For 4/4 measure:
- Beats-per-minute:
60BPM - Beats-per-second:
1Hz - Length of 1 beat:
1second - Length of 1 bar:
4second
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Sorry… I’m not next to my OT, but I looked it up in the manual, and it’s there.
Page 38
"When selecting the reserved sample time, the equivalent in sequencer steps based
on the current Octatrack BPM, as well as the amount of RAM the reserved time will occupy, is shown
in the upper left corner of the LCD screen. "
Maybe you just never noticed it. I remember it being a little fiddly to get set at 128, but it works. At 1/4 speed you could do 256 I imagine.
I noticed steps, I think it depends on tempo, not scale. If Reserve Length increments are in seconds, theoretically it doesn’t work for all tempos, if you want a perfect loop.
Default Reserve Length is
16 s = 128 steps at 120 bpm
RLEN sets the duration of the recording once the track recorder starts to sample. This setting is dependent of the BPM of the sequencer but disregards any scale settings of the track.
Hmm…I’ve been writing at 128 bpm. Hmmm… That’s strange. Works perfectly. Maybe I am not noticing the recording is a little longer. I’ll have a look and get back to you on it.
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If you are thinking about the OT, and have done research on the OT, and are still thinking about the OT…then the answer is FUNC YES
Edit: changed my life, never a dull moment
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And yes, scale has nothing to do with the reserve length. It’s about BPM. I just set scale at 1/2 so that the recorder would record 128 steps.
“sequencer steps based
on the current Octatrack BPM, as well as the amount of RAM the reserved time”
Maybe Elektron has a little guy in there with a calculator, sorting getting it sorted.
Recorders don’t respect the scale settings unfortunately.
RLEN sets the duration of the recording once the track recorder starts to sample. This setting is dependent of the BPM of the sequencer but disregards any scale settings of the track.
I wish you found a workaround, but I couldn’t set Reserve Length with step increments.
QREC set to 128 works.
I’m about to ask for this for my birthday. Wish me luck!
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Yeeee good luck!
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I got both an OT mk2 and a DT. I’m doing 4 individual mono outs from OT, which obviously means that I can’t do stereo stuff in the machine, but it’s okay, I use stereo fx after its output. I’d like to multitrack and don’t find 4 outs enough, so I got the DT for some of the drum stuff, where I’ll do 2 ndividual outs and maybe other tracks through overbridge. I’m thinking also to get a Bass Drum module from Erica Synths to divide it even further. I also have a Mono Lancet and Dfam that can be used for perc and bass stuff. But let’s see, things don’t always end up as planned 
Yes setting the reserve length only has 1 second resolution unfortunately which does not line up to steps that are not multiples of 60bpm (or other exactly divisible number)
It would be great if the personalise menu had option to use seconds display or number of steps display.
What I do if not working in a divisible steps/seconds tempo is set the reserve length to the closest second above the number of steps I want, set dynamic recorders to off, use a 1 shot record trig, trig type as ONE, arm and start recording, then once the recording is complete stop and go to audio editor to trim exactly to size.
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This discussion should really be (if it isn’t already) be its own topic, so it’s easier to search for it. It’s really important. I don’t know how I’ve been doing this for 3 months without a problem. I looked at the OT and yes it says 16 seconds 127 steps, but at 128bpm it seems to work. I guess I should add a second to the reserve length, so I have no problems. Thanks for chiming in everybody! Love this forum.
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Did you set Reserve Length to 15 sec?
It corresponds to 127,999999998 bpm!
I didn’t check on OT, problably 128 steps?
128 steps corresponds to 32 quarter notes.
With Reserve Length = 15 sec :
15 / 32 = 0,46875 s
1 / 0,46875 x 60 = 127,999999998 bpm
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I think I broke math😝
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I finally got to a good place with pickup machines for looping my Model:Samples. A variation of the cross fader trick, using a thru machine and a pickup machine.
It was a knock down, drag out fight with the OT but I seem to have prevailed, once I found the culprit.
Just spent the last hour having actual fun with the pickup machines for the first time. Mixing drums of one pattern with hooks from another. Lots of fun, actually.
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Not sure if this thread still targets a specific question, but it’s a good place mention that I recently made some tracks solely on the OT and fell totally back in love 
I usually start tracks with a specifiy goal or style in mind, a usually end up exactly there.
The last stuff on the OT started the same way but led to a completely different result. Which is a great thing. And I remembered that this was the reason why I bought it 6 years ago.
So… To Octatrack is my answer
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I’ve just scratched the surface with the Octa as I use it as a performance mixer for my synths but damn, it’s fun.
I couldn’t live without it now, making music like Dj-ing on steroids is just buckets of fun and I don’t think I’ll ever go back to mousing around or recording single tracks at a time. It’s setup as 4 mono in/out mixer/effect unit and it’s just so good.
And then there are all the other options with this monster called Octatrack, I’d say always go Octa.
Disclaimer: I’ve never touched nor even seen a Digitakt irl… 
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Last week, I returned mine within my refund-period.
My plan was to replace my Digitakt with it because I wanted timestretching and slicing.
Sadly (in my opinion) the OT doesnt really deliver on that front. The timestretch algo doesnt sound very good outside of little tempo changes. I could have lived with that but the slicing was not practical for me: The auto slicing of 8/16/32 etc. slices on zero crossings didnt work for me at all and resulted in useless (seemingly random) slices that were not very usable at all. Coming from Push2 and Ableton Simpler that has a pretty nifty senstivity-controlled transient detection for its slice mode, this was a big let down.
I really liked the crossfader and scenes though (seriously why doesnt every Elektron machine have it as a signature feature?!) and the additional LFOs. Using it as a performance mixer was great, but with the effects on that thing that are at best mediocre!? Workflow is kind of convoluted comign from the DT/DN, but maybe that would have gotten better by muscle memory. All in all, it didnt justify the price for me, so I had to let it go. 
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