“Plays free” or “disconnected” tracks are still tracks, singular sequencer lines to place trigs on, etc…
When they are disconnected, they do not start with the play button, you start them manually, but they still play just like tracks and follow the bpm and track length/scale and what not, and as tracks they are sequences of trigs.
Take a regular OT pattern that you have where you press play and all 7 or 8 tracks play. Turn one to plays free and it will not start with the play button, but when you trig it manually it will be the same sequence of trigs that it was before. If a track is blank with no trigs and you change it to plays free, it still will be an empty track and therefore make no sound when you play it, just like a regular track with no trigs…
Most certainly the logic is that playing an empty track whether plays free or not will make no sound…
You may be looking for something other than plays free, I don’t know, it seems like maybe you want to just trig the “machine” instead of the track which would be trigs 9-16. That will just play the sample with all current parameter page settings and not the “track”, you can quantize the launch of the sample in the attributes section of the audio editor.
Just thought I’d say this all for clairifaction… it seems like you just want to trig the “machine” and not the “track”, otherwise you would have had trigs on it from the get go… 