Overbridge, Digitakt, and track panning

Actually,
@craig
I bought a digitakt partly because of multitracking with overbridge but I am finally using overbridge without multitracking because of this panning issue, as I use a lot the p-locks and LFO on panning.
If I need to record a break/transition that I am performing on digitakt, I only remove some elements (kick, snare) from the main stereo output through the pattern routing options (import menu)

The thing is, I don’t mind any of the limiting choices about the digitakt (memory limit, mono-sampling and all the things people complain about), however for music production, I still feel this panning issue makes overbridge lost half of its interest.

And that is a shame, if it is a bandwith limitation, I would really love that elektron gives the option on overbridge to track out 5 stereo buss (equivalent of 10 mono tracks), instead of 1 stereo track + 8 mono tracks (equivalent of 10 mono tracks as well)

Having 5 busses to route your 8 tracks from would be more than enough. This mono routing, is a pretty bad design choice

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As far as I can tell, it’s not strictly a bandwidth limitation - the pan value is a control signal, and that info is already present in the Digitakt plugin, since the UI visualizes it. It might be a bandwidth limitation if they tried to send a stereo channel for each track, but the tracks are “mono” before panning anyways, so it could just as easily be implemented with the plugin applying panning on the computer side. The plugin’s individual track outputs already show up as stereo in the DAW, but the same mono signal is present on both channels, so at that point it could just be a matter of using the pan signal to actually pan the output within the plugin.

I’ve just written Elektron support properly about this, since it’s becoming a huge headache for me at the mixing/finalizing stage of my current (all digitakt) project. Having busses would be completely fine for me as well, even if it were only 4 stereo busses instead of 5.

Has anyone managed to figure out any workarounds using MIDI tracks?

AFAIK, the Panning is already implemented with the Digitone.

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Yes but the digitone is 4 tracks right ?
So it might not need the implmentation thingy @rkn is talking about
Also, @rkn, I am not so sure how feasible it is do to this : You can set a LFO on the tracks with very high frequency values. In order to be sample accurate it might be difficult to implement right ?

Actually, when I am producing, I am mainly using mute and master output only, creating “groups” manually to record loops and build patterns from there.
It is not a very “live” way of using the digitakt, but most of the time I use digitakt as a “rythmic loop creator device”. It does’nt prevent me from Performing transition of manual effects on the device though and in the end I find it more efficient than re-panning everything.

However, I would really prefer having groups, and I am pretty sure most of user would too.

Wil they ever do the overbridge panning foor individually tracks it really sucks

Having fun with the Syntakt for a while. I just booted Overbridge this morning to see how it worked and was also VERY surprised to see that there’s no apparent way to get your ST track’s panning mapped to Ableton. :expressionless:

I managed to get cc of the actual panning encoder, which is a start, but I can’t get the actual value there (so no LFO or P-Lock goodness). For now, I might solve it by replicating the movements using an LFO when needed. I’m not an expert on these things so I guess this is as good as it gets for now.

Seems like a simple, but great improvement to these machines (I’m guessing there would be sync issues, that’s why it’s not there yet?)

Just curious if I lfo’d to pan on a pad sample in the dt, would it ignore that panning when recording with overbridge or would it sound weird since the stereo info is missing?

Also cant I choose 1 track to record in post fx and compressor and come out of the main outs in ob? I guess I’d have to choose one track to get all the fx if I went that route.

Honestly don’t mind panning in the daw I just like to do it on overbridge too so I get an idea of how a pad will sit in stereo in a track when I mix.

was surprised as well, i just used overbridge the first time.

i would definitely vote for getting panned tracks through overbridge as well.
also fx !
( maybe a checkbox in OB ?)

The only working solution I have figured out is a little bit complicated, and is a thougth experiment at the moment. I’ve tested it really quickly, will try to work this way when some new tracks will be ready.

  1. Hook up DT to DAW and Overbrigde
  2. Record master USB audio and MIDI data on Overbrigde channel in your DAW
  3. Jam, play track, adjust parameters on the fly etc
  4. Now you have a reference audio mix and (nearly) full MIDI information on the timeline of the MIDI track.
  5. You can modify MIDI data where more precise results are desired.
  6. The drawback: no pattern change or “func+no” were recorded on your MIDI track, so you have to re-create this data on your MIDI track manually, using reference audio that has been recorded earlier. Also, adjustment of the ‘root’ note of the sample on the fly didn’t record either (have no comments on this - I don’t use this parameter after I fine-tune my sound).
  7. Re-record 10 individial stereo tracks one by one using master bus and controlling DT via previously recorded MIDI data