Pickup hiccups

Elektron Gear Octatrack
#1

I’m struggling to bond with the Pickups because there are so many little niggles, wondering if other folk just give up too or if there’s problems with my usage or expectations, one thing’s for sure, it’s not polished

I frequently get issues on screen with the graphics denoting Master/Slave, i posted before but nobody echoed my observations

frequently my previous slaves stay marked with the proper slave gfx, but this means i end up with this, plus it persists after a machine re-assignment when i restart a new project, again the gfx persists


I’m still getting issues where a slave pickup machine will radically take over the tempo of the marked master, this happens when i run with len set to off, so the slaves are ‘free’

often a PU m/c will have no marker, i’ve also saw during testing a machine play without any transport icon, ie just a blank tab !

anyone else having gremlins, for without some good user feedback this will persist and whilst it persists folk avoid it and so the issue goes on

BTW - no pitch adjustment or midi clock or scene assignments

i’ve also noted that PU machines are not keeping up if you multiply the master, a stopped slave @1x will not be same length when you use it

here’s a screen, confusing, one unmarked, one double marked

photo.JPG800×600 84.7 KB

to keep things easy for testing - i run a plays free static on T1 with level down and the pick that up with the P tracks

tell me it’s me, please, because it seems really flaky to me
ps - it’s not only when i use Len Off fwiw !

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Master pickup machines
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What if a pickup shows both Master & Slave icons simultaneously?
Octatrack OS Bug Reports
Octatrack OS 1.30B is here
Why do people not like Pickup Machines?
Octatrack OS 1.40A: bug reports
Pickup machine icon question
Probably a bug in the Pickup Machine but worth asking
#2

mabye it’s you - but certainly me too.
I had heavy kerfuffle when stopping the sequencer and starting again. starting the slave machines manually did work … but then had mostly weird things occuring. I couldn’t really reproduce or even grasp and write down to ask the elektronaut brain.
sorry I can’t confirm or remedy your findings - so am not of help at all. but i have slowly turned away from the PU… if at all I will overdub a few things together and save the sample to take it further with a flexmachine… the scenario they have in their video works well enough but pushing it further in a (all elektron) sequenced environment gave me some unpredictable quirks and I couldn’t be arsed to investigate further…
I will keep running my record on repeat: elektron, pretty please could you refurbish those pickUpHiccUp machines? i think there’s a lot of potential to be unfolded here!
I’d love to have a setUp (with OT as master) other elektrons and some ‘stuff’ played freestyle on top of it but as soon as I have PUs alongside with all the other OT jazz I can pretty much only use them at the beginning of an improv and leave them as is. i find PUs could be more flexible but dont really want to add a dedicated looper…
yes in theory(!) this is already possible but doesn’t play well under my direction … phew… sorry, went off a tangent

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#3

Hmm, sorta confirms my suspicions that people don’t embrace PU m/c because of the issues, so it doesn’t permit much feedback and there are few experts commenting. Looping should be much easier than this, that’s been my experience prior to this

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#4

You guys should file defects with Elektron Customer Zone. I got a reply for the defect I reported on the slave pickup machine within 24 hours.

It may be possible that there will be some issues they cannot address quickly but at least they will be more aware of the specific problems.

I just got a Dub Rec Aborted error in band practice yesterday, this time with the Master pickup machine. I think it’s because i forgot to reset all my track LFOs, some of which were modulating pitch (mucking about with pitch settings, before beginning to loop) has been known to cause this type of error). I have a habit of resetting all LFO settings to zero after a gig/practice session to avoid this problem, but I just forgot this time.

I picked up an Akai Headrush E2 looper pedal because it was on sale for a blowout price at $89. I plan to dig more into using it and using track recorder sampling on the OT as an alternative to pickup machines.

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#5

I kinda gave up on pickup machines about 8 months ago, though i can still see potential in using them
I even bought a foot pedal, then re-sold it (Behringer)
I found them just not straightforward enough to use, and too random in their behaviour concerning the master playback
That said, i cant remember sufficiently to beable to say what exactly wasnt working
Often my loop wouldnt restart when i restarted the sequencer, and then sometimes id accidentally wipe the loop whilst trying to get it restart
Other times it worked fine
But the only sure thing was to assign it to a flex sample so it would remain saved
Anyway hope it gets improved somewhat

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#6

Yeah, I’m trying to do my part with my own effort to take better notes on exactly what I did to break a pickup machine, then file a defect with Customer Zone.

The more info we customers can give them, the easier (in theory) we make things for them, and the easier we make things for them, the more likely they are to fix a problem.

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#7

i’m keeping notes myself, but it’s disheartening to hear of the tales of trying>giving-up ! doesn’t bode well

i’d been aware of the sensitivities of pitch modulation and dubbing and i started this thread a while back, there are others of course, but it just needs a few little finesse touches to make it usable, there are touches that could improve things too imo

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#8

i didn’t even think of modulating anything on the audio side (other than FX) after having a bumpy start (admittedly user related - that being me)…

when I reported my issues regarding the tempo detection and then updated the ticket with further findings in regards to slave machines not playing once the sequencer is restarted it took almost 3 weeks to get a response which basically stated that my findings are correct.
I do hope they’ll give it some love once all the analog dust has settled

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#9

cool - would you like to cut’n’paste your findings (or thread link) from before here so we know exactly what the issue is and to avoid it (& monitor if it is remedied) ?

