Strange behaviour from Thru tracks

Elektron Gear Octatrack
1

Hey all!
I’ve got my Vermona Perfourmer running into the A B inputs through a THRU track on my OT.

The THRU track is set to A B for stereo, and I have a trig on step one with full hold and release.

I have various voices panned left and right on the Perfourmer, yet I can only hear this in stereo when I have DIR turned up on the mixer page.

It’s my understanding that I should have DIR turned down if I want to affect the THRU track with fx, I’m sure it wasn’t like this when I used it last week, wondering if I changed a setting somewhere along the way.

Any ideas?

2

Maybe this is a silly question, but on the AMP page of the Thru track, do you have BAL in the center? BAL (balance) is the panning parameter.

3

Is it set to A B, or A+B? If it’s set to A+B, then it is the sum of the two inputs (ie. both panned to centre), rather than using them as left/right of a stereo signal.

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4

Yeah, A+B would be an issue too.

And check if you have and BAL parameters p-locked or set in scenes. Sometimes scenes have little surprises that you don’t remember assigning :slight_smile:

5

Yes, balance is centered, not silly at all, its certainly the kind of basic error that I thought could happen, I feel I’ve tried everything.

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6

Definitely A B.
Aware A+B wont give me true stereo from one source.

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7

Any FX on that track or a neighbour track if you’re using one?

8

First things I do when having problems with thru tracks-
Clear all effects and filters. Hit the button underneath the filter/effects on your thru track and hit play button.
Do you have neighbor tracks? Do the same.
Are the lights on on both a&b?
Make sure your envelope is fully open, if you want to have the track as an open thru.
Remember that his little exercise will teach you. It may take time, but that’s how we learn he OT. Still happens to me 7 years in.

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9

Update.
I was using T5 as the THRU track and there seemed to be a strange glitch when I turned the encoder to adjust the input for that track, I could almost hear the stereo come in for a second, but then it stops again, I then found that somehow the A+B kept getting plocked automatically to my trig on the first step on T5, I’d remove the p-lock and when I restart the sequence, the plock gets added again. Very weird.

I tried adding my THRU track to track 2 with the A B inputs, and everything worked as expected.

I was using the T1 Torso to sequence the Perfourmer initially and it runs into the OT and out via MIDI thru to the Perfourmer, so I disconnected the Torso and ran MIDI straight into the Perfourmer and now T5 is functioning as it should be with the THRU staying set to A B

My only assumption is the Torso was sending some weird MIDI into the OT and forcing it to plock the track somehow to a certain input with a weird CC message.

Possible?

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10

I’ve never triggered a sample buffer with external midi, but I know its possible. I can’t remember the cc, but yeah. It could do that for sure.

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11

Trying to think of good use cases for Plocking an input now. Could be an interesting experiment. :joy:

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12

Have you tried other tracks? Also, I’m pretty sure you can filter cc’s from entering the OT’s midi stream.

13

Yes, other tracks worked fine, well track 2 at least. See above. I assume track 5 gets midi from midi channel 5. which very well was coming from the Torso.

I think I’ll just reverse the MIDI flow, so the OT is the master and it clocks the Torso rather than the other way around.

But I’d be interested to know how to block the CCs and test if this was truly the reason,
I assume so, as taking the Torso out of the equation fixed the problem.

14

func-mixer->midi->sync->prog ch->uncheck both boxes

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15

Yup, they’re all off by default. even stranger!

16

I would always use the OT as the master for now. But try other tracks. Check what the CC# is that does that and try to switch it off on the Torso. The Torso thing is AI, so maybe it is sending messages that it is aware…

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17

Track balance (pan) can be changed over MIDI. I believe it’s CC 08. Could that be it, or were you actually seeing it change the input to A+B?