Anyone unhappy with their mkii, I’ll gladly trade for an equivalent amount in Eurorack modules 
I tried to use a mki as a loop player/drum sample player and it didn’t work, but I want to try it again munch loops into so I get the BPM stable…
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If you don’t like the OT time stretch you definitely won’t like the MPC One time stretch (in standalone mode) so be aware of that as you mentioned thinking of getting one. For fun I compared them and was very surprised that the OT sounded a lot less grainy than the MPC.
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You use a computer for effects but not samples? You can find timestretch and sampling VST’s to use the same way you use effects VST’s. Let us know if you need a list of some to try out! Someone here will have some suggestions, I don’t own a computer so I can’t help there.
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This thread
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The best part was when the “OT sounds bad” crew tried to frame their argument as a crusade to protect future buyers from Elektron’s devious, un-premium ways.
It’s not an audio debate. It’s a human rights issue.
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So, since my livestreaming setup was already 90% of the way ready to do it I just threw together a quick A/B comparison of the Octatrack vs a direct recording. I make no promises WRT the quality of my patches or playing, I just flipped through and made some noises with a few different sounds. Honestly other than quickly doing some minor level matching I haven’t compared the two and don’t even make any claims about how similar they sound.
Obviously it’s not a full mix or anything, but it’s all I have the time, energy or interest to do and I think it’s still informative.
The sound source is a Kijimi (DIY) running through a modded Boss CE-300 chorus (a variant of the 80s Roland chorus family, in the ballpark of the Juno/RS09/Dimension D/Dimension C choruses) to give it some stereo movement and also act as a splitter. The rear outputs of the CE-300 were routed to the Octatrack C/D, and the front outputs directly to the interface.
- In the octatrack, I started from a new project and made the following changes:
- Inputs C/D gain up all the way (63) in the mixer menu
- Thru machine on track 1 with not effects in either slot
- Master volume turned all the way up (127)
The input volume on the CE-300 was set so that the OT inputs were peaking in the orange but not hitting red.
The connections to the interface were made using identical, balanced cables (DIY with ProCo DynaMic stock).
The interface is a Presonus Studiolive32R running in USB interface mode, with nothing inserted on the inputs.
Files were recorded at 24/48 and rendered at 24/48 with TPDF dither and no noise shaping.
VARIABLES (if you’re going to do a blind A/B, you should probably do it before you read this since it might bias you):
Even at nominally unity gain settings, the OT recording peaked 1.1db below the direct recording. I did some A/B comparisons and to my ear the levels were audibly different as recorded but more or less identical with the OT turned up 1.1db so I made that adjustment, while also boosting both tracks 5db since they were peaking at just over -6dBFS. Because of this, the two recording shad slightly different amounts of gain adjustment (using Airwindows PurestGain) but that isn’t something you will be able to hear, I’m jsut including it for the sakeof being nitpicky. It’s possible the levels are still slightly off (and if they are, the OT isn’t necessarily still the lower one) but I think they’re pretty close.
There was an additional 3’ of balanced cable (DIY, some variety of Mogami stock but it was salvage so I don’t know what specific kind) between the CE-300 and the OT on the OT recording, and it’s unlikely but possible that this could affect the sound.
Since both recordings were made in a single pass and use different outputs on the CE-300, it’s possible that the buffers on the front and rear outputs aren’t perfectly matched.
That seems exhaustive enough, way more than this half-assed contribution to the “Does the Octatrack Sound Bad?” discourse actually warranted but there you go. Enjoy!
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Did anyone mention that Stimming actually liked the OT’s time stretching algorithm? 
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First, I dont know the Presonus Studiolive32R. But from what I hear then I choose “Octatrack sound test 02” as the better one.
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That’s called hybris. Got it from time to time as well.
It would be interesting to know how many people in this thread makes music as a hobby vs how many people are real professional musicians, music producers, DJs, engineers…
I would say to all of us let’s go and create/produce amazing music rather than talking about OT mk3, 1 euro converter, tests etc etc.
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…does’nt matter that much…
just keep in mind, there are heaps of productions out there, that became global hits with commonly acknoldged pristine soundquality, that were done with really bad and way older converters… and many of those took even their special sonic charme from that poor but truu FACT…
so stop comparing til u end up totally nuts…stop challenging ur opinions to be more true than others…and get back to sonic business…MAKE MUSIC with the tools u got in front of u…
u gonna be fine…
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I preferred number 1, but hardly any difference, if any.
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This thread became my pet peeve 
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My ears are telling me both sound similar, my brain wants to tell me there’s a difference (or is it the other way round?). In any case, it’s not like there’s any difference I could clearly point out.
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Something to add on the best musical advice thread? GTFO of forums!!!
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I tried to do the null test on the two audio clips, but actually found there’s a fair bit of difference between them. Obviously there is a lot of opportunity for error as I was having to try and line them up manually both in time and in gain (although you levelled them already I was just trying to check everything), but did a lot of playing around and adjusting.
I’m picking clip 1, but I can’t hear anything wrong with either.
Technical analysis spoiler:
Clip 2 has an additional 20Hz / 22.1kHz rolloff that is not on clip 1.
@Supercolor_T-120 FYI I also looked at the schematics for the CE300 and looks like the front and back outputs are just connected directly to each other. I guess input impedences on the OT/Interface could play a factor here but I’m not going down that rabbit hole.
If I’m recording for a release I would record things directly, but that’s just me wanting to colour signals as little as possible unless I need/want to deliberately. For me the OT is a writing/performing tool and it absolutely sounds good enough for that.
I saw mention of using the OT for foley work earlier in the thread, and to me that just feels like using a 4x4 in a Formula1 race - a great tool, but not suited to the task at all. 
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It just depends on what kind of ride you would like to take, so why not to have both
Nice to meet you everyday in this kindergarten
It’s worth mentioning here that the Force has been updated with a render option that uses Elastique Pro on the hardware, so this might make it over to the MPCs (which I think only have this option in the software element at the moment). Timestretch is a minefield, though - I think in a lot of cases people are chasing the magic of the old Akai era sound, which was firmly offline and usually required a fair amount of trial and error, and was basically flawed and limited in all the right ways and at the right time.
If I had a time machine I’d put the dinosaurs and JFK aside, go back to the late 80s / early 90s and implement realtime warping in all the hardware samplers. Then come back to 2021 and see what effect it’s had on music.
If all else fails you can soon buy the Stimming box 
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