#10

sure… you can skip the first 4/5 postings which are just me not being overly clever

http://www.elektronauts.com/t/pick-up-machines-conundrum/1948/13973

elektron later confirmed this including my issues with slave machines
experpt:

… after that I encountered all kinds of oddness (like others) which made me slowly turn away as it didn’t seem to go anywhere… I agree though I should have taken record but didn’t feel it was going to help

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#11

Of course i tried them out (eagerly, when they were introduced), but at some point i realized that one-shot recording trigs on a flex machine fulfill my humble looping needs much more reliably, as my way of working does not require me to be able to overdub my loops.

#12

good spot - it’s these things that should be easy to fix but that take slightly unusual usage to flag them up, i think i try to work in the slightly unusual mode and this reveals these little niggles, i’d like the loops to be independent, it seems possible, and partly is, but it often tries to snap slave machine step counts to multiples of 8/16 and then re-tempos the master ! it just seems very buggy and a bit glitchy on the audio side

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#13

For me switching to track recorder sampling is not so much about giving up as simplifying my workflow. I’ve read a couple of times that the pickup machines are simply built on top of the track recorder/flex machine anyway, with some “convenience features” added. I don’t mind having to assign track recorders to tracks explicitly than the auto-assign that comes with pickup machines, if it will remove an extra layer of code (and bugs! ;))

#14

the pickup machines are too much of a hassle, what´s the point in having a looper that needs all your attention?
i´ve had lots of troubles with the pickup machines myself, i finally got them to work as expected but they´re not reliable, as mentioned above, and i say this as someone who has 7+ years experience with elektrons machines and their workflow.

i don´t understand why we have to have explicit loopermachines anyway, make the normal (and fine working) flexrecord overdub-able if need be, that would be great.
the thing is, a looper gives much different results then the normal looprecorder, a quick punch in/out on a looper can bring a whole tune to live, it would be sad to abandon the looper functions.

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#15

why does lowering release on the amp page stop the pickup machine from working?

i think the thing for me is pickup machines work very differently than the flex machines but share a lot of the same buttons, which gets awkward. since you can’t use the trig buttons in pickup machines i think being able to activate commands that way would make it easier? dunno.

i mean even the way you place record trigs is different, what will work fine with flex machines will often be too long in length to work, too many record trigs, or not enough and will cause feedback.

dub aborted is a hilariously obscure error. it’s either the pitch or the length, i’m not sure why it doesn’t say that or let you disable them. it was annoying at first, but now it just makes me laugh.

i do really like the crazy sounds you can get out of them, but i don’t think they’re that useful as loopers - but i don’t really need more than the flex machines.

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#16

the pick-up machienes are a great feature. but it seems not to correspond well with the sequencer and it is somehow confusing to use them. i. e. if you stom the playback the PM stops as well. but if you press play, they doesn’t start playing…?? as i said, the PM are cool and you can get realy great patterns with them, but not realy for a live situation, because they are tricky to use and buggy as hell…
it would be nice to integrate them better in the trig mode like the other machines. and they are somehow drooping out from the usability concept of the other machines…
btw I’m using also most of the time only flex machines. perhaps some thru and neighbor aswell, but i think routable FX channel would be much better.

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#17

Hmm i have zero troubels with the PM’s i love them… but i migt not use them as most persons do :slight_smile:

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#18

that’s my point, i’m sure i’m approaching them from a different perspective, it strikes me that using what is available should at least be consistent and predictable, to be used as an improvisational instrument - if it’s inconsistent at the peripheries then you learn to use the smaller subset where it works, but it’s still buggy, that’s not to say that fantastic things can’t be done with what’s working, i think your stuff is the most exciting usage of the OT, but as a user of many loopers old and new i find it too temperamental to develop a bond
i suppose i should ask Elektron but i’m bemused that a slave PM can take over the global tempo ! i just don’t get that, nor the bizarre graphics that i am seeing, i presume it’s just me as nobody’s chimed in ! And the ping pong glitch is tolerable as i don’t use that mode, but it’s still surprisingly clicky at the boundaries - plus i find this lockdown assumption that things need to be in multiples of 8 frustrating, sure make it the default option - it’s time to look for the good and focus less on the bad
Q: Anyone know for sure what the Off setting in Len is meant to facilitate ?
I can’t get polyrhythmic loops with it because of said slave tempo takeover - is this a bug or are my expectations askew ?

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#19

Thanks again for sending me a couple of your projects!

One reason I haven’t fired up the Headrush looper pedal yet is I plan to dissect Anders’ projects. :wink: His usage is more advanced than mine, and he’s mentioned doing some things on a more basic (not advanced) that I haven’t tried yet like using smaller LEN values.

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#20

Im trying out the PM with my acoustic guitar and the first thing that comes to my mind is an auto record feature? (I have no footpedal)