Total Recall - Digitakt

Elektron Software Overbridge
#1

I know, I know, “RTFM”…

but I am still slightly confused about this feature (I am a bear of little brain) and previous threads seem to apply to Overbridge v1…

If I save a project with Total recall, does it save only what is in the active project?
I assume this is the case - that it backs up the project and current RAM samples?

I would like to clean out the entire Digitakt and start from scratch to build a new live set… but I would like to back up the projects I currently have on the box so if I needed to I could open them again and copy patterns into new projects.
I can’t quite work out if the way to do this is to open each project, save with Total Recall and then delete on the box?
Or do I only need to save one Total recall file for the entire project library?
I am guessing the former…

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#2

AFAIK it only saves the current loaded project and pointers/references to the samples - not the samples themselves. So you will need to use the Transfer app for that - unfortunately there’s no way (at present) to gather the specific samples for a particular project - to be sure use transfer to save every sample. Not elegant for 2019 but there’s no other way to do this.

Hopefully the engineers/product managers at Elektron will eventually deal with this trivial file management problem. It’s been over 2 years since the DT was announced.

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#3

General Principle: Suggest you make a dummy project with a couple of patterns and sample assignments. Save it / delete it and then try to recover your work - if it works then great you have a workflow for this. If it doesn’t then you’ve not lost anything of value.

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#4

ah yes, thanks -that’s a good plan to test.
I will give that a go…

I was wondering how it would work with the samples - I couldn’t work out what would happen if you reloaded a Total Recall project where the samples weren’t on the +drive and then tried to save it to the 'takt.

I’ll give this a go. Otherwise I may just have to sacrifice all the projects to start again from scratch - I guess I can at least bounce them all into ableton as stems now, so they could be reconstructed in an emergency.

#5

2 years… jeez that’s somewhat embarrassing :grimacing:

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#6

Total recall does unfortunately not save the samples. I tried to do a total recall, format and factory reset. Couldn’t retrieve anything. I figured this was how it worked, but was a bit confused with the manual. I dumped everything to audio manually though, so I got the parts I wanted to keep. The fresh start felt great :slight_smile:

#7

thanks!

I will have to do some recordings instead…

#8

Yeah, it kinda sucks, the backup is not well implemented on the DT. But at least you’re forced into committing which is a plus most of the time :slight_smile: That said, you can backup everything, it just requires a bit more planning and understanding of the backup functionality on your part.

#9

…but the backups can’t be sent to the DT with the current OB-enabled beta OS 1.11…

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#10

I was kinda hoping you could just save everything in RAM at least… maybe more complicated than it seems though.

Is the other backup method (in theory when it’s working) just to save projects over Sysex and the entire +drive with the Transfer app?

I guess I can do that as well as audio safety copies… unclear if the issue with Sysex backups is in saving or opening though!

tbh, this is probably more reason to clean up and start again from the beginning as knowing this is the situation would probably mean I made different decisions!

#11

well that would be another option except as indicated above the C6 Sysex route does not appear to generate functional backups using the latest DT software (well this is true on the Mac, can’t speak for the PC). No idea if it’s the saving or the reloading of the Sysex that’s the issue - as mere users we’ve no way of telling.

As mentioned this situation has been operative for 2 years and counting…

#12

Functional back up is for the dreamers.

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#13

You would think they could fix the system restore bug in the beta firmware, right? It’s been many months now.

I kind of dispair sometimes as, at least from the outside, their approach seems so piecemeal, to put it politely.

I got replied to angrily when I commented that bizarrely Elektron doesn’t even put out release notes with the betas, so we have no way whatever to know what has changed. To the fanboys this is, of course, somehow logical… :expressionless:

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#14

It seems from other peoples replies that even that functoniality is broken. But in essence, you can save the project data with sysex, and then save the samples. In theory this should work, because the samples are hashtagged. Or something. I have sucessfully done this, so in my experience it sort of works. But in all honesty, I think the backup options thoroughly suck, and are a major drawback of the device. Should just be some sort of save and collect all, if you’re familiar with ableton.

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#15

Yep. Lame. And no Sample organisation feature either.