Strange playback track behavior out of nowhere

Elektron Gear Octatrack
#1

Hello friends,

I’ve encountered a weird phenomena while trying to sample my digitakt into my octatrack. I’ve got the octatrack as the midi master and the digitakt being synced. Last night I was recording some 64 step drum loops with no problems.

Today I’ve been trying to do some touch up to the drums but noticed the playback head stops 8 steps short of the 64 step phrase.

I’ve tried clearing both the playback and recording tracks and reinserting the record and playback trigs respectively, I’ve tried muting all midi channels on both the digitakt and octatrack and of course reloading the project and restarting both machines. Moving to any other track and inserting trigs on the first step results in a normal playback/recording head behavior.

Thanks in advance! :smile:

#2

Amp hold set correctly to (at least) 64 steps?

#3

You didn’t tell what you were doing exactly, but if you’re reading the recording buffer while recording, check your pitch settings and LFO’s.

#4

Amp hold was at infinite, setting it to 64 didn’t solve the problem.

#5

Pitch for the track was set to ‘0.0’
all LFOs on track 5 were set to 0 amplitude, all midi LFOs were set to 0.0 too

#6

Even more strange behavior I’ve never seen:

If I do just a recording trig it will record all 64 steps without cutting short. If I do just a playback trig it will playback all 64 steps without cutting short. However if both are on, only the recording track will stop short (without me having changed any other parameters or added any other trigs).

This is only happening on track 5, no other tracks have this problem. It will happen on track 5 regardless of what pattern is selected in bank 1, if I move to any pattern in bank 2 the problem disappears.

I’ve never had this happen in over 3 years of octatrack ownership :sweat_smile:

#7

Playback LEN shorter?

Any scene lock? Same behavior with another part? Timestrech off?

#8

Changing parts seems to fix the issue, going back to part 1 and the problem remains.

I’m also noticing that sometimes the playback head will trail the recording head by a small margin (maybe 10-100ms)

#9

When the playback head gets infront of the recording head playback stops (because there’s nothing it can playback anymore. That’s what the other posts are hinting you at.

Normally this happens when pitch > 0 or the rate is increased.

Have you tried to disable Scene A and B (just in case there is any parameter scene-locked)?

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#10

Which parameters are locked in that scenes?
Lfo depth? (lfos are set to modulate pitch by default)
Rate or pitch parameter locked?

I should have set amp hold set to at least 64.
If hold is set long enough, that‘s sufficient.
Just so that nobody gets confused^^

#11

Have you tried a reboot? When I get weird recorder behavior, a restart usually does the trick.

#12

Guys I’m having even more playback trig issues over here and it’s totally destroying my workflow…

I’m not doing any unorthodox triggering… just trigs on the 1st of 64 steps for both record and playback. It sounds fine during the recording phase but as soon as I save the sample and try to assign it to a track it cuts short and starts playing back early.

I should also mention previewing the sample from within the sample browser yields no playback issues. But as soon as I assign the sample to a track and play it back with a trig I get these playback issues…

I’ve been using the same methods for tracking and recording phrases for over 3 years and have never had this issue. I am suspecting it’s a bug or something to do with the latest firmware.

#13

Have you checked the sample after it gets loaded to a track with the Audio Editor? Is it complete? How are the sample properties (checkable within AED)? Anything unusual? How does it look like in the AED when you play it back? Is the playback indicator moving along until its end?

Try everything on a new project, of course.

There are so many settings on the OT where things can go wrong. IMHO “suspecting” already a bug for a simple procedure which I guess almost every OT owner is using is “quite a little far fetched” (since no other reports popped up here).

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#14

Do you have anything (potentially) sending to the OT?

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#15

The sample looks fine in the editor. The playback head is jumping back to the start too early in the editor. There is only a single playback trig on the track. All the sample properties are completely untouched. Disabling timestretch doesn’t fix the problem. This is now the third project in a row I’ve tried starting thats had this issue come up.

I’m sure you’re right that it’s just a product of my own lack of understanding of the device but still this is very weird considering I’ve used the same method to track and record samples and never had this problem before upgrading to the current firmware.

There is no midi input to the octatrack, I do have the octatrack sending midi out but unplugging the midi out cable yields no fix to the problem.

#16

Issue still on T5 only?

#17

On the latest project it’s on T2 that I’m having this issue. I had no problems recording to T1 or T5. In fact I recorded a phrase to T1, saved and assigned it with no issues then moved to T2 to record a variation of it and the problem started. This time on step 9 of page 3 rather than step 9 of page 4 like before.

I’ve tried every suggestion in this thread and nothing seems to fix the problem :frowning:

#18

Just try to clear the LFO pages. It might look like they are at zero, but maybe they are just offset a bit… that’s what I figured out when I had the same type of issues.

#19

Any chance you run out of sample memory? What’s the bpm for the 64 steps?

Maybe you need to turn on dynamic sampling?

Just a thought (because it happened to me)

#20

Prepare and upload video of the issue you meet. Things will clarify. New or better suggestions may appear in a second.

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