OT Sound Quality & FX

Elektron Gear Octatrack
#1

I haven’t had my OT long, just a few weeks. I haven’t tried to build a track yet, I’ve just been intensively learning its different functions using single samples by reading the manual, guides and asking questions on here.

But, what struck me when I first got it and the more the I play with it is that the sound quality overall is weaker than I expected it to be.

At the moment I’m using it through the headphone-out and I’ve made sure time-stretching is off. I use an Apogee card for my Mac and I didn’t expect it to be as strong as that, but it seems samples in the OT don’t sound as strong at my Mac’s regular headphone-out, which I did expect it to beat.

I suppose I expected it to be as strong as other pro-samplers, like my old MV8800, or EMU E6400 Ultra… but it doesn’t kick like those machines.

Also, the FX seem pretty weak. There are some sweet spots in some, but not many and you really have to coax them out. Is there a stereo ping-pong delay? I can only find a straight tape delay.

Any advice from experienced users? Are there any settings I need to check? Maybe it sounds better when you have more things going on, but without clear dynamics and soundstage, I’m worried it’s just going to get muddy.

I bought it second-hand and am perhaps thinking maybe I should have gone for an AR?

Either way, I’ll definitely invest in a separate FX unit.

EDIT: THANKS TO Lymtronics FOR HELPING ME SORT OUT THE SOUND QUALITY ISSUE. COMPLETE USER ERROR - NEW USER / USED MACHINE - MASTER VOLUME WAS WAY DOWN! NOW I CAN HEAR IT PROPERLY, I CAN CONFIRM THAT THE QUALITY IS GREAT AND THAT THE OT REALLY KICKS!! - EVEN THROUGH THE HEADPHONE-OUT! (Still not sold on the FX though :slight_smile: )

Stimming OT review
#2

The first knob of the second page of delay controls- labelled X? There ya go.

FX as a whole are not bad, IMO. Some are kind of weak, but the LoFi and Comb filter are great, and the filter, delay and reverbs are fine.

#3

There’s a shed load of threads about this so having a search will really help you out.

Getting gain structure right is very important.
When sampling the inputs I recommend setting gain in attributes to +12dB as the OT attenuates the inputs to prevent clipping.

Ping pong is the ‘X’ in the DLY setup menu. Double tap the FX menu button.

Cheers

#4

Thanks.

Weird I already tried the ‘x’ and just tried it again it’s making no difference, just gives me a mono delay either way. Strange. I’ve pretty much tried every setting combo possible on the delay and nothing gives me a stereo delay. I must be overlooking something, but no idea what.

Actually the stereo width of my OT is really narrow on everything, even samples that normally have quite a wide image. I wonder if there’s some setting that’s doing this and affecting the delay too?

Yeah I had a search and saw other posts about the sound and read about the gain structure etc. and turning time stretching off, but I’ve just been importing samples so far.

I’ve checked the mixer, checked the levels per tracks.

Thanks.

#5

Pan!
There you go :slight_smile:

If not, have you plugged you speakers into headphones & Left instead of L&R?
Seen that before!

#6

mmm…i’m a believer that the ot is indeed not a hifi or inyourface device. For me it is an instrument not an emu sampler for big beats or an apogee. It’s more a canvas for conversational layers between lofi textures and clean “loops”, weird auxiliary fx/organic stutters, unquantized beats vs martial step sequences.

Like a guitar, you have a sweetspot between polished on the grid playing and rough, clunky pick and finger errors recorded in the mix. I really think it takes time to coordinate the knowledge of the different effects combined with the texture of samples and the operation of the different machines.
It takes a while to find a creative method and imho it works in either a cut in sonic options and/or a more “mid-fi” approach that take you to this sweatspot.

in terms of quality, well it’s like a painting compared to a photo. It’s less accurate but it has more layers with signatures, gestures.

Of course if it’s about looping finished stuff or transparent playback that’s another problematic.
For some reason i only sample in 16bits.

