Sorry, to get mono things into the octa without weird panning stuff that goes wrong.
I do not know… but
I am having great fun by sampling the thru machines…
Leftside (track1 to 4) used by thru machines. track 5 to 8 used as playback of the sampled versions.
use fader to switch from left to right side of octatrack to controll what is playing back.
and use that neat track + record button to grab loops while tinkering in on leftside
reset/program something new/change pattern external stuff while tinkering on the rightside…
But yeah, might not be the most fun aproach for everybody.
if you search the forum, people use pickup machines + flex machines and switch parts to get from recording to playback…
maybe a combination of all these techniques would workout to something nice.
so you do get sample mangling and prerecorded samples + live input stuff together.