Sound Quality Drops When Plugged into the Octatrack

Does none of the usual warriors of this subject, stop to think why it comes up again and again, instead of being annoyed, that it does?

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for real
#occamsrazor

If the OT can be shown to color the sound in a positive way, then OT’s place in the pantheon of great samplers is assured.

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I don’t think I’m an OT fanboy. I think it’s likely that it does change the sound, ever so slightly. It’s just that there are so many ways to reduce the sound quality that aren’t inherent and that the user can correct for if they know how.

Personally, I think the convoluted gain-staging structure of the OT, and the difficulty of monitoring levels, is a real shortcoming of the device and probably the reason for a lot of the complaints. My experience is that having understood the gain staging, the effect of the FX and so forth, even at 16bits the sound quality is… CD-quality, as it should be. It’s just more difficult than it should be to achieve that.

20 years from now there will be an “Octatrack warmth” VST plugin.

edit: or “Digital Cool”

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If you’re using it as a sampler, there’s nothing odd about wanting it to play back your samples at the same quality they went into it. It’s literally the most basic function of ANY sampler.
To think that’s an odd request is a little odd, IMO

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Yeah if only it was that simple. I had a similar experience with ot. Ended up seeing the ot thread mentioned above, so I just dont sample into it directly. Theres tons of videos about this on yt

Apply the tinnitus filter sounds fine after that.

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It has “sampler” in the name descriptor.
Seems to me that the most very basic function for a sampler is to sample your sound at a resolution that is very close to null exact.
I suppose people are going to just keep arguing whether it does or doesn’t at a fundamental level.

My point to the OP is that he should maybe evaluate whether he wants to spend time on forums or watching YouTube videos just to get the sampler to sample normally, or get something that just does it automatically without fussing around.

This^ reply is on point. It’s not as simple as it being either OT fanboys in denial or OT haters being out of their minds. Yes, the OT changes the sound slightly. And yes, it’s incredibly easy to unintentionally do things that change the sound more than slightly. I feel like most people get this. Implying that one camp or the other is in blatant denial just seems like creating friction for the sake of it.

FWIW, I’ve been using the OT for years. I can say without a doubt that if you’re hearing large differences between source and sample that disturb you, you are definitely doing something wrong. With the right gain staging and settings, the differences are very minimal. Whether those very minimal differences sound good or not is open for debate. But regardless of how you feel about the OT’s sonic signature, in the context of a full production, the live environment, or whatever, that signature is vanishingly trivial.

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I wonder what would happen if you performed a null test on the audio. :thinking:

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I’ve always wanted to see the results of that too. (Done right, that is). I’m not aware of anyone who’s done this cleanly, without introducing any unwanted variables. The OT’s gain structure makes it pretty rough to precisely gain match things too, which might be part of why we don’t see people try the phase cancellation test more often.

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Those clips sound exactly the same on my iPhone 4 speakers

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Good. So now OP does not have to care about this issue since it’s irrelevant to 99% of the listeners :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: :+1:

It has “sampler” in the name descriptor.

Yeah, so what ? Sampler is not a synonym for “transparent”. There are some people that buy vintage samplers precisely for their sound. Heck, there are even people enjoying Ableton’s timestretch algos artifacts. I personally much prefer the sound of the model:samples over my Digitakt but hey… ymmv.

I don’t think it’s such an issue that OP should care about but again…

get something that just does it automatically without fussing around.

There I agree with you.

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Tell this to any fan of old MPCs or any other of the 80s samplers.
Heck most genres that use extensive samping are looking for sound degrading qualities.

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Oh no, my MicroGranny degrades sound :cold_sweat:

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Did a quick test just now. Audio going out of my Zoom R16, through the OT, then back into the R16, recorded into Reaper. Played back using a thru machine, no effects, gain turned up fairly high but not much effort put into gain staging.

Compared with an original WAV file, directly rendered from Reaper.

Source: Autechre’s track “see on see”, 16 bit WAV. Lots of high frequencies to potentially lose.

Alternating between original and OT:

(there are a couple of moments where it might sound like the WAV files changing over, but these are present in the original)

Single source (either original or OT):

Single source (either original or OT):

They actually don’t cancel each other out perfectly, so there is some difference (could be from either the R16 or the OT, who knows), but really, can anyone actually tell the difference between the two versions? I certainly can’t.

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Taking a small work break for this.

:popcorn:

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User error, aka ignorance.

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Occams razor says that some new users might be jumping to conclusions.

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