Pickup Machine as Slave

Elektron Gear Octatrack
#1

So, I’m just here to gripe more than anything.

I’m sure anyone who has tried using the Pickup Machine while the OT acts as slave has discovered that it’s near impossible to get working correctly. I was under the assumption that perhaps this was somehow my fault, and that there was a subtle setting toggle I had off.

But, I contacted Elektron, and they basically came back saying that yes, pickup machines don’t work nicely when the OT is slave, and that they are not clearly aiming to fix that. Rather, Elektron’s ‘workaround’ is to always have the OT be Master Clock.

I’m sorry, but this is a terrible workaround, and it’s somewhat shocking that Elektron isn’t spending some effort to resolve what is clearly a bug. Does anyone know if development is even moving forward on the OT’s OS these days? Or has development tapered off to the point where I can expect this never to be resolved. This does seriously affect my decision to purchase any further Elektron products, as it strkes me that their older model of heavy support for the OS over a lengthy time is going out the window.

Anyways, enough bitching: anyone come across a solution to this, other than to set the OT to master? I mean, I’m sure the OT clock is great, but I have a Cirklon that clearly has a superior Midi Clock that I’d prefer to be the ‘master’ for all things timing-wise, so this is a pretty big setback if I plan on using the Pickup Machine at all.

Open Letter To Elektron
Open Letter To Elektron
#2

I complained to Elektron about this when the pickup machine first came out. Their response (as you also heard) was to make the OT the master.

I asked them what I should do if I have two Octatracks and heard nothing but silence…

Their technical explanation (I have to paraphrase since I can’t get to the email at the moment) was that they felt they couldn’t keep synced to an incoming MIDI clock and still support the shifting/overdubbing/etc that they do. They felt the incoming MIDI clock with its inherent drift would make the OT sound bad and subsequent passes would be a mess.

My counter argument was that they should implement it anyway, give much warnings/caveats in the documentation and let us decide if it is bad or not. Given the overall mangling capabilities, I would be willing to take a slaved pickup machine that was glitchy over none at all.

The fact that every other looper ever made in the world will slave to an incoming clock apparently means nothing to them.

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#3

I came to the OT from searching for a live looper. I’d never had a sampler before, so Pickup Machines was the first thing I learned. My OT has always been a slave. Tempest is my master since there are other horror stories about Tempest as a slave

I’ve gradually learned Flex, Static and midi sequencing with the OT, but I still use Pickup Machines quite a bit. Other than the fact you can’t overdub on Pickup Machines when the OT is a slave, they seem to work rock solid to me.

What other issues are you seeing with Pickup Machines? One thing that I dont like with Pickup machines, but this applies to Master or Slave, is that once you stop and restart the sequencer you have to re-trigger the sample. The best workaround I’ve found for this is to save it as a Flex first, then enter the trigs to trig the Flex. Which makes me wonder why I dont just record live loops on a Flex machine… :zonked:

#4

Except the Akai Headrush, Akai Headrush E2, Line 6 DL-4… :wink:

In seriousness, yes, it’s a shame about the slave pickup machine. I’ve moved in the direction of just using a master pickup machine and flex machines/track recorder sampling, instead of master pickup machine and slave pickup machines.

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#5

[quote="“GovernorSilver”"]

Except the Akai Headrush, Akai Headrush E2, Line 6 DL-4… :wink:

In seriousness, yes, it’s a shame about the slave pickup machine. I’ve moved in the direction of just using a master pickup machine and flex machines/track recorder sampling, instead of master pickup machine and slave pickup machines.[/quote]
:joy: Hyperbole – exaggeration for effect.
Of course, how many of the others cost $1200+ ?

In addition to not being able to overdub (on a looper? really?) any slight pitch/tempo changes causes it to drop out of recording as well. In fact, there’s more ways to cause recording to abort than to keep going.

The big gripe is that the original marketing and one of the selling points of the OT was the looper functionality. The pickup machine wasn’t in the initial release and when it did appear, it was severely crippled.

I can certainly see if Elektron was trying to add a new feature outside the original scope of a product and found it too hard. I fail to see how a fundamental requirement like being able to overdub the loop while slaved could have been dropped during the initial design and planning for the product. Why would you not design that capability in from the beginning? It’s not like the features that make a good looper are a mystery.

I definitely agree that if you didn’t choose to design it in from the beginning, it’s going to take a significant amount of work to put it in later.

#6

Here’s my wild idea:

Give users a choice on whether additional pickup machines are slaves.

I have not had any issues with master pickup machines that couldn’t be fixed by more RTFM/asking on the forums.

Slave pickup machines OTOH are buggy, so if I wanted to use two pickup machine tracks, I’d rather both of them be “master” than one be slave to the other. I would gladly give up the length multiplier - never got much use out of the 2nd pickup machine having 2x or 4x the length of the first. anyway - to have the 2nd pickup machine be its own master instead of a slave. There is a master clock in the OT anyway, so I don’t see the need to sync the 2nd pickup machine directly to the first when both are being controlled by the master clock.

