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)