Do the VOL and BAL controls on the AMP page on Neighbor tracks do anything? I assumed I could adjust balance, but it doesn’t seem to do anything. Same with VOL.
I can use HOLD to impact the filter.
As stated in the manual, vol and bal on neighbour machines dont do anything.
You can still make amp envelopes.
1 Like
I couldn’t find that described in the manual.
What would the amp envelopes impact? HOLD impacts the filter/lo-fi, but I don’t see what the ATK and REL would alter.
Recorders + Flex = better than Neighbor
1 Like
That seems to be the governing rule for the OT, with only occasional exceptions.
Recorder + Flex is better than Neighbor
Recorder + Flex is better than Pickup
(Recorder +) Flex is better than Static
1 Like
Ended up with T1 flex as my live/decaying loop, T2 as a neighbor for filtering and reverb, and t3 as flex to handle panning. Sounds really great.
Three tracks for a pad sound might be excessive, but I couldn’t figure out a more efficient way.
1 Like
Thru !
Master track ! (Recording Cue)
That’s exaggerated, I tried but I wouldn’t do it instead of Master track. 
1 Like
I’m not sure to understand why Recorder + Flex was recommanded in OP’s case, instead of a Neighbor Machine, and didn’t understand what he (you) mean(s) with “t3 as flex to handle panning”.
As far as I understand (just started to study the sample-recording part of the Octatrack yesterday though), a Neighbor Machine is the (only ?) way to make a linear four-FX chain with one sound source.
OP’s case seemed similar to mine but I’m not sure. I’d like to “side-chain” (using a LFO) a pad sound coming from an external synth (Behringer Pro 800). I also want to add a Delay, a Chorus, and then a Reverb to this sound, in that order. But I’d also like that the side-chain effect applies to the whole pad sound (dry + effects), at least that it also applies to the delay reflections (Delay on T1). For that reason I used a Neighbor Machine on T2 and intended to apply the “side-chain”-LFO on that track, simply modulating the AMP - VOL parameter : here’s how I came across this thread, realizing I couldn’t do that (this parameter having no effect in a Neighbor Machine).
Any idea how I could do the trick, with less workaround and track consumption possible ?
(I thought that would be enough on topic to post it there)
thanks
No. You can record a track with 2 fx constantly with a rec trig and play the buffer “directly” on another Flex track with 2 more fx. That way you benefit from SRC/PLAYBACK and AMP settings.
Caveats : you need +1 microtiming on the Flex track, around 5ms delay at 120 bpm.
Example :
- Set Track 1 fx
- Set Track 2 Rec Setup to record T1 (SRC3=T1), RLEN as T1 length, rec trig on step 1
- Set T2 to Flex, assign to Recording 02 slot, trig on step one.
2 Likes
Thanks for this great trick ! I have the feeling the recorder features of the OT have a lot to offer.
I’m still wondering if there’s a way to get rid of the click sound I hear at each loop start ? (which comes I guess from the sample amplitude value not matching between the start and the end of each recorded loop)
Tried to tweak the FIN and FOUT parameters on the REC Setup 2 page, with no results.
1 Like
Ah yes, forgot to mention, another caveat if OT especially if OT is slaved. Also depends on fx types, some have DC offset…
You can set Amp Atk to 1 but clicks can be also due to release. Hold value is in Step, you can set it to a shorter value than sample length and adjust release.
Or…use Neighbor and set VOL and BAL on “neighboured” source track.
Ok thanks for those leads, will try when needed (in that case the click sounds is not bothering me)
1 Like
Working on another track using this great method, I’m experiencing an annoying problem which didn’t happened when I first tried it : the playback of the recorded sample just stops randomly.
I think I understood where it came from so I thought I would share it here.
It seems to have something to do with the time difference between the two trigs (the recorder trig and the recording sample trig). Since the tempo of the synced Octatrack is moving slightly (I didn’t understand why this is happening but that’s another topic), it can occur that the playback head reaches the recorder head, which means that the playback of the sample being created on the fly reaches its end, which makes the sample playback simply stop. Tell my if I’m wrong.
If I’m right, I suppose that wouldn’t happen if the OT was set as the Transport master (=tempo not moving), or if there’s a way to strictly fix the tempo when it’s used as slave.
If you increase the microtiming on the playback trig does it decrease the occurrence?
FWIW, I pretty much only use the Octatrack master clock. That stability is needed for a lot of how I use it.
1 Like
It should. I would definitely use OT master that context or a neighbor track (pan on neighbored track).
Other reason to stop playback is pitch up. Timestretch should be off.
Regarding Timestretch, I thought that could be the source of my problem at some point and disabled it, but I noticed that every time I stopped and replay the general playback (the transport I mean), the new sample settings would switch to Timestretch ON again.
If you increase the microtiming on the playback trig does it decrease the occurrence?
Yes it does, I should have write it in my post but that’s actually how I solved the problem.
FWIW, I pretty much only use the Octatrack master clock. That stability is needed for a lot of how I use it.
I would be interested to know what are some of those other situations, just as examples.
I should consider using the OT as the master clock but I was so far too lazy to figure out how to set Reaper up as the slave, I’ll check that out later.
1 Like
Yes it is on by default in recordings Attributes. And default track TSTR setting is Auto (following AED Attributes).
I almost always have a recording buffer (or several) doing sound-on-sound looping. T1 would be a Flex track that plays recording buffer 1. Recording buffer 1 takes input A and T1 as sources.
The challenge is that I wanted those loops to be seamless. That meant no clicks at the start point and I didn’t want to use FIN or the attack to kill the click. For certain tempo and pattern lengths you can get it to work. But Octatrack needs to be the master clock, at least in my experience.