OT Sound Quality & FX

circumstance · 2015-03-09T19:31:06.000Z

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

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

(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)

circumstance · 2015-03-09T19:41:56.000Z

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.

bluewolfse7en · 2015-03-09T21:02:24.000Z

""Baddcr"":

I see…

So a question of semantics rather than any actual problem.

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.

enryo · 2015-03-09T21:15:40.000Z

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:

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

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

enryo · 2015-03-09T21:30:29.000Z

[quote=“” bluewolfse7en""]

[quote=“Baddcr”]I see…

So a question of semantics rather than any actual problem.

[/quote]

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.[/quote]
Thanks, I’m just outside Bournemouth on the South Coast if anyone is near?.. but it’s probably just new user error I think I’ll do what I should have done when I first got the box and reset it to factory settings and clear everything.

(EDIT: Talking of clearing, apart from copying a blank track (which I may not always have), is there a quick and easy way to clear everything from a track? Machine, sample, patterns, plocks, FX, the whole lot in one go?)

Yeah, thanks, if I pan the original signal hard L or R, the stereo delay kicks in. But this effectively just sounds like the wet signal of what I’d expect a stereo ping pong to do if I had the original panned central.

So, with all this in mind. Is there a way to add a stereo delay / ping pong delay, whatever we’re calling it, like in my first example above, on a sample panned central, on the OT to give it a nice stereo FX width?

If not, no worries, would be nice, but not the end of the world

enryo · 2015-03-09T22:20:06.000Z

Thanks, yeah already tried that. Couldn’t get much out of it until I got past 32, but by that point it had affected the dry signal’s stereo position too much

reeloy · 2015-03-10T08:27:31.000Z

…i experience very sonic results with the ot…

…and we can’t discuss sound quality, if you seriously judge it while all you hear is nothing but a headphone amplification…

i say ping…you say pong…

avantronica · 2015-03-10T10:19:39.000Z

""henryoakley"":

Mono delay done on a single mono sample, panned central, on the OT

Afaik the OT doesn’t work with ‘mono’ samples, aren’t they sorta converted to stereo (or 2 channel) once loaded (all tracks are stereo)… Maybe a nuance which is clouding expectation. Fairly sure the ‘pingpong’ worked out as i expected. Curious to investigate again

clunky · 2015-03-10T11:00:53.000Z

""rozzbud"":

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.

Very well put.

avantronica · 2015-03-10T11:41:12.000Z

[quote=““avantronica””]

henryoakley:

Mono delay done on a single mono sample, panned central, on the OT

Afaik the OT doesn’t work with ‘mono’ samples, aren’t they sorta converted to stereo (or 2 channel) once loaded (all tracks are stereo)… Maybe a nuance which is clouding expectation. Fairly sure the ‘pingpong’ worked out as i expected. Curious to investigate again[/quote]
yep - the issue here is that you’re actually hearing a ping pong delay, but as the left and right channels are the same, you can’t easily tell (unless you adjust the balance (not PAN) - easy to verify with an obviously stereo sample, record a note on left channel and a different note with different dynamics on right at same time - then fire through the delay with default balance - if X (crossover) is off you’ll hear that the delay is true stereo, if X is on you’ll hear the echoes alternately swap sides - so the confusion is that you’re expecting the ping pong to work as a mono input ping pong would

if you adjust the balance on the stereo sample now, it’ll emphasise either of the notes and the ping pong will be even more obvious

glaciertree · 2015-03-10T13:17:30.000Z

""SB-SIX"":

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.

@SB-SIX - I was not aware of this. Thanks for sharing the knowledge. I learned something new today.

avantronica · 2015-03-10T14:33:24.000Z

""glaciertree"":

[quote=“SB-SIX”]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.

@SB-SIX - I was not aware of this. Thanks for sharing the knowledge. I learned something new today. :)[/quote]
well, you will hear the ping pong if there’s pronounced difference in the signal (left > right) ! if the original is at default balance (remember it is not a PAN)

djadonis206 · 2015-03-10T14:40:52.000Z

Of all my Elektron boxes, the OT sounds the best followed closely by the A4. Then the AR. My foregone MD sounded the worst.

debug · 2015-03-10T16:04:04.000Z

(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)

I was going to say of course the OT can produce a complex ping pong delay effect, just not in one effect slot. You can get most of the way there on one track if you use both effect slots for delay.

Another point to make is that we’re talking about a sampler here. You don’t even need a delay effect at all since you can just trig your samples to make them sound like a delay, param locking them to add panning, progressive fading, retriggering, etc.

enryo · 2015-03-10T16:32:55.000Z

Thanks everyone. I think it’s safe to say the whole ping pong thing was a mixture of expectations and definition. It didn’t do what I expected my definition of a stereo ping pong would. No probs, there are workarounds. I just wanted to make sure there wasn’t user error or a technical fault preventing what I expected.

Anyone listened to the compression Vs non compression issues and examples a bit further ^^^? Any ideas why it’s doing this?

Thanks

Lymtronics · 2015-03-10T16:35:46.000Z

Hold function and note the change in graphic of the track level. It now controls main output level which should give you some more oomph.

enryo · 2015-03-10T16:50:22.000Z

[quote=“” reeloy""]

…and we can’t discuss sound quality, if you seriously judge it while all you hear is nothing but a headphone amplification…

[/quote]

I’m not sure I agree with this. For example, my Mac sounds completely different between built in sound card and my Apogee using headphone and monitors. It’s night and day in terms of punch, detail, freq response, sound stage and stereo image on headphones.
I use Focal CMS65, but only to do the final mix. The rest of the time for all production I use cans and have done for over 15 years. I’m sure there are loads of people who do the same, due to living arrangements.
I would have thought a machine in the OT price range would include a decent headphone amp. The amp is ok, but not great.
Other hardware I’ve owned over the years including Virus, Emu, Akai with their S and Z ranges, Roland in their MV range sound great in cans. So I think it is fair to seriously judge sound quality through the headphone-out, especially as this is how a lot of people work day to day.

enryo · 2015-03-10T21:51:32.000Z

""Lymtronics"":

Hold function and note the change in graphic of the track level. It now controls main output level which should give you some more oomph.

Wow, thanks Lymtronics! This just solved the sound quality issue. The master was way down. Now it KICKS and I can hear all of the detail properly!

See said it could be (was probably!) user error!

Have put a note on the original post to reflect this

Zymos · 2015-03-10T22:05:50.000Z

Cool- glad you got it sorted!!

GovernorSilver · 2015-03-11T15:36:17.000Z

Excellent!

I have my OT sitting in the send bus of my mixer so I usually plug my headphones into the mixer instead of the OT. Gives me a better preview of what to expect when I rehearse with the band or play out, because the OT’s master volume only works for the headphone out, not the main out.