Review: Octatrack at year 8 - Is it still worth it?

sabana · February 21, 2019, 3:46pm

Its pretty exciting when you tell someone youve made a track out of nothing but solar wind.

darenager · February 21, 2019, 4:01pm

You’re welcome

Yes indeed, as an over thinker myself this can be a constant dilemma, but if you set aside some time for just working with the OT it will probably become clear to you if it is going to work out for you or not. Whenever I find myself in this situation - which can be often on devices like this, I tend to not focus on trying to work in my usual ways and just mess about, trying out different functions etc. Often this will result in something cool happening, which may result in ending up in getting something finished and making my mind up to keep it.

Best of luck whichever you decide.

cold_fashioned · February 21, 2019, 6:31pm

Thanks for this x100! I’m a new OT user, and my next goal is to get familiar with recording / sampling. I’ve been building drum patterns in my digitone (it makes an amazingly fun drum machine) and now I’m ready to sample them into OT for further processing. With this method, I think it’ll be pretty straightforward to get all the patterns sampled in a no time at all.

I assume when you mention making sure your drum machine (DN in my case) is synced to OT, you mean via MIDI cable and having the tempo matched? I know that’s a noob-y question, but I figured I’d ask, if only to get it in writing for any others who might want to clear that up.

darenager · February 21, 2019, 7:18pm

Yes synced by midi

cool42141421 · February 21, 2019, 7:31pm

You are freakin’ out, man…

nutritional_zero · February 22, 2019, 1:49pm

Here’s another chap who clearly thinks it’s still worth it at year 8.

nfim · February 22, 2019, 2:14pm

To be fair, sampling in Ableton can be a hassle as well when you write it out. Connect soundcard, make sure it’s playing from DAW rather than direct thru, set the right inputs in Live, arm track, set monitoring settings, hit rec, hope loop mode is off and levels are right. Then you still need to trim, drag into sampler/simpler and get your settings right there. Either way it seems really complex until you’ve done it 1000 times and it’s second nature.

pinup57 · February 22, 2019, 3:13pm

When I got mine a bit over a month ago I actually found that sampling is absolutely straightforward on the OT. I got it to replace my current looper that had to many sync glitches for me to continue to waste my time with it. I was looping happily 1 hour after unboxing. Flex sampling was even easier. I don’t know what the fuss is about, maybe I’m just an old guy raised on two-line/24 character displays and some knobs. I’d love to have a forum filter option that automatically filters out posts containing the sentence “just like Ableton”…

sezare56 · February 22, 2019, 3:24pm

Ableton Live at year 18 - Is it still worth it?

sabana · February 22, 2019, 4:09pm

What would Mozart choose if he was alive today?.(if he was into Electronic music that is).

darenager · February 22, 2019, 4:17pm

craig · February 22, 2019, 4:30pm

Sounds to me like your main goal is speed, so have you considered ditching the OT and getting a Digitakt? Now that Overbridge is here (at least in an advanced Beta), I find the two (DT and Ableton Live) are the perfect combo for happy accidents and refinement. I create things in DT, then polish/mix them in Live. When playing live I re-export the sounds onto the DT and sequence from there to create remixable elements, etc.

pinup57 · February 22, 2019, 4:33pm

Ableton Non-Live

Open_Mike · February 22, 2019, 4:36pm

Ask Beethoven…

sezare56 · February 22, 2019, 4:53pm

Reggae Dub
smoking-and-drugs
With OT
giphy%20(2)

sezare56 · February 22, 2019, 4:56pm

He actually used OCTA :

Open_Mike · February 22, 2019, 4:59pm

My OT doesn’t let me play dub…
I always get “Dub Aborted”…

tnussb · February 22, 2019, 5:12pm

Everthing before that age is child’s play.

jbone1313 · February 22, 2019, 6:11pm

@nfim

Agree. Honest question: What do you mean by “hope loop mode is off?”

If you don’t want your audio warped, then I agree that loop mode should be off.

But, having loop mode on won’t affect the audio capture, right?

@craig

Yeah, it’s partly speed. But, I also value happy accidents. I know it’s a trade-off conundrum many of us face.

The DT is not compelling for me. There are too many things I like about OT.

jbone1313 · February 22, 2019, 6:23pm

I spent some good time yesterday working with the OT, and I am going to keep at it for now.

Someone prompted me to try single-button quantized sampling with the OT, and that is so fast! I had long been using one-shot record trigs.

With a lot of hardware pieces I have owned over the years, I have found a lot of ways to accomplish the exact same thing in Ableton (in a nice, workflow friendly way), always without resorting to Max 4 Live.

If one does not care about the live looping features of the OT, then one could pretty easily setup Ableton’s Simpler device with three LFOs and some effects to get most of what OT’s sampling capabilities offer.

I have thought about doing that, but there are still other things I like about keeping the OT in the mix, e.g.:

It’s a dedicated device, and it keeps the Live set less cluttered.
I love using the OT’s beat repeat Trig Mode on all my tracks. Having all that so accessible without a bunch of track routings and dummy clips in Ableton is a lot of fun.
The general knobbyness of the OT and its MIDI stuff is a hoot.
Scenes of course.
Sample slot Trig Mode is a blast.

One thing I miss is the transient based slicing in Simpler. Does OT do that? Or, is it strictly grid-based?