Thing is, the TB-03 sounds amazing in that video, but it turns out it’s mostly down to the Analog Drive it’s going through and the Heat on the master. Though the OT does contribute in a positive way, to be fair.
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Right, I don’t watch many performance videos so it was just the easiest thing for me to reference…
We’ll hear from OP tomorrow, but he did tell me results were much better using 24bit setting…
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No, I get you, for sure, my reaction immediately was “hey that sounds good”. And the OT definitely enables it. The Heat/Drive aren’t fixing or hiding anything.
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There’s a recent video where Cuckoo samples live/acoustic drum samples from a keyboard, and they sound great – very present and clean-sounding, it sounds like a live kit. You could probably ask him (here) about his process as well… he’s super friendly, helpful etc.
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Hey guys, I couldn’t post for a couple hours, but I’m back now!
So I did a little A/B test with material I recorded into my DAW and transferred to the OT. I turned off time stretching and found that the sounds were very close. I do think that the OT is compressing the audio a bit, but thats to be expected with any hardware right? Anyways its pretty tough to tell a difference between the 2 unless you start really mucking around with the FX on the OT. I’m alot happier with these results and I think you could probably get similar results by recording stuff in, if everything is 24 bit and the gain staging is done properly.
Im getting used to the OT workflow and I’m thinking I’m going to stick with it. It would really suck missing all the good stuff if I ended up switching to the DT. It would be so amazing if the OT Mk2 had updated effects like the DT, and I’m wondering if that could ever happen in an OS update?
Thanks for all the help guys. If anyone is running into the same issues with the OT Mk2, my advice is to go to the Control Memory settings page and change Flex Format and Recorder Format to 24 Bit. When you import samples make sure that time stretch is off.
As for the muting issue, the best work arounds I’ve found is to bring things in and out using patterns and the scenes. The scenes allow for more interesting transitions then cutting volume anyways.
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good to hear, only just bought an OT mk2 
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Some great info here.
My only advice would be to get something to “colour” 
your synths before the Ot’s inputs, like a compressor 
then you also can get a nice hot input level.
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Glad things worked out so far.
Ironically, engaging in this post prompted me to recheck my Control Mem settings ,… which I thought I had reset once upon a time.
Alas, Flex and Rec bit rates were back to 16bit 
… this is why it becomes very noticeable to me when recording acoustic instruments ( guitar , bass, upright bass)
Lesson , these might reset to default if you start a whole new SET . So check these periodically if beginning a whole new SET ( eg, for sampling instruments ) .
However, there might be some RAM limitations ( particularly with FLEX machines ) when using 24 bit .
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Hello.
For me, I shifted to 24-bit after sampling the Continuum fingerboard in 16-bit. The Continuum is super high resolution and with complex overtones that I felt took a hit in 16-bit. It sounds noticeably better in 24-bit for me. So much better actually that I suspect there might even be something subtly wrong in the AD conversion in 16-bit. I’ve described this and reported it to the Elektron feedback form. If many of you are having the same issue with 16-bit sampling I’d urge each and every one of you to report it to a Elektron so that they get an impression of how wide spread this is.
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I had the same 16bit experience. Had it not been for the significant improvement with 24, I would have sold the OT, no doubt.
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You might have to wait a while before an analogue sampler comes out mate!
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When I had my OT, I changed to 24-bit the first time I turned it on… it’s always made a big difference for me in every aspect of audio production so I would never record 16-bit if possible. But it sounds like there might even be further reason on the OT.
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A4 plus DT = super awesomeness, without any of the scary OT stuff.
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Yes! Just waiting a little for news on new AKmk2 
EDIT: just to be completely clear and avoid spreading any speculation as fact if someone reads this post a year from now, this is all 100% speculation based on casual listening and could easily be completely wrong!
My suspicion is that everything is always converted at 24 bit and gets converted down to 16 in software without any kind of dither (just truncating the least significant 8 bits) if you’re working at 16. The way working at 16 affects the sound quality is VERY similar (to my ears, anyway) to the difference between correctly dithered and undithered bitrate conversion - a kind of subtle “plastic” quality (I know it’s a really vague term but it absolutely captures the sound, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that a lot of people use it), and kind of a one dimensional quality. When I first got a proper interface (MOTU 828, not really that great sounding but a lot better than using a bunch of Sound Blaster AWE64’s like I’d been doing before that) I used to describe the difference between 16 and 24 bit audio in general as being like the difference between looking at a very high quality, life size photo of a window vs. looking out of an actual window, but it turns out I wasn’t dithering correctly (back then DAWs didn’t always dither by default) and the difference got smaller after that. The OT at 16 bit has a very similar sound.
EDIT: Also, if I prepare a sample on the computer and load it into the OT over USB I typically save it as 16 bit and don’t have the same loss in sound quality when it’s in the OT, which obviously could be the converters themselves not working properly in 16 but but it could also be because if I convert to 16 in the computer I’m always dithering correctly. On top of everything else, if people are generally recording a bit on the low side it the OT (because it’s easier to err on the side of caution that to push it too hot and get digital clipping) that would also bring the truncation artifacts up more relative to the audio.
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For clarify I’ll add that I turned 24 bit on for recording and flex in my first week with OT and have left it there ever since, so everything I’ve ever said about the sound is based off those settings… 
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Same here. The only time I use 16 is if I load stuff in via USB, because I figure it saves a little disc space and converting from 16 to 24 is just a matter of adding a few empty bits that shouldn’t (and doesn’t seem to) have any negative impact on the way the samples sound.
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Can anyone comment on whether they’ve noticed any difference in quality when transferring via USB vs. the OT Mk2 inputs with proper settings and gain staging?
I think with USB there isn’t any noticeable quality difference.
On another note, since the OT has digital effects, is there any chance elektron would amp up the effects in a future update? Probably wishful thinking but that’d be great
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