In practice, DAWs aren’t good master clocks but aren’t they just as bad at receiving clock, why people have E-RM or other devices to sync from DAW and distribute to devices to keep them in time with the recording?
In my experience they’re equally bad at receiving and sending clock, yes. However, slaving everything to a hardware sequencer has the advantage that your hardware devices are at least getting a solid clock instead of getting a second-hand shitty clock from the DAW.
Also, in Bitwig, I haven’t had any serious issues recording audio with Bitwig as slave (which is kind of miraculous actually).
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Maybe you already know this but Bitwig is also able to output a trigger clock through an audio interface. Despite that this is useful for Eurorack, it could also be used to sync either a solution like the Multiclock or the OXI One.
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Right, as far as I’ve understood it the DAW is always the bottleneck at sending or receiving, and the best way to ensure clock in the DAW matches the recorded audio is
- Have the DAW send the clock via audio triggers instead of MIDI via hardware or plugin
- Don’t have the track playing the audio be the track recording the audio… at least with Ableton…
If the clock you’re sending is off at the DAW level, at least quality clocks down the line won’t stray further than trying to have your DAW awkwardly follow along.
I mean obviously if it works for a person, it works for them and I wouldn’t sweat it!
Both the two crowdfunding campaigns I’ve ever backed (Oxi One and Töörö) knocked it out the park. Guess I’ve been lucky. Good job, Oxi Instruments and Fred’s Lab!
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I totally agree !
In my experience they are even worse at receiving clock… well, it could also be that modern hardware is better “resistant” to a sloppy DAW clock by using a buffer or something. So it is actually the hardware that makes the improvement, not the DAW sending clock vs receiving clock
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Can the Oxi act as a linear sequencer? I know it can micro manage steps, but when recording does it capture all the timings, or is it limited to the steps? How does it record thrills, strums or just plain garbage timings? 
for polyphony, the OT has the same timing of different notes on the same trig, which is not linear, and does not handle thrills and different time signatures well. The AR will record only one note per step, so if there is overlap, you must aim for it with retrigs. This is why i’m asking, looking for a way to avoid the “step sequencer” paradigm in my live setup, and record notes more aking to a DAW. MPC’s also do this, as well as the Keystep Pro (not KS37 that i own, unfortunately) So wondering if Oxi can do this, as it is the thing that will sway me here or at the Hapax. I prefer the Oxi in almost every way, just have too much step oriented sequencers and none linear.
Did you check polyphonic mode? In chord mode you do have all notes on same trig but there’s strum too. I’m busy now so can’t give more details.
Oxi has a parameter for quantisation that you set after recording. It’s a percentage in which 0% is free timing and 100% is quantised to the step.
The limitation however is that every step can fit only one event, unless you manage retriggers afterwards.
For Polyphony this works better than it may look, since you can fit 7 notes per step. I haven’t seen Poly recording on hardware as smooth as Oxi (I haven’t tried every piece of gear though). For better results it’s best to record on lower time divisions.
Oxi also has different recording modes, overdub, loop, extend, 1 shot…
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Great! How? I asked Manuel for this but he said it would always be quantising afterwards.
Oh I’ll correct myself. It affects after recording. Would be nice the other way around too.
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I’m glad quantization was brought up because I’ve been meaning to look into how it works on the Oxi One for a while and keep getting sidetracked. Turns out theres a menu on shift+record which allows you to set the quantise mode:
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Yes it would be great if you could set it to record quantization like in Ableton or all Elektron machines.
That remains a feature request 
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It’s on the agenda for future releases AFAIK.
IMHO it’s not that simple because having a destructive quantization turned on by default can get frustrating really quick because it’s not always wanted. In the end you’d always have to bear in mind to check the quantization options before recording.
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Sounds good.
In Ableton and on Elektron machines you can easily turn it on and off. No problem there.
To my knowledge most electronic music is tightly quantized but you could always turn it off or quantize manually if you want humanisation. Also currently, if you want a tight beat you have to quantize after each recording so I’d love to see this feature at some time.
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Oxi One version 2 !
FW 2.0 - Main features
- New Stochastic Sequencer mode
- Draw modulation curves for velocity in the grid
- Draw modulation curves for CCs in the grid
- New arpeggio engines: 8-step pattern and rand once
- MI Grids drum pattern generator for Multitrack lanes
- Improved chord mode built in arpeggiator
- Renaming Patterns
- Copy Patterns from other Projects to the current one
- Quick save the project: shift + save
- Permanent (or momentary) Load and Save screens
- Configuration menu reorganisation
- Arranger rework with Scene Launch and Master Lane
- Adds Aftertouch to the LFOs destinations
- Adds PitchBend and Aftertouch as new MOD destinations
- Multiples melodies can be copied into Poly
- Double functions menus allos more parameters per menu (shift + encoder)
- Adds LFO bipolar offset (also working as CC and CV)
- New LFO engines: linear, gated and noise
- Init and End step indication in the grid
- Expand & Condense stop when the lowest or highest resolution respectively have been reached
- Bugfixes and other improvements
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Early May!!
About slaving the OXI: the problem from my experience comes from the VARIABLE latency of the DAW as more plugins are added to the project. You compensate it once but then it changes again even if you don’t change the audio buffer.
That said, if you don’t load a lot of heavy plugins or tracks, setting it once should be fine!
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Great update.
Is it possible to use the Oxi as a midi faderbank? Eg assign each column to a CC and hit a button in a column to smoothly move to the value? Or set columns to LFO between two values with a path (eg sine) and frequency?
(I like the new functionality and the new ‘app’/mode mentality of the developers, makes the OXI ever more useful as both a sequencer, controller and a generator)
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