I’ve been owning my OT MK2 for about half a year now and I’m thinking of selling it too.
Coming from MPC, I think the OT-sequencer is really stiff and terrible to use, especially because of all the submenus, key-combinations and what not. It’s probably just not what I was looking for.
The Sample-editor is fast, this is a plus, but too sensitive, just one mistake with the nob (like tweaking the wrong one), and you can start from scratch again. Same with Ableton-LIVE but at least god invented the Ctrl-Z-function. Elektron, hello?
But the real fun-killers of the OT are:
Samples play only mono. This is especially shitty when I have a chopped drum-loop, and I can’t have the hi-hat on the same step where a low-tom would hit. Neither do I want to sacrifice a whole new track for a hi-hat-pattern.
Another unfun-fact: Can’t step-edit intuitively by playing the pads, I need to do it with B-knob for all trigs, I can easily lose count and it’s just not a very fun thing to do. MPC step edit programs the pad I pushed, and if it’s the wrong one, I can correct it easily. This sounds like a non-issue for many, but imagine a 4-bar-drum-loop. Where was that goddamn open crash next to the ghost-kick? Slice 24? ah, no, 25…
Time-stretch, looping position. The submenus of the time-stretch, initial tempo of the loop (I’m talking drum-breaks here; old vinyl shit. Damn, I should call Clide Stubblefield (RIP), what was the BPM of your solo? Ok, maybe it is possible to make the loop roll tight with the metronome on, but I felt better just skipping this whole option with the OT because it’s just a PINA.
For those who don’t know: With the MP, you just loop the thing until it sounds “right” and you have an instant BPM recognition. Adjust the tempo, and here we go. As easy as that.
I could “time stretch” (or ‘warp’) the loop, but I never liked the result soundwise, unless done deliberately on certain slices - but I’ve got the pitch/rate for that.
Since we’re talking loops here: I can’t make an 8-bar loop. Say, I want a pad to subtly change during a sequence - especially pads work better when they’re long - it’s a nightmare to program this into the OT. I could make a 2nd pattern, that would follow up where pattern one left - which means I need to rely on the terrible handling of the copy-paste-pattern combinations. If there is any other way, let me know. The manual doesn’t tell me how (I usually need to read between the lines, which actually means I need to trick out the machine to do what I want it to do).
I don’t need scenes. Never got why everybody’s so in love with them. But to be fair, this my personal problem. I hated the Kaoss Pad too, and the crossfader is pretty much the same thing.
Switching between sequences. Since everything is ruled by ONE Bpm-timecode, you can’t get that much variation. Why is it impossible to save Pattern 1 at 130 bpm and Pattern 2 at 140? Can anybody explain this to me? (You’re free to tell me in detail to prove me otherwise, but RTFM-answers will be ignored in disdain). Fair enough, you encounter the same problem with LIVE - which brings me to the next issue of why electronic music got boring, but this is beyond scope here.
8 Tracks. No overdubs like the MPC could. I repeat, 8 tracks only, and then not even giving me the chance of creating sub-tracks…We’re in 2018, guys. Seriously? It’s nice to have a hardware-sampler that acts like “Simpler”. But these “limitations” are way too big to be ignored, and they’re not making me creative but pissing me off.
Cuckoo was very enthusiastic about the “track-mute”-options in the Arranger. (Oh wow, I’m able to MUTE the tracks, oh wow!!!) So what? I wanna mute WITHIN the pattern; creating sub-sequences like intros, think “hi-hat”-only, then change to kick, then snare plus hihat, And save these transitions as ONE sequence. This goes back to the problem mentioned above, what’s the point in having a sampler where all slices cut-each other off? I could use another track to divide the respective elements - which is killing the options for the arranger.
For the price of an OT MK2, I can get three SP404sx!! THREE!!! Endless resampling, adding of FX and what not.
MK2-manual is suggesting me to create random patterns out of a sliced loop until I’m happy with the result. TILT. Uhm, sorry, I’m not interested. I want precision. But I also want my drum-loops to be longer than 4 bars, and I’m not interested in a 4 x 4 solution (which is a terrible mess with the OT).
All things I mentioned above are more or less about hiphop/drumNbass-issues. Now what about techno?
Just to let you know, when I did Tech with the MPC, I had 15-16 different drum-tracks alone! Different velocities, pitches, unusual patterns, you know, that old-school Hawtin-thing. I can’t enjoy doing this with the OT.
Cuckoo, Carl-Michael, Halution, all nice and sympathetic guys, I can definitely imagine having a beer with them (or a coffee, depending on preference) - but all their tutorials do absolutely NOTHING for me, and none of them are actually even covering the issues I’ve mentioned above. Interesting, huh?
Travelling through YT, I’m actually a bit shocked that I haven’t seen ONE good piece of music done with an OT - my bad for buying it too soon before really checking out. Well, at least I know now.
I might give the AR a chance if I could at least program a pattern that’s actually FUN to program. And I’m totally not interested in a Looper or FX-processor, I got all that already.
All in all - the OT is everything and nothing - which means it can do a lot, but none of it right.
You might ask me why I actually got one? Mhm, good question. Clever marketing I’d say.