Simple "Can the Digitakt do this?" Inquiry [Recording]

Elektron Gear Digitakt
1

Silly one, but I see you can specify a record length in steps. Say you want to record a single bar, let’s say bar 3 out of a 4 bar pattern. Is there any way to engage the recorder so it starts at the beginning of the chosen bar besides having ultra precise timing with the record start button? If not, what is the use case for using a record length in steps? I mean, if you have to edit it down to the bar you want, seems even if you wanted only 16 steps you’d need to engage it early, no?

I can see how to do this with the opening bar of a pattern, but even here it seems to operate differently from the manual.

i.e.

13.1.6 R.STRT
Record Start lets you set if the recorder will start sampling when you press [PLAY] or >when the level of the audio source exceeds the threshold level set by THRES and with >ARM set to ON

When I set R.STRT to the play button icon, pressing play doesn’t engage the recorder. I have to enable the ARM option, contrary to what it implies above (ARM, above, seem to just be for the THRES setting, but it seems necessary for both R.STRT options currently).

Thanks.

p.s. I’m on 1.01A

*Edit: To be clear, I’m setting this on pattern A15, Flutes, just to test the water. I set the source input to MAIN L R, so I’m trying to just grab the main mix output for the internal machines. Thresh shouldn’t matter, but it is set to 0. The MON is N/A, R.LEN 16 STEPS, R.START is the play button icon, and ARM is off.

If I’m reading the above correctly, pressing play should enable recording, yeah? I have to set ARM to on for that to work, but this still will start the recording from the first bar, and not whichever bar I want cleanly.

2

Normal. And Arm have to be on as stated in the manual.

Did you try to loop a page before ?

A workaround is to record 4 bars, play the 3rd bar (Start = 90), and resample.

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3

Normal. And Arm have to be on as stated in the manual.

Not following what you mean by ‘normal’? Did you mean ‘normal behavior’? If so, I got that. I was just saying it was the only way I could get a clean recording starting with precision on the first step (opposed to say, for example, on the Octatrack which can be set to pay attention to clock pulses to synchronize record start).

As to ARM needing to be enabled, doesn’t the text I quoted contradict that? R.START has two setting, PLAY and THRES. The text says:

“Record Start lets you set if the recorder will start sampling when you press [PLAY] or when the level of the audio source exceeds the threshold level set by THRES and with ARM set to ON”

– ARM in the above quote seems to be connected to THRES only, no?

4

The Record Arm stays on when you leave the sample page (and until it records), so I think the idea is you’d want to arm it before sampling, rather than having it record every time you hit play on the machine.

No way to synchronize recording start otherwise currently, though I tend to get good results from tapping in time next to the button before the 1.

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5

Gotcha. I see how I was misreading that sentence now.

Ok, so there just isn’t a way to make the record enable sync to the start of a measure other manual timing. Gotcha. Shame. I’ve always preferred clock synced record enabled sampling so I can cleanly snag specific bars. Oh well, guess I still have the OT for that.

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6

PLAY or THRES, and ARM on.

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7

Maybe the Page Loop feature would work for starting the play head at a specific bar? I haven’t dug into that so I’m not sure what its particulars are beyond the manual.

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I also suggested that, can’t test atm.

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9

Hmm, interesting idea. Will play with that shortly.

Odd, I missed that when sezare56 mentioned the same, but looking back I do see he referenced it too. Sorry, Sezare.

I’m pretty beat from a day of moving my studio, so perhaps I’ll rest my mind for a bit and return to this when fresh.

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10

The comma helps, but it’s still ambiguous as worded. I think I stumbled on figuring out this setting too.

11

I didn’t have problems to test it without the manual. Maybe I’d have if I read this part. :content:

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12

If you only wanted to record one track you could just copy/paste page 3 to page 1 and set it to start with the play button at 16 steps length. Its a shame you cant use the the step shift feature for all tracks at the same time as then you could go into grid mode and shift all the page 3 trigs back to page one.

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I agree, but if you want to record a specific bar, page loop seems more useful, seems to work from what I just tested.

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