Pickup Machine Reverse Play Bug?

Just about 50% of the time I record a loop on a pickup machine, it starts playing it backwards despite the setting being FWD - is there a way to avoid this? Then when I change it to reverse it plays it the correct way around. How bizarre! I read somewhere that this is a known bug, but despite updating my Octatrack to the new firmware version the bug’s still there. Any indication on whether this will be addressed? Any workarounds? Using flex machine as a looper is one alternative way to do it, but it just isn’t as convenient due to the slight complexity in arming/disarming play and record trigs in conjunction.

Thanks!

Link ? I can’t find it but it reminds me something.

Did you try from a new project ?

A Static track can be plocked to a scene, then set to Pickup and keep that value (reverse for instance).

Reverse would be reversed ? :thinking:

I used to experience it more often than I do now… hasn’t happened lately…

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Hi Clancy, yes! Your question from few years back is the only information I can find on the internet actually. It’s really strange and I swear the frequency of its happening is inversely proportional to the amount of days left until the gig, on the gig day just about “always” happening, lol.

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So what of you plock scene A and B to Forward ?

@LyingDalai @avantronica
Maybe this should be moved to Pickup machine playing backwards randomly - #7 by Clancy

Ive experienced the same, although that topped with not being able to unlink the tempo has me avoiding pickup machines unless it’s for some thing that can be intentionally unpredictable. Hopefully you can find a solution

No way to reproduce it systematically ?

Recorders + FLEX. Can be overdubed.

No, I can’t seem to reproduce it on cue.

I did actually try the flex route, but it just seems a little bit counter-productive for my purposes. I tend to live loop synth parts that I play with one hand whilst pressing rec1/rec2 on a pickup machine.

In the flex route it’s just a bit fiddly to go to rec mode, then function rec1/2 to go into rec trig page, then arm the rec trig etc. It’s difficult to do all that whilst shredding with one hand, haha. Maybe I just should get used to it.

Tempo unlink would have been great yes. Also what’s very frustrating is if you get too excited and cut the first pickup machine loop shorter than supposed to, then all of a sudden the whole track’s tempo goes up.

You can record without rec trigs.
Press Track + Rec 1, 2 or 3.

There is also a 1 button Quick Rec mode.

QREC to quantize rec.

Oh, that is true. Totally forgot about that, thank you. So then you have the play trig always on? Then if you’d like to stop the loop - you just go in and get rid of the play trig?

Possibly. Or mute track, record silence, change pattern…

No tempo change with rec+flex.

Yes, why not just mute the thing, true. I’ll definitely give it a good shot, especially now that the soonest gig is 2 months away. Thank you for your help - it’s v helpful to connect the dots between what initially seems like unrelated functions of this beast of a device.

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Recorder + Flex ?
It is the initial way of recording, inherited from Machinedrum.

Pickups machine were an add on, clumsy hack imho…

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Totally , that’s what ive resorted to . It’s just more clunky than the concept of what pickup machines are supposed to be . I have similar gripes with using the transition trick to copy one pattern to another without stopping the seq. But that’s another talk for a different (already discussed) thread

You can use a pattern with an existing trig.

Btw I have another approach. Instead of using a Thru track and a Flex playing Thru recording, you can use a Rec + Flex as a Thru, recording constantly. Change pattern to finish recording (no rec trig on last pattern).

It saves 1 track, and the crossfader can be used for something else. You can record several tracks this way. Go back to previous pattern to undo…

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Hello! New user here, and just posted on a different, older thread. Forgive me for double posting, and let me know if I should delete one of them. Just figured there might be people more up to date here.

Has anyone found a solution to this during the last four years?

I recently aquired an Octatrack mkii, planning to use it as a looper at concerts, but this bug happens almost consistently if I change banks and come back to the bank with the pickup machines. Tried to plock the direction of playback to scenes, but the error happens somewhere else since the direction has to be set backwards to get the sample playing back like it was recorded.

Is there some parameters carrying over from other banks? Could i avoid some of this with setting up the bank i enter before my loop-bank differently? Are the developers still looking into this?

Sidenote: I have looked into looping and overdubbing with flex, but as far as i can see it’s hard to get that to function as a traditional guitar looper because of the need for both recording trigs and playback trigs. I typically have a short percussion loop of a bar or two playing on some tracks, and i would like to record quantized samples of several bars that i can then dynamically start and stop at different bars of the pattern. So if i know i want to record a 4 bar sample, I can only place the recording and playback trigger at the first beat of a 4 bar pattern, and would have to wait 4 full bars for a new try if I miss the beat. As opposed to pickup machines where i would just have qrec and qpl at 16 and be able to trigger a recording at whatever bar i like.

I get tempted to see if I can work out what conditions cause it, but doing that is such a time sucker and I think the consensus for years is that it’s a pretty unpredictable bug.

I know it’s not what you want to hear, but perhaps the best strategy would be to have some moves that can get you out of it/make something of it and back on track

Having said that, I just tried your bank change condition and sure enough it went backwards

At least it’s a way to practice incorporating it

Regarding flex for looping - You can use PLEN on recording setup page 2 so that recordings start and stop when trigged but quantised to numbers of beats. This avoids any ‘laying down of rec trigs’, arming, removing - all that pain. Quantised recording so much better than rec trigs

Pickup tip (maybe already here) - Turn on slots mode to see a visual of the progress of your loop. Especially helpfully if you aren’t sure if/how much you’ve multiplied an identical loop before adding another layer

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