this is one of the slightly opaque areas in the OT manual.
with plays free and the quantize settings you have to remember the distinction between tracks that are constituted of individual trigs trigging one shot samples to construct a pattern and tracks that have a trigger which trigs a single sample on its first beat that lasts say 4 bars.
if you have a 4 bar sample set to plays free the one, one 2, hold settings will have no effect because the sample will behave according to its envelope when the track (not the sequencer) is “stopped” as rhizome points out.
the quantize settings will ONLY affect the timing of the start trigger if the sequencer is already running. if the sequencer is not running, no matter how you have the quantize set, the track will start straight away.
the only way to stop these long samples is to press track and stop. this will stop the track’s audio directly but NOT the sequencer.
where the trig mode settings (and the quantize settings that apply to them )take effect is with tracks that consist of programmed trigs trigging one shot samples.
please see my post in this thread for an understanding of how the trig modes work in that case.
http://www.elektronauts.com/t/trig-quant-vs-quantized-trig/1244/20255