Underwhelmed by the Octatrack Mk2, looking for advice!

What type of sound is tone suck most evident with when sampling with OT. I have been sampling percussion from my eurorack lately and seriously cannot tell difference between sampled material and original. Maybe it says something about my hearing :grinning:

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I was gonna sit this one out, haha!
But Iā€™m starting to wonder if thereā€™s more to it like not running 24bit or impedance mismatch with the connections/cable or somethingā€¦

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Thatā€™s what Iā€™m thinking. Might be an issue if you hook up old gear directly to the input on the OT. Thatā€™s why I suggested trying with a decent mixer in betweenā€¦

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Hey Mike,

Not really sure how Iā€™d make a video, I donā€™t think one on my phone would suffice. Well at this moment Iā€™m not sure if it has to do with my gain staging or if its the sound of the machine itself. Samples from my computer have sounded pretty good, so I havenā€™t had much issues there at all! What Iā€™m about to try is sampling my synths into my daw and then transferring them via usb to the octatrack. Iā€™m hoping that will sound better! Will let you guys know how it goes

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If you have to go through all that I wouldnā€™t want to keep the OTā€¦
Maybe try the opposite, does anyone know of any good videos where the artists is sampling things and it sounds fine?
Then at least we could agree itā€™s capable of sounding goodā€¦

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So key things to check;

  • both audio record and playback = 24 bit
  • ensure signal going in is at 0 dB unity
  • turn off time stretch in flex machine
  • check impedance issue with cables ( I use two TR cables from mixer, left and right into A and B)
  • for source use A B for InAB

Anything else?

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Hereā€™s dataline sampling thingsā€¦ I realize this has gone through youtube, but what do you think of the sound?

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Cuckoo has a few videos where heā€™s direct sampling various equipment.

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OP canā€™t post anymore today because heā€™s a new user, he was on 16 bit recording and gonna check out 24ā€¦
Hereā€™s what I pmā€™d him, weā€™ll hear from him tomorrow I guessā€¦

I was gonna stay out of your topic just because Iā€™ve talked about this a lotā€¦
I do use an OT mk1 for live looping sampling, in my opinion I have really good ears and can notice a difference between my apogee enemble at 96000 and the OT, but the difference is super subtle and most of my friends canā€™t notice itā€¦
Once I did a/b tests of the remastered dark side of the moon from apogee and through OT mixer dir, difference was super subtle, the material still sounded epic through the OT as it shouldā€¦

Hereā€™s my gain tips for sampling on a mk1, not sure if itā€™s exactly the same for mk2 and currently Iā€™m adjusting it a little, but it has given me good results in the past:

Hope you get to where you like it, I guarantee you thereā€™s tons of artists using it and we would not if we thought our tone was destroyedā€¦ But if your not happy I always say go with your gut, donā€™t let us try to make you keep it if you really just wanna sell the thingā€¦
Good luck!

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Iā€™m waiting on my MKII to arrive in 10 days or so. Iā€™m planning on doing a lot of tests with gain staging on the new inputs. I have a wide array of sources Iā€™m sampling from (turntable, modular, iPad, etc.) so getting it consistent without having to prerecord through my DAW is the end goal.

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I only have two samples on my OT and I barely ever trigger them, everything I do with it is live captureā€¦

On the flip side everything I do with the OT also vanishes when I turn it offā€¦
Itā€™s transitory, like a sonic mandalaā€¦ :slight_smile:

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I felt the same way and bought easier to use gear, still pretty good stuff. Since getting OT2 I realize I was buying around what I really wanted. Yes itā€™s less immediate but not by that much and you can really see a long term path with the machine, which may even save time and money over time.

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Thing is, the TB-03 sounds amazing in that video, but it turns out itā€™s mostly down to the Analog Drive itā€™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 donā€™t watch many performance videos so it was just the easiest thing for me to referenceā€¦
Weā€™ll hear from OP tomorrow, but he did tell me results were much better using 24bit settingā€¦

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No, I get you, for sure, my reaction immediately was ā€œhey that sounds goodā€. And the OT definitely enables it. The Heat/Drive arenā€™t fixing or hiding anything.

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Thereā€™s a recent video where Cuckoo samples live/acoustic drum samples from a keyboard, and they sound great ā€“ very present and clean-sounding, it sounds like a live kit. You could probably ask him (here) about his process as wellā€¦ heā€™s super friendly, helpful etc.

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@cuckoomusic have time to chime in on gain staging with OT MK1 & 2?

Hey guys, I couldnā€™t post for a couple hours, but Iā€™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. Iā€™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 Iā€™m thinking Iā€™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 Iā€™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 Iā€™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 :grinning:

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