I currently use a DT as my main production machine along with a digitone and Nord lead A1 rack. A couple of things are limiting me - I hate having to use a mixer and I miss being able to chop up loops easily. I’ve had an octatrack before but the complexity made me turn to the digitakt. However, the new mk2s look to have improved the workflow somewhat and I’m considering adding the octatrack so that I can lose the mixer and maybe also the digitakt. I do use a DAW but I tend to treat the 2 approaches to making music as separate and generally don’t mix OTB with ITB. Do I really need to add the octatrack or is it just GAS… I really would love to be able to just use a single machine for sketching out tunes.
I had ot mk1
Didnt like it
Bought dt
Loved it, But wanted more
Expected to find it in ot mk2
But didnt.
Workflow of dt is amazing, and cant be beaten by dt
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you can sketch out tunes perfectly well on the digitone and/or the digitakt; the digitakt is still that bit more immediate than the OT for getting a new riff/phrase up and moving. CTRL-ALL is helpful as is the compressor for creativity.
digitakt sample parameters are perfectly adequate for setting start points and length as an alternative to chopping
digitakt reverb is not present in the OT
a little prep in your daw beforehand will help keep you on track in your hardware productions.
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Go get another MKI (I went there too). The workflow improvements aren’t significant and certainly not worth the $$$.
Focus on exactly what you want from the OT and master only that for the time being - one step at a time (pun intended).
I’d vote for time stretch as OT’s biggest advantage btw.
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Sounds like you are after a main brain, and more depth of sample manipulation.
My understanding of DT is that it is a drum machine, with bells and whistles.
The OT is a sampler and sequencer. With a ridiculous amount of bells and whistles. I have owned one for 3 years now and it has become the center of my set up. Along side it I use a drum machine, and what ever synths I am into at the time.
OT takes care of all samples, midi sequencing, some fx processing, resampling, occasional mixer duties etc.
Use the right tools for the job. The idea of one box do it all groove machines is fine, but as soon as you start to include other gear, that one box do it all magic is defeated.
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Octatrack is NOT Digitakt just bigger. It’s a different animal altogether. Enjoying Digitakt will not help to be friends with Octatrack. You have to like the new instrument and you have to learn new skills.
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I’d say the DT is far more than that
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I think this is the key. The last time I was trying to master everything at once
What do you want out of the OT? I ask that as each of us is different. For me, I wanted something to basically muck about with and occasionally make something cool that I’m actually impressed with. I’ll never master it enough to sound as good as anything I can do in a DAW (in terms of EQ, sound quality, etc) but I often end up in places that would never happen with anything else at my disposal.
So, if happy to pick something up to learn and grow with then I’d thoroughly recommend getting one. Just be wary of trying to force things with the OT. It’ll frustrate and annoy.
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It could be as easy as this:
- If you need a digital drum machine and what the DT is giving you is enough, stay with it and ask yourself, what you might really miss in your setup.
- If you are missing a great performance sampler and the accent is on “performance”, then the OT or a MPC-like machinemight exactly be, what you want.
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I mostly miss being able to quickly chop, rearrange and timestretch loops. Also, the crossfader and scenes workflow on the octatrack is something that isn’t easily recreated.
IMO … in a non-live situation chopping, time-stretching and working out new arrangements might be more efficiently done with Ableton and Push.
But if it comes to live recording or live re-sampling, chopping synchronised recorded recording-buffers and rearranging the snippes on the fly, then I would say, this is the domain of the OT.
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this
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Greetings, I need your opinion
here are my desires, topics that alert me and a question:
Topic first:
For example, an OT and a DT synchronized: one master and the other slave, so a clock, the ability to play with different signatures here are my desires for the game.
For the creation my question concerns the real signature by track and the possibility on the manipulation which would follow
(knowing that resampling is a blessing and can simplify many of my failures.)
Let me explain:
A (!) Tempo signature is not possible _ !! _ on each DT track
because the machine is based on the smallest number of steps, and very quickly limits the signature area of the 8 tracks / As much as if we want to apply 1/4 to a track and 1 to the other track the measure the sequencer can not be common during the facts.
Does the East(OT) face this problem?
This is the problem of DT and unfortunately I think I have gone around the question
I juggle with sampling retrig and classic, the signature mode applied to the general plus the micro timing (hacking) are not enough for me.
The OT could bring me a plus If we speak well of real signature by track with a “no limit” number of measurement on a track then a smaller number on another … I hope to be clear:
If you have a little of your time and your knowledge to devote to me I will be very happy to read you.
Sincerely
Sorry mate, not sure what the ask is! Perhaps someone else can wade in and help you out a little. Despite having owned an OT on and off for 5 years or so I still only consider myself a novice with the thing!
The Octatrack’s effects are getting very long in the tooth. Especially the reverbs. Coming from a Digitakt, I couldn’t get behind them at all. :-/
Every track in an Octatrack pattern can have a different length (up to 64 steps) and a different tempo multiplier.
It can chain patterns if 64 steps is not enough.
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Thank you for the answer Peter, I following the manual of the octatrack, and discover the possibilities of all new functions
This makes it very well with a trig synth … Curious I did not find an example with a sample of battery or arrangement…
Here check this tuto if you want to know something new with the lowfrequencyoscillators
I am curious by the application tempo multiply because I have no example, please share
Longer patterns.
Finer time resolution.
Polymetric rhythms.
Triplet rhythms.
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