I was anti ableton, until I had an eureka moment lol after that I never looked back
2 Likes
I have bitwig which meets all those needs and I dont often use that either, but far happier with the functionality and UI. Studio One is also great (but thats for another topic I guess). Octatrack above all! 
1 Like
Iāve had both Ableton and Octatrack for quite some time now, although until the Live 11 update I just used Ableton as a multi-track recorder.
Neither of them can replace the other for what i like to do. Thatās why I intend to keep using both.
4 Likes
I use the OT with Ableton as a mixer, the only problem is handling latencies of the OB devices.
OT - Band
Ableton - Studio
Ableton + OT = Band in a studio.
Ableton + Push = Band shackled to a studio
5 Likes
anyone āexperimentedā with any of the iOS āmasteringā apps? I have this iTrack dock, gonna do some reading and see how close to the HEAT i can get one of these appsā¦
Sorry to bring this upā¦about the OT soundā¦I looked for threads, there are someā¦nothing recent / canonical I could findā¦
Does it have āa soundā though? I have only lately acquired one and after playing with it for an hour, and then going back to my AR/A4 I thought that my A4/AR really lacked mids. I had to go and change a load of filter settings, and really āde-mudā my AR/A4. Is it cos the OT samples I was using were well mixed/well balanced and had a nice mid-range punch? Or the machine, I dunno. But yeah, it seemed airy and open in the mid-range compared to the analog duo.
1 Like
Here is my theory. OT is flat by design because of what it is made to do. You want to be able to sample and loop other synths and itself and switch over to the loop without noticing. If it was adding color it might build up over time with all the crazy ways you can resample through outs/ins etc.
So no, it doesnāt have āa soundā any more than any gear that aspires to be transparent does like an audio interface or basic mixer (everything does technically because nothing is perfect).
If you add effects all bets are off. Note that the filter is enabled on all tracks by default and might be rolling off the high end a tiny tiny amount (yet to be proven as far as I know). Disable it for peace of mind.
5 Likes
I hear a little bit of difference in soundstage, nothing thatās going to be noticeable without a side by side comparison, about the same as the difference between rendering dithered vs. undithered 16 bit audio in a DAW.
Thatās running at 24 bit through a thru machine without filters on it. Once you introduce timestretch and some of the effects that are audible even at their neutral settings (filter, lo-fi, EQ) it does have a sound, but not a bad one. As far as other samplers I own, itās WAY more transparent than the MPC2000xl but not quite as transparent as the S-4000.
Iād say donāt worry about it, what sound it has isnāt enough to make or break a track by a long shot.
As much as I love to hate the OT, its sound has always been fairly transparent for me. No problem hereā¦
1 Like
The OT sound quality lives on!
7 Likes
I have all my gear routed though a external mixer. The main outputs of the mixer feed a OT recorder. That recorder is assigned to a track that is in cue mode, with a trig on step 1. The cue outputs go back to the mixer, but is muted. So I go ahead jamming, and at one point I hit ārecā on the OT, which will then record 4 bars (or more: 8 bars with 1:2 condition on the playback trig for instance) of the main mix. When finished recording, it plays back automatically, but because the recording goes to the cue outputs, into a muted stereo channel of the mixer, we canāt hear it (yet): we still here the main mix running (all sequences or whatever else) . Now here comes the magic: When I solo that stereo channel (provided the solo mode on the desk is set to āin placeā) the main live mix is replaced by the sampled mix from the OT. This transition is seamless. I can switch back and forth between the live mix and the sampled mix without noticing whatever difference. It a brilliant trick I use a lot, and is made possible only because the OTās sound quality is transparent. There have been many threads on the subject, most of them I donāt understand. If properly gainstaged (and this is a piece of cake, no menu-diving or fiddling with gain internally, itās OK as shipped) OT is āwhat goes in, goes outā. If some fellow users notice a difference between original and sampled sources, there must be, IMO, an issue up front. FWIWā¦
16 Likes
Can you elaborate on what difference you hear exactly? Using the term soundstage in this context seems odd to me since itās used mostly in context with (high end) audio reproduction (speakers) and the way they throw the sound in front of you in a three dimensional manner. Are you saying that the separation of instruments and location of them in the sound is altered by octatrack somehow?
2 Likes
I think that should be the last word. Thanks! (For my own part I put it down to looking for it, and imagining it after reading too many OT scary stories.)
2 Likes
I thought absolutely everything had been told on the subject.
Do you think the OT SQ thread should be reopened? 
5 Likes
Probably has all been said, but for such an enduring machine you have to expect/accept some āeternal Septemberā effect on the forum.
1 Like
Nothing to see here. Move on.
1 Like
Not to mention sample accurate duration of synced recordings, and almost perfect (less than 250 microseconds jitter) triggering of those recordings.
I am yet to find another machine that can do this.
I think probably the simplest way that anyone can test for themselves is to have a machine with good sync connected to a mixer that has an alt bus, when the alt button is pressed machine is routed into OT inputs. This way they can easily and quickly A/B between direct to mixer, thru OT, and OT recording.
Then if you can hear any difference which bothers you, then fine, good luck on your quest for perfection, but I suspect 99.99% of people would not notice any significant difference.
8 Likes
This would be a interesting aspect between all kind of samplers.
- neutral?
- time stretch and pitch shifting?
- filtering?
- onboard fx?
- summing?
So far too busy to start this, for making a new thread.
Anyone else maybe?
1 Like