#7

Most of the complaints are about the slave pickup machine, not the master. I was using a Line 6 DL-4 as my looper before I got the Octatrack. The DL4 has no such thing as a “slave looper” so I don’t feel like I’m missing anything by not using a slave pickup machine. Then again, I’ve never been as sophisticated a looping musician as oldgearguy. I did own an Echoplex Digital Pro briefly, but it was much for my brain. Having just said that, I just have been nuts to pick up an Octatrack… While the OT is not the looping machine we were all hoping it to be, it’s still changed the way I make music in a fundamental way. I’m not really a “build up a song, track by track” kind of looping musician, and I’m not a “Fripp soundscape” type looping player either - I like to get more into the muck about with the audio after it’s sampled aspect than continuing to loop and loop and loop…

As for your flex machine question, I don’t think it is possible to overdub like you can on the pickup machine.

#8

I’m a bit frustrated right now. I spent a good long while trying to fix/diagnose/calibrate my brand new midi foot peddle that I bought to do some live looping. But I kept getting the ‘dub aborted’ message. Yes the OT is slaved. Why shouldn’t it be?

Can someone point me to the place in the manual where it says the OT is unable to do pickup machines when slaved?

A quick search on this site finds a bunch of posts similar to this one:

Really bummed I made the assumption that a $1300 piece of kit that advertises itself as a looping powerhouse doesn’t work as advertised when slaved.

That was posted in 2014. Since then there has been no fix nor documentation updates nor more descriptive error messages…

Are my expectations unreasonable? Is there an official Elektron position/plan for this?

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#9

Can’t you set Octatrack as master ?
It’s possible to overdub with Flex machines.

#10

I gave up on using slave pickup machines a while ago.

I just use one pickup machine in the OT - which guarantees that it will be the master pickup machine (not to be confused with the OT in its entirety being master or slave), and if I need more loops, I use Flex Machines instead. It does take a bit more effort and patience to learn how to loop with a Flex machine instead of a Pickup Machine, but it’s worth it. I do admit that I did say in the past that I thought overdubbing on Flex machines was not possible, but it could be I was using recorder trigs on the Flex machines - every time the recorder trig trigged sampling, the new recording would wipe out the previous one.

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#11

@colaba
At first I didn’t like Pickups that were changing OT’s tempo sequencer and prefered Recorder + Flex. More possibilities with one track.
Since I tried quantize Rec, I changed my mind about Pickups, as you can use their recordings with Flex and use them as you want.

I had a RC505 before, best looper I know for simple 5 tracks stereo recording with different lengths up to 3 hours for each track !
I kept Ot only, the craziest looper in the world.

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#12

Hi guys:) trying to rap my head around the best way for me to do things. I’m sorry if my questions have already been answered (probably has) but I have been reading online and the manual for a couple of days.

As I’m using another sequencer as master I’ve been live looping synths with the flex machines using a thru machine to monitor the synths while playing.

I thought I could not overdub on the same track using flex but I now read that it is possible. I’m not sure how though…

But basically is there any other advantages to using pick up machines over the way I’m doing it when I’m not interested in octatrack changing tempo to fit the loop.

Also if I were to use the pick up playing over a loop that already has the preferred tempo, does the octatrack understand the tempo correctly when for example playing pads or other synthy stuff without much tempo information in the playing?

Sorry if I’m not making much sense. Hope you can bear with me:)

#13

If you use QREC (quantize record) in Recording Setup 2, Pickup won’t change tempo (QPLAY maybe needed too).
Otherwise Tempo is calculated with bar numbers (1-2-4-8-16…) or sub divisions, between rec start / stop, with 80-160 bpm range.

Are you sure OT can’t be master in your setup ? Even for overdub with Flex OT master is better for loop recordings.

Main advantages of Pickups can be the monitoring in Recording Setup 2, multiply, loop length for slave loops…

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Pickup machines and auto bpm changes
Pickup machines and auto bpm changes
#14

Thank you for explaining:) I’m definitely going to give OT as a master a go. The trouble with the setup is that i’m not always using it but I could just switch back and forth.

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#15

Wait, this is suddenly very relevant to my interests. How do you overdub in a single Flex Machine?

#16

Record inputs AB or CD and SRC3 with corresponding track number (SRC3=T1-T8).

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#17

Thanks for the reply! I tested this out and I think the feedback issues are too limiting for what I’m trying to do, but it’s certainly an interesting option.

#18

Can you explain this in more detail? What feedback issues?

#19

I’ve got a very particular usage case, so your mileage may vary here.

I’m using the OT and flex machines to loop my bass playing. Pickup machines don’t work for my needs because of the lack of sequencing options.

I’m manually managing the sampling with a footswitch and with the HOLD mode enabled rather than a recording trig.

When I go to overdub, I immediately get hit with strong feedback. I’ve seen this discussed in other threads, and it’s something that can be managed with record trigs, but I haven’t found a way to fix it using manual sampling, although I confess I haven’t tested it too much.

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#20

You shouldn’t have feedback.
Anoying things are monitoring, and the sound getting bad if you use filter, and record more than 15/20 times.

If you’re not slaved you can record with a Pickup, and mangle its recording in realtime with a Flex.
T1 > Pickup
T2 > Flex playing Recording 1

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