Trying to decide if i should get a digitakt or a octatrack.
So which one and why would you choose it? If price have zero effect on the choice
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It depends on your current setup and your needs, but as a rule of thumb:
If you use a daw I’d get a digitakt, if you have an hardware setup, octatrack because it’s much more versatile and you can discover a new role for it in your setup everytime you want to change/explore something.
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After about 6 months with the DT I had nowhere to go, I hit the limit with it and wanted more interaction with my hardware. It’s great but it was too static for me. The OT is the onle piece of hardware that is actually only limited by the user’s imagination
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they are both phenomenal instruments.
OT is WAAAAY more flexible in what it can do, how you approach it, capabilities, etc.
The DT is very immediate and the UI is more modern/thought out.
THis is good advice if you plan on computer integration.
I, personally, like the layout of the DT much more and prefer its two rows of 8 trigs to the OTs one row of 16. I can see the phrasing easier when im programming drums, for example.
Some folks find it cramped.
If price isnt an issue then id get the OT.
Its the one machine id keep if i could keep only one because its so flexible.
takes a bit more thought and intention to use it but its worth the effort you put into it.
Same here…
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Same!
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I’m 100% in the OT camp…prefer the 1 row of 16 buttons and the general flexibility of the device.
my recommendation: If you at all want to slice samples, don’t get the DT.
On top of that, the Octatrack Scenes are something special 
In case you just want to use one-shots and don’t sample yourself…then I’d even get a used Rytm mk1 over the Digitakt, because of its performance features.
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If you want to know whether you should get the OT or DT, read the section of the OT manual about scenes. If you can’t instantly think of 10 ways you’d want to use that, just get the DT.
To be less glib, the DT covers most bases, has good FX, and is highly flexible in any setup. The OT is slightly more clunky and dated with FX but makes up for it with even more potential uses and fewer barriers. Both are excellent music machines. Think of the OT as manual transmission and DT is automatic. How streamlined do you want your experience?
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My opinion: without a shred of hesitation the Octatrack.
The OT has fundamentally changed the way I make music. If I heard it was being discontinued, I would go out and buy one or two more, just to make sure I still have an Octatrack if mine dies. It’s the only instrument I own that would make me do that.
Not everyone feels this way though: I’ve heard many people complain about it around here. And many people find themselves buying, selling and re-buying the Octatrack numerous times, possibly out of frustration or annoyance.
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DT for me. Had both. DT allows me to get around 80% of a tune done on it before finishing in daw and sounds a lot better imo.
I also much prefer mono. I can make anything stereo after the fact. I have been re-mixing some older tracks today and getting stereo pad samples to collapse well to mono is near impossible if the sample was recorded super wide.
The one digitakt mix that I have finished easily has the best transition from stereo to mono.
Also the DT is very fast to get ideas going on. Thats a big plus for me. OT is too but being able to record 8 outs plus 2 more stereo ins plus the stereo out gives me a lot of options and saves me a lot of time.
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Octatrack everytime.
I still own mine. Bought in 2015.
Breifly owned a digitakt. Sold it and never pined for it again.
I use the OT almost daily.
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Do you want power? OT
Do you want speed? DT
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Listen, I love my Digitakt.
If they were both the same price I would have got an Octatrack, and I would buy one in a heartbeat, (it’s been on my wish list since before the digitakt was invented!! Ha!), one day I will. However, I will never leave my Digitakt, and I would def buy another. Can’t see a time when I don’t have one.
Yeah.
So get the Octatrack!
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I’m still in the Octatrack camp regarding the OP, but I totally agree with this. People focus a lot on the fact the Digitakt only plays back samples in mono, but I actually like that about the DT – it can be a bit cleaner to work with all mono source audio, plus you can make stereo to your own taste – you can even pan sounds per step, and the effects are stereo. Basically, it’s not mono when I’m done with it!
Very rarely I’ll work with some totally immersive piece of stereo audio, and I’m grateful the OT can play it in stereo, but that’s not really why I like the OT. It’s really just a detail. Sometimes I wish it was simpler to sum stereo samples to mono on the OT.
To me the power of the Octatrack is really in the recording buffers, not the fact it plays stereo samples.
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Digitakt if you are more into taking samples and building something with them.
Octatrack if you are more into recording material into it and putting effects onto incoming audio.
I found the DT incredibly quick to get ideas going, whereas I found the OT pretty tedious to use. Digitakt also has the huge advantage of having Overbridge.
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I own a Digitakt. I love my Digitakt. I know it like the back of my hand. And I know that there would be a huge learning curve if I tried the Octatrack. But if I had the option, I’d happily trade my Digitakt for an Octatrack mk2. It just does a lot of things that my Digitakt can’t. I think the main things I want are the slice mode and scenes. But I also like to occasionally run vocal tracks on my Digitakt and I think that kind of thing would be more straightforward on an Octatrack.
I would probably have a different take if Overbridge were a part of my workflow. But it isn’t. So I don’t.
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+1 for DT if you want to quickly build and develop drum patterns/tracks. And know that you don’t want to use the device for much more than that. Also: if you’re fairly new to Elektron / sequencers / sampling, maybe start with DT and see if it’s sufficient, if not, upgrade later. If you can afford it, maybe buy the E25 DT, which you can sell for what you’ve bought it for easily later on. Or buy a cheap used DT first, you could get one for around 500€ if you’re lucky. DT is way easier to learn the workflow, OT can be hard if it’s your start into Elektron / hardware.
That being said, OT is not that complicated if you know what you want to mainly do with it and start learning just how to do that one thing. It gives you lots of options to grow into over time. If for example you plan to play live with longer stems, OT is the way to go.
So yeah, I would say it depends on what you want to achieve with it and what your experience is so far.
how about both! 
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I have both
OT any day of the week, its a beautiful beast. And those unintended happy accidents where the fader is half way between 2 scene ideas, presenting unimaginable nugets of sonic gold that no one in their right mind could have thought of, but there they are.
I use the DT for static sounds that just play a part in a track, and the OT for movement and organics…
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`dt if you like it quick n dirty ot if you like it slow and painful
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I’m for DT.
I have both. Spent times with both.
OT feel old, half of FXs sound so bad that they are unusable, or used as part of sound design.
Forget about making a bassline on the OT, the pitch shifting of samples is very limited and sound really awful. Do you want timestretch ? Activate it, listen, desactivate it forever.
The delay is cool, the dark reverb is ok.
The mixing inside the OT is a pain, you have to go in each tracks to adjust volume, the compressor is hard to understand how it work because there is no visual feedback and only number between 0 and 127.
For me the OT is really good if you have at least one synth or source audio material to sample in it. It work best with loops.
On the other side, the DT feel modern. It sound pristine, the delay and reverb are excellent. The compressor is visual and easy to setup. The global UI is much more visual than the OT.
You can make melody from one shot samples, the single cycle waveform can spit huge bassline.
You can work with small loops. And you have overbridge to get 8 separate tracks.
The mixing is easy from the master page you can adjust the 8 faders.
You don’t have scenes or performance macro, but most of the time you don’t need to break everything with one finger. But if you want to break everything, you still have the pattern reload button that work well for performance.
For me, DT is much more productive, you can use it standalone and make a full track really quickly.
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