#7

OK, so I’ve been having a play and here’s what I’ve found out:

  1. If I go to Project > Control > Audio and switch Cue CFG to studio, the volume of sample playback is improved through headphones (which is my preferred monitoring path at the moment), which gives the impression of better detailed audio, but is probably just higher dB effect.

EDIT: In this mode it looks like I’ve lost control of the levels of individual tracks???

  1. Pan on individual instruments is working and I can get a full hard left or hard right pan. However, I am still unable to get stereo ping pong delay to work, or if it is working, the stereo spread is so minimal so as not have any impact at all and I can hear the full delay in both left and right headphone concurrently. (Again, I’m only monitoring through headphones)

  2. If I set Track 8 as master the sound quality is really diminished, sound out of phase. At first I though this was this because there must be FX on track 8 affecting the sound, so turned these to ‘none’ and sound is still awful if track 8 is used as master.

EDIT: This only happens when set in Studio mode… so my guess is that it must be a phasing between studio and master signals both being sent to the headphones-out.

EDIT: 4. If I use 8 as a master and apply compression, I get lots of low beating artefacts with any useable ratio or threshold.

I’m sure, as a new user, there must be some (lots of!) user error going here… can anyone help?

#8

If I pan a track left then send it full into the Dly with ‘X’ enabled I get ping pong no problem.
If I drop sample with lots of stereo imaging into my DAW, Reaper, Renoise, Ableton whatever then compare it to the same sample in the OT the difference is negligible.
Yeah there’s a minuscule dip in the very high end, say 1dB at 8kHz but that’s about it!

Certainly nothing like you’re talking about & stereo width is spot on.

I’d start a new project, load a single stereo sample into a flex slot, place a single trig & see what that sounds like. No master track & make sure all effects are initialised. Hold fx button & press clear,(play).

If that’s still not right can you post a couple of audio clips. One as is & one recorded from the OT’s outputs.
Cheers

#9

If this is causing a difference in your headphone monitoring -

Project > Control > Audio and switch Cue CFG

then it sounds like the headphone mix is set to mix between cue and master rather than one or the other (on the mixer page, it’s the graphic slider on the far left).
Set it just to master then you won’t need to use your cue in studio configuration

In terms of sound/fx I’ve found the opposite. I actually really love the sound of the OT, there’s a tightness and punch to it that I don’t get from any of my DAW environments, especially on processing guitar.

FX wise you might want to look into parameter locks and neighbour tracks. One half of my OT is set almost permanently to a THRU input and couple of neighbour tracks so I can chain effects. Then I use parameter locks on each track to sequence the fx settings, the rhythmic control you get over movement and texture makes the effects really powerful (especially if you set each track to individual lengths for some polyrythmic fun).

but no, there is no ping pong delay. Once you add LFO control to parameters (pan, routing) you may not miss it :slight_smile:

#10

So the manual and other users are lieing about the ping pong delay?

#11

I don’t think anyone is lying! :slight_smile:
but different people may have different understandings/approaches of how to create a ping-pong delay
technically it’s just different delay times in different channels,
…even if there isn’t a dedicated ping-pong delay per se on the OT you could achieve this in numerous ways, (combinations of LFO control and thru or neighbour tracks would be my approach)

#12

Appendix B, page 12 “X sets if the delay will act as a ping-pong delay or not”.
So, the manual is wrong about this?

#14

as i said, we all have seem to have different understandings of what an actual ping pong delay is, and I seem to disagree with elektron :slight_smile:

#16

Ping pong on the OT swaps the left and right channel on every repeat. If the original signal is centered, you won’t hear any ping-pong effect.

1 Like
#17

Ah ha…

#18

This is why I said Pan to the left!

#19

dang, i just wrote a complicated and poetic post and my computer lost it… so here’s a brief version :slight_smile:

in my book (which is hastily scrawled but has lots of pages) a ping pong delay is made up of two mono delays where the signal of one is fed into the other. These are panned to create stereo width and the effect of the sound ‘bouncing’ fro one side to the other (this was how you could achieve moving stereo delays before they were invented). Also the fact that the delays were independent you could create cascading delays by setting the times differently (the sound coming out of second delay would be that delay time plus the original)… or in other words imagine yourself playing ping pong against an olympic champion.

