Total Recall

Beta Public Beta
#1

Unless I’m missing something, there’s nothing in the manuals about this function.

Managed to lose a couple of hours’ work there a minute ago by hitting “sync” which returned my Rytm to a previous state that had been saved in the plugin - luckily it wasn’t anything too major, lesson learned to still save patterns and kits regularly. Not sure if I could’ve reverted the pattern and gotten back my work, but in any case I didn’t think to do it at the time.

As far as I can tell, it was the saved sync state that was sent to the machine, not the plugin’s current state, I could be wrong on that.

As far as I can see, to sync the Elektron’s state from the machine to the plugin, I need to click “Re-Activate” in the plugin and then select “Use Device State” on the machine.

For me, it’d probably be better to use the sync button for this, and offer the option in the plugin of syncing to or from the machine.

Saving a live project also appears to automatically sync the machines’ state, if the “sync on save” option is selected.

So, I’m pretty confused about a few things here - mainly what exactly is saved/transmitted when the device is synced to the plug and vice versa? All patterns and kits in the project? Just the pattern you’re working on? Sounds in the Sound Pool? Does that include the Rytm’s sample pool? Can you revert to the machine’s previous state if you’ve sent a pattern update via total recall by accident?

Any insight or clarity would be much appreciated, would rather not have to learn this stuff by trial and error…

#2

I’m also very confused. ¿What is storing? ¿How? ¿All projects? ¿Current project? ¿Syncs DAW to Machine? or ¿Machine to DAW?..

#3

There is some information in the Overbridge-Beta-Manual on page 23-24. I had no time to try by myself.

#4

Cheers, hadn’t spotted that there was a new manual for 1.1, had been looking at the old overbridge manual. Here’s what it says:

“When activated, Recall enables the plugin session to store the complete state of the device along with the plugin. When you save the DAW project on your computer, it will also include the entire active project of your device, including all kits, patterns, songs, sound slots, et cetera (similar to everything that is included when a project is saved to the +DRIVE). This convenient feature enables your device to recall its exact state, as it was when you left it the last time you worked on your DAW project.”

This is a great feature imho, but it’s going to need a little bit of getting used to.

#5

This has me confused a bit currently. I just royally screwed up and deleted a bunch of work, which was user error basically (changed projects without save - now I know how important that is!!)

I’m confused about what happens to the machine once a DAW project is closed. In the manual, it appears as if the Total Recall state continues to linger after the DAW session is closed. Looking into the PROJECT folder on your machine, it appears as if no Project is actually currently selected - there is no arrow to indicate a currently selected Project, even after a power cycle.

What happens here then? If I keep working on the machine, and want to save the project, how should I approach this? On the one hand, it can be confusing to know which project you are actually working on, but now I’m faced with this situation where I feel like I need to save versions of project or something.

Is there a way to get back to the ‘Device State’ that existed previous to Recall? Or, is the best practice following a DAW session to load up a project again, assuming the device is currently in a kind of Recall limbo?

Am I understanding this correctly?

#6

When you close a DAW project and shut down your Elektron, the machine will retain whatever state it was in prior to doing so. Whether that state is one of your preexisting projects or just the machine memory buffer depends on what you did with TR inside the DAW project. Let’s say that you opened an Elektron project on the machine and then LATER opened a DAW project – a blank one which never had TR initiated. If you hit “enable now” in the TR menu, your DAW project will save all the data from your original project to be recalled. So then you close the DAW again. Your Elektron machine will still be working out of the original project slot.

Now lets say you do some other stuff, open and close a few projects without the DAW. Let’s say your machine is currently on Project B for example. You then open the DAW project from the example above (let’s say this one is linked to Elektron project A). You’ll get the window in your AR/A4 OB plugin asking if you want to accept recall. You do, and now your machine is loaded to Project A. Project A is now in the machine’s working state. If you had done work on project B previously and not saved your changes, they’d be lost as part of the process in accepting recall into project A. And it’s important to note that while A is loaded into the machine’s working state, you’re not working off of the project A slot from the plus drive. So let’s say you now make a bunch of changes and you want to save them. So you click “re-activate” in the TR menu and your machine will ask you if you want to sync from the device or the plugin. Choose the device. If you’ve added patterns, they’re on your device. If you choose to sync from the plugin, you’ll be bringing the machine’s working state back to where it was the first time you initiated recall.

So you did all that and your DAW project has saved all your recent work on project A. So every time you open it and “accept recall”, you’ll be right back here. But this is where you have to remember the working state vs. project folder distinction. All your most recent work on project A is now in the memory of your machine and in the TR of your DAW project, but project A in your machine project manager is still in whatever state it was when you last saved it on your machine, prior to this whole example.

What I do to feel confident about the whole process: Every time I’ve done some work I’ll first save it on the machine manually, back to it’s original project slot so I know that’s that. Then I’ll initiate recall and sync from the device state. So then I’m confident that both have the exact same copy.

Took me a while to wrap my head around it but I think it’s pretty incredible as it stands now. Also serves as a backup making it less necessary to worry about doing so with sysex.

2 Likes
#7

Thanks the response. Yes that makes sense. Yeah, I think you are right. I probably just need to get into the habit of savings projects on the device more.

But to reiterate my question - if when I close the DAW project, the way I understand it is the currently active project on the device is now a kind of ‘limbo recall’ Project. There is actually no active project selected on the machine anymore. I probably just have to be careful what I name projects too.

My point is, I mean, it would be cool if the machine went back to ‘machine state’ after closing the DAW project. Or -> if I understand this correctly - If I open another project on the machine I am in danger of losing those DAW changes to the box unless I save to the box, right?

Thing is - no project is selected, so I need to save over a project with what is essentially the Total Recall instance of that project, yeah?

It’s not THAT confusing, its just, I mean, some options about all this this would be helpful.

For instance, a check box in settings somewhere for ‘save and return to machine project’ when leaving Overbridge mode or something.

As its stand I feel like my machine is in project limbo when it goes back to hardware mode.

This makes sense - because if you leave OB with machine changes, changes that you have saved to Live set via TR, then, you close the Live set and the machine is in that state, that state should be saved to the machine. As it stands it currently isn’t. That way, I can go away with the machine with the state it was at in the DAW, make changes, and next time save the machine state as the new recall state.

I guess I just feel like saving in TR should also save the currently active project on the device.

Why would I want two different versions of the same project?

#8
#9