Thanks. I’ll keep an eye pealed for a sale.
I really like dynamics, are you saying the OT has limited headroom to work with?
Sound can be a very subjective thing, so I’d never say my perspective is more true than anyone else’s. But, having worked with the OT (MK1) for few years now, here’s what I’ve noticed:
It’s easy to take a sample and inadvertently make it sound less than modern. The big contributors have all been mentioned already - not changing to 24 bit, using the dated timestretch algos, stacking filters, and most importantly, bad gain staging. Avoiding these things, to my ears, the OT sounds extremely neutral. Unremarkable even. Add some subtle eq, and the compressor with the right settings, and you easily start tapping that character people like about the DT.
To me, as long as the settings are right, internal samples and external sources through DIR or the thru machines sound nearly indistinguishable from the source. However, I have noticed that once a thru machine is sampled, there is a very subtle “something” that happens to the sound. It’s like some people have mentioned - a kind of slight reduction in dimension/depth, narrowing of the stereo field, and some attenuation of very high “air” frequencies. This effect is minor, and barely perceptible once you’ve got a full mix going. You really need to be listening for it.
I have no idea what is technically behind the change to sonic characteristics that I’m perceiving, but it’s so subtle it rarely bothers me. And, as I mentioned, simple sample playback with the right settings sounds faithful to the source, to my ears. There’s a lot of different ways the OT can get grainy and dated sounding, but it doesn’t have to. It’s perfectly capable of punching clean, crisp and hi-fi, in my experience.
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FWIW: In my studio I have all my synths, DAW and stuff routed individually into 64 channels of my mixer. A copy of the stereo output mix of all this is sent to the OT that has a one shot record trig and a playback trig. That track is then sent to OT Cue outputs and back to the mixer, where it’s on a stereo input that is NOT sent to the main mix (guess why 
). The desk is set to SIP (Solo In Place). This means that when I hit the solo button on the mixer track that receives the OT CUE I switch from the full mix (up to 64 tracks + Fx returns) to the OT’s sampled stereo copy of the main mix. When I do this, the transition is seamless. There’s no difference whatsoever between the direct stereo mix and its sampled clone. You cannot hear the switch. To my (trained) ears, the audio quality isn’t altered in any way.
It’s a very interesting routing, because I can perform normally (including my fellow musicians in the mix ) and at one point arm the OT recording trigger, then hit the solo button on the mixer which switches to the loop I just recorded of the whole performance, and start mangling away. When I’l done, I disengage solo and I’m back in the live mix and nobody noticed the transitions.
This is only possible if the converters on the OT are pristine. I can attest that they are.
If some of you experience quality loss when sampling, then you have your settings wrong, or you have quality loss in the signal chain outside the OT, IMHO.
(I refer to OT MKII, using balanced connections everywhere)
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I´ve done similar things for years, switching between synths, drummies, daw playback etc. to OT that has captured the loop and back again.
I have to admit, on the very first day, I tried to get a simple beat going on the OT and OT was sequencing synths (I had read the manual twice prior to my purchase, so I kinda knew my way around) and it sounded kinda lifeless Took me some time, but now that I know how to properly work in OT, there´s no way of distinguishing between sources feeding directly into my audio interface or mixer and the captured loop playing back on my OT.
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Sure. Even paramount headroom can be exceeded and on the OT you really have to pay attention.
Leave headroom (track levels and volume settings), insert effects can degrade the sound if overdubbed again and again and again…(easy test to check and can also be expoited in creative ways) most notably the filter and lofi - even at neutral settings.
The effect might be subtle, but the it´s there.
If you don´t use them on a track get rid of them. Input meters mostly yellow-orange-y, red at peaks is ok.
Here are a few links that deal with gainstaging and levels:
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Just an impression how Kyma handle dynamics without compromise of the sound quality.
https://youtu.be/7kx1JCHdKFk
https://youtu.be/wfmwnlraTmA
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I hear you, though depending on one’s hearing & setup/listening conditions, the changes can be quite dramatic still. When I moved from my TC Konnekt to a UAD Apollo, the difference in resolution, definition and overall clarity & quality was immediately noticeable to me.