On the OT I would consider it a panning delay because you can’t a) control the width or b)change the delay times independently. And as SB-SIX says above if you send it a mono centered sound it seems to have no effect, this wouldn’t be the case if it was two hard-panned delays feeding into each other.

BUT as far as I know the term ‘ping-pong delay’ is not technically specific and refers only to the sonic effect. So if the sound makes you think of a ping-pong game then it’s a ping pong delay, no matter what I think :slight_smile:

(p.s. if you do want to experiment with old school ping pong delays it can be achieved on the OT by setting up delays on different tracks panning them and feeding one into the other)

#21

yes, that and growing up in a time where a true stereo delay was a thing of great wonder that only BIG studios had,
whereas we had quite a few mono guitar delays kicking around.
Throwing myself into the OT over the past year or so has pushed me back to lots of old hardware methods and i’m enjoying the random cable/pedal plugging/unpluggin and creative problem solving it’s making me do. funny how something so digital has brought so much analogue back into my studio.

#23

Yeah I guess so.
What ‘Circumstance’ refers to I would call a tap or multitap Dly, ala the old Digitech TSR24.
Again confusing as ‘tap’ these days refers to tap tempo!
Back on point to the Op, if you pan your signal to one side & send it thru the Dly with ‘X’ enabled it should bounce from side to side! Call it what you like.
With all the other points you’ve made tho I’d suggest that there’s either a lot of plocks, modulation or scene activity going on or that your machine is knackered.
Where are you based? Be good to get another forum member to check it out if there’s anyone near by.

#24

OK, so maybe it’s down to expectations and semantics, but I would consider this a stereo ping pong delay, done on a single mono snare, panned central in Logic:

Here are a few audio examples of what I’m experiencing:

  1. Mono delay done on a single mono sample, panned central, on the OT: https://www.dropbox.com/s/bjran7hhycxobdb/DELAYNOPINGPONG.mp3?dl=0

  2. ‘Ping Pong’ (X) delay on a single mono sample, panned central, on the OT:
    https://www.dropbox.com/s/d8ikiitg4dejqys/DELAYWITHPINGPONG.mp3?dl=0

Clearly not a proper ‘ping pong’ delay. Even on a mono signal (in fact especially on a mono signal), I’d expect any basic stereo ping pong delay to alternate between L and R on the delay. A ping pong delay in my book should effectively be two independent mono delays, repeating at different intervals panned hard L and hard R to create a stereo image. Even better if you can set the delay time per channel… but hey.

OT doesn’t appear to have what most people would consider a stereo ping pong delay. A ‘ping pong’ delay which doesn’t produce a stereo image on a sample panned central, isn’t a ping pong delay, it’s just a mono tape delay.

Now to compression:

Here are two short loops (like I said, very new to OT and haven’t managed how to set the record longer than a bar!!), one with compression, one without:

  1. Beat loop without compression:
    https://www.dropbox.com/s/azsfp5kcp9rhjnr/LOOPNOCOMP.mp3?dl=0

  2. Beat loop with compression:
    https://www.dropbox.com/s/q9ok0fquju1qjsw/LOOPCOMP.mp3?dl=0

Can you hear the weird artefacts the compression has introduced? It’s like a low rumbling or beating. Especially after the middle kick drum? And these aren’t extreme settings, and come into play at very low ratios and thresholds.

Any advice on what’s going here with the compression? It isn’t usable as it stands.

EDIT: After comparing some recordings of single samples on my Mac, I think the sound quality is equal. Maybe just not such a great headphone amp or headphone signal path on the OT or something?

Like I said, no doubt some user error going on here and love the creative stuff I’ve found with the OT, not moaning, just want to get around these little ‘quirks’, after all, not matter how creative a box allows you to be, the sound comes first… :slight_smile: