Peak in the red seems even better.
I donāt think there is limiting on the inputs. When I did those passthrough tests for the gainstaging thread I was able to push a test tone right up until digital clipping and it wasnāt distorted in any way until it actually clipped. If there was some kind of limiting I would expect the waveform to start becoming distorted as it passed the threshold. It could be that with instruments that have really dynamic transients the lower headroom of he MKI is more noticeable because transients that are too short to actually register on the LEDs are already clipping before you actually see much red, or something like that. Thatās not something Iāve really looked in to but I have noticed that it might be happening with my tanzmaus, which seems to lose some snappiness if I push it too far into the red, where every analog monosynth Iāve tried (which is only a couple) seems to sound better if it kind of hovers between red and orange. Thatās just stuff Iāve noticed when Iām practicing though,I havenāt made any attempt at checking with matched levels or looking at the actual waveform to see if itās clipping.
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Do you think the high end frequency lost only happens with the inputs? I didnāt notice any high frequency lost when transferring from USB
Yes
On a monosynth you may not notice sInce there isnāt often a great difference in amplitude in what youāre performing it but i was playing back one of the preset patterns on the a4 mkiii that was particularly dynamic and bassy as test. Iād not even see red but could feel the dynamic range being crushed. A happy balance beteeen seeing green and orange seems to be ideal. Itās a shame they didnāt add the digitakt way of actually seeing levels on the screen
Quotes out of context. Well done.
Iām talking about actually looking at the waveforms themselves, they pass through essentially unaltered. Not saying it isnāt happening (and your gainstaging advice is the same as Elektronās, thatās how it was intended to be done), just that I havenāt seen evidence of it.
If there IS some kind of limiting on the input Iām actually glad about that, since it means hitting the input hard has potential use for shaping the sound. Iāve run a few analog synths through t (Juno 6, Anushri, and a few months back a Matrix 1000 and a friendās Eurorack system), a few digital polysynths, an acoustic guitar and a turntable and theyāve consistently sounded better when I run them so they average in the yellow/orange with peaks in the red. If thereās limiting happening maybe I just like the sound of it.
At any rate, the OT definitely has a sound, but I havenāt noticed any obvious limiting on the inputs yet myself, but I donāt discount that itās possible.
Very interesting discussion. Iāve been switching between 16 and 24bit modes on the OT for years now depending on my project needs and I have never heard a difference in sound between the two. Hmmmā¦
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Just curious: if you didnāt hear a difference, what other requirements made you switch?
Last night I was setting up the crossfader transition trick in the project Iām working on for live improvising and I turned timestretch on for the record buffer that the main out gets sampled in to, so that after I crossfade to it I can drop in some trigs and trigless locks and mess with the pitch.
While I was getting the levels matched between the live inputs and the sample track I noticed that the coloration from the timestretch (no actual time or pitch adjustments being made yet, just the artifacts from turning timestretch on) actually sounded BETTER to me than the direct output of the thru machines. There was very definite coloration but in this case it worked - everything just sounded generally thicker and the transients were smeared out a bit in a way that I like.
Go figure.
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Well, I can only speak for what I have right now, a Deepmind 6, modular rig, and Analog Four MKII. The Deepmind it didnāt matter as much but you can REALLY hear it on the A4 if you live to dangerously.
I can definitely notice harmonically rich, dynamic sounds getting less punchy if I drive the inputs too hot, but Iām inclined to think itās actually the ADC clipping peaks rather than any extra circuitry in the input section. With more dynamic or complex sounds you can actually get quite a bit of digital clipping before itās obvious (and clipping is essentially extra hard limiting).
But no way to really know unless someone from Elektron chimes in.
Last thing to say about inputs, short of an extremely expensive digital mixer, no mixer is going to give you as the transparency of an audio interface. Especially a good one. But of the mixers Iāve heard people put their synths through, and have bought and tried, the OT MKII is the most transparent Iāve experienced. This was definitely NOT the case in the MKI but the new inputs are glorious.
Itās also worth noting, if youāre using your OT as your main sequencing/DAW, youāre going to be rolling off and adjusting and eqing all over the place after the fact of recording to make everything sit well together and likely compressing on the master so all this fidelity talk will to some degree be moot.
Thatās why my plan is to only record stuff thatās more rhythmic, and have the more melodic and harmonic stuff playing live from the instruments with some mangling from the OT.
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True about the fidelity talk. Ideally Iād like to get my sounds nice and level and do as much eqing With the ot as possibly before recording, but yeahā¦ it always seems that I never notice any mixing issues until itās too late and then you are trying to compress, eq, etc after the fact to fix things.
Iāve found that I really like using the ot for recording long synth takes into my daw and then sending them to the ot for mangling. Percussion loops are really fun to mess with too.
Yea, long recordings belong on the computer. Short loopy stuff in the OT. In a live PA setting play those longer sounds live if thatās an option (my A4 and DM6 will come with me to the stage, probably not my modular though)
Agreed on all counts, although for me transparency isnāt actually a major goal for me, other than the interface I record through. But I would take the summing on a budget mixer over the summing in a DAW any day, based on having heard a lot of both.
And all of this stuff is out the window when itās down to actually making music that sounds good, which you can do with just about anything.
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Why do you prefer just short loopy stuff in the OT? IVe found it very useful for longer stuff with the one shot trigs andwith scene locking start points. This way I can record something longer and then do a call and answer thing with the scenes. Super fun
As a whole Iām not a big fan of sampling pads/atmos/drones because I feel like it takes away from their predesigned evolution if it loops. I want those sounds to evolve throughout the course of a song. Where as a kick is a kick. You can maybe add some velocity randomization and use microtiming to add some humanism to it but itās something thatās safe to sample. Those are extreme cases but you get my meaning. Some of the fun is taking sounds out of context and turning them into drones/atmos but even there youāre starting with shorter samples and drawing them out. Just my thinking. OT for backing tracks, perform leads.
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The cool thing about the Octatrack is there is a million different ways to get the job done. 
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Sorry, I misunderstood the context ?
Iām french, and when an english text is a bit long, I can get confused.
Could you explain more about orange peak ?