I’d better be… that’s entry level compared to (pretty much) high end gear.
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Exactly! Big difference! 
Have you considered that it may just be coloring the sound in musical/pleasant way?
When I got the OT I found that it sounded much better and way more interesting when cutting up and playing samples than doing the same with Ableton’s Simpler/Sampler.
I have used Simper in Drum racks for years and was never able to get the specific sound I wanted when cutting up something I had recorded. When I got the OT I heard that it has a more punchy/clear/realistic character especially to the attack part of the sound. That means that I now find software sounding boring and flat (in a subtle way) although it may be more precise.
A few days ago I had some friends over for a jam and one of them has a formal education from the Rhytmic Music Conservatory (electronic line). He had brought his guitar and first we hooked it up to Live 11 and made a good sound and we played for a while with it. Then I connect it directly to Octatrack and made a good sound there. It sounded great because there were so many ways of looping, pitching and affecting the sound with my premade scenes. After a while of playing he said “that sounds much better than running it through the computer”. I got a message from him that he is now considering getting an OT.
The Analog Rytm sounds great with samples since the samples actually get an analog character from it.
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Has anyone that’s responding to him ever heard a Kyma, S1100, or anything by Sound Devices?
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I haven’t touched a Kyma since college. I remember them sounding pretty nice.
Kyma from what I remember from them coming out 15-20 years ago, is a computer type device with a sound design OS. Like a hardware Max msp. Supposed to make you sound like autecre when you turn it on.
S1100 is vintage Akai and I don’t doubt it sounds amazing, but nah.
Kyma has been around for a long time, mid 90s I think. I messed with one a bit in the lat e90s but not much. It’s basically ahardware accellerated modular environment. 8 channels of really nice sounding 24/96 i/o when the standard was still 16/44.1 unless you had a 6 figure Pro Tools system or something. The one we had at college was maxed out, which meant it had I think 12 DSP cards in it, each one was comparable to two G3 Macs (same CPU, two of them per card). Pretty insane for the time, and a full system was around $10k plus a computer, which is a lot of money and was even more money in '98 or '99 but actually REALLY cheap for how powerful it was back then. No idea what the newer generations are like or how relevant they are now in terms of hardware, but the software is still pretty unique from what I understand.
It’s hard to really get an idea of what they sound like now because the rare Youtube demos tend to be awful.
I don’t know… Nice that you find the sound you’re after in the OT.
OT and Ableton should be both pretty neutral. OT does not much to the bare samples (which might be a good thing), no vintage magic or anything.
It’s what you do to the sound. Maybe it’s just the OT interface that inspires you to do things differently. I don’t think the software sounds flat thing is accurate. There are software effects that sound more flat than those in the OT, but there are some that sound much better for sure…
My elektron hardware synths are very nice, but they have a hard time to step up against some software synths in my opinion. Repro sounds better to my ears, than many cheap (probably expensive as well) modern analog synths.
Bottom line is that you don’t have any experience with those 
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You are correct. Bottom line. Nill, zilch. Never will. I would never be able to afford a Kyma, and I’m not sure I could deal with learning the ways of the Akai again…also don’t have the room.
Yeah, I remember them. Just googled. They are up to version 7 and they start at 2900. It always hit me as academic. I’m sure they have one at Mills.
Wait it says it requires a audio interface. So, it is actually a computer with a proprietary audio OS on it.
https://secure.symbolicsound.com/kyma/order?config=Paca
Back to the sound quality of the OT. It’s not just my personal opinion why I say it doesn’t sound great it’s more like an observation.
No doubt the concept of the OT stands out from other sampling hardware. But if you look at this clearly and take the midrange segment it’s easy for Roland to make the OT next level in sound quality. Just with the technology of the VP9000 and merge it with the MX-1 with a overhaul of the UI and run everything internally on 32 bit…