPU and two three DSP chips. Now granted they are from a generation somewhere around 2008 - 2010 if I am not mistaken. But damn that should be a lot of power for such a tightly integrated unit.
EDIT:
The OT specs on their site actually say triple DSP… so yeah that is crazy.[/quote]
Agreed that 3 DSPs + a CPU is a lot, except when you talk about the realtime manipulation of 8 audio streams running at 44.1/24 while supporting 8 tracks of MIDI data, parameter locks, etc.

Without running a debugger/monitor on the entire system, we’ll never know for sure how taxed the OT really is, but for comparison, the Bricasti M7 uses 12 600mhz dsp cores (6 dual cores) and 3GB/sec of main memory bandwidth for one reverb. So I can imagine dealing with 8 tracks of audio in realtime like the OT does is pretty taxing.

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Off the top of my head:

  • Possibility to use all 128 steps for track/cue LEV
  • Some ubiquitous way to record-save-assign-play flex recordings
  • Saving current pattern to new pattern slot
  • Saving scene as part
  • Slices and slots triggering via midi notes
  • 16 sequences per project (default-assigned to bank with tempo?)
  • Reverse order of effects (REV->CHO)
  • Master bounce to CF
  • PIPO that works
  • Possibility to add midi notes with trigless trigs
  • Nameable tracks
  • Saveable track presets
  • Multi-trig editing like on the analogs
  • Option to use crossfader for live-rec of p-locks (with slides)
  • Retrig/arp envelope implementation that enables dialling up to an uninterrupted audio stream (the ESX, for instance, does this very elegantly)
  • Simple post-FX lo-pass cutoff for the lofi effect (there’s an empty slot)
  • Consistent mix/send implementation for spring reverb
  • (At least some) p-lockable effect setup parameters

I’d also like to see a couple of flavors of monaural machines, enabling duophonic triggering (polivoks, anyone?), and loop crossfading. This shouldn’t be black magic by any means, just a reconfiguration of the voicing.

This is a guess, but it seems like Elektron’s business model actively counter-acts any machine being a do-it-all solution. So features that further flesh out its niche might be more likely to fall in favor rather than something already there on other machines.