What do you use the Cue outputs for?

If things are stereo in a club and there is a lot of extreme panning a clubgoer would only hear part of the music if he is on one side. Mono soundssystems try to level the playing field so it sort of sounds the same everywhere since people are moving around.

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So from the OT to the FX and then to a mixer? Or back into the OT?

It’s true, I run soundboard for shows occasionally and most of them I come across are set up in mono, even the nice Funktion Ones. Even had a long talk with the organizers of a bigger outdoor event that I was working for last summer as I was willing to try stereo, but the general consensus was that we should just go mono for a more even sound…

It’s not unheard of to go stereo and usually if you know the sound person and want stereo, they can make it work, but in general they’re often setup and used in mono…

Roger Waters however spends an absolute fortune to bring amazing quality quadraphonic sound to stadiums, so where there’s a will there’s a way, but that’s probably one of the hardest sound gigs imaginable to get the whole stadium sounding good in quadrophonic…

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I’ve set up PAs for little parties and done sound checks together with artists at slightly bigger parties and we’ve always used stereo because none of us even considered that we could/should set them up in mono!

Next time I go to Berghain I’m gonna listen close to their lovely system to see how they tune it.

This is really interesting for me, thanks everyone! :smile:

I normally run L/R stereo and cue 1 for kick and cue 2 for snare/clap - however I think I could be converted to the all stereo + then hit cue (with remove from main) method to route my isolated channels. Would make it much easier when forced to play out the stereo only (you know - at all the imaginary gigs I’m tasked to played at the last moment!). Any bright ideas on how to automatically route hard left and hard right? Turning the knob is too much work for me. Makes me miss the MachineDrum way of re-routing the whole machine in the setup memory.

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Nothing spectacular, but I did send sine waves out the que outs once and and into the moogerfooger. I plan to do it more often. I really liked doing it this way.

From the video discription: The octatrack is also sending sine waves from the que output to the FreqBox and the FreqBox is sending its processed audio back to the Octatrack input D. The Octatrack main outputs is going through the Analog Four FX track. The Analog Four is sending various CV LFOs to the FREQ and WAVE expression inputs on the back of the FreqBox. With Overbridge and a computer, the Analog Four also works as an audio interface and is recording everything. In this setup, I only recorded the Analog Four main out. Yes, it all boiled down to a simple stereo track at the end

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I think it was in a video by AdamJay, he showed a nice que trick. If you just fast and easy want to record some specific tracks or anything loopy or whatever, you can set the recorder to listen to que. That way whatever you send to que will go into the recording.

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Well, the pan values can be stored in a part, plock, or scene…

Few ideas…
You could have a part you switch to that does it, you could have scenes store various panning schemes and enable them from muted with the slider on one side, you could set up a pattern to switch to that has trigless locks plocking pan, you could have one shot or fill trigless locks with plocks on pan and just arm or enable fill…

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yes that’s a great way to capture things in a tricky and useful fashion. in order for the effects to be active in the recording, the Prefs setting re/ preview tracks with effects on or off needs to be set to effects on.

i sometimes use the left cue output to send a mono signal to a guitar preamp/overdrive to then recapture it to an input. if i have already resampled and applied effects from the Octatrack to that audio clip, sometimes a high whine is then present in the signal going to the cue->preamp (even though it isn’t audible in the OT during usual playback), so i usually do this with clips that have not been resampled in the OT.

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how can i do it in OT? Use cue or how?

Use Cue.

In personalise settings, choose “mute tracks on cue” (or something like that) if you want for your cue to be send to your headphones only (not to mains at all).

Then in the mixer page, you can decide how much of the main signal and the cue signal you want to go into your headphones (all cue or 50/50 etc)

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Thanks a lot. Will use it =)

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Yes. This is in the mixer menu. If you press cue + track 1 (for example), you will hear track 1 in the headphones out. And you can mix this with the master like on a dj mixer that has a cue crossfader. You can set this up in the personalization preferences menu. So it will either mute the track when you cue it (mute it from mains) or cue the track while it still hits the mains. There are several ways to achieve different setups which makes the OT flexible.

The best thing about it is being able to cue tracks before they hit the mains. Sometimes lately, I just jam out on 1 pattern. Then I use scenes to mix, because you can assign any scene to side A or B of the crossfader. Each scene had their own effects settings. It’s brilliant. Truly! You can mix and match scenes to apply different effects to the same pattern. I have spent hours of my life using the OT like a pair of turntables and a mixer. Instant gratification. Quite addictive! :3lektron: :elmm: :elot: :heat:

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I used to use them as a send for outboard reverb but I’m using all my inputs these days so if I use cue at all it’s usually for a tuner.

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Breathing space between all the other cables :slight_smile:

EDIT: Less flippant application for cue outputs. I’m using OT as my mixer currently, running stereo Rytm & Virus into it. I want the cue outputs to mirror the mains exactly and go out to my tascam handheld. Possible? I know each track has a separate cue level. Is there a way to link the main levels to the cue levels for each track?

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OT set to Studio Cue mode. Send Cue out into OT Inputs. Set a Track to Thru and receive Cue signal. Add 2 nice effects that can run 100 wet (eg: comb & reverb).

This allows all other Tracks to send a % of their signal to that FX chain. This frees up slot 2 on all other Tracks to be more than just Reverb.

Handy if you don’t have any external FX boxes but can be used with those too.

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Sending both main and cue outs to my mixer (in studio mode) alliws me to use the OT as 2 independent fx/audio mangling chains (fed by two separate aux sends going into AB and CD).

You don’t needto do this to use internal effects this way. Instead of using a thru machine use a flex machine playing a record bufer that’s recording the cue out. Use microtiming to nudge the flex machine’s play trig right/ahead the smallest amount possible (IME at least it doesn’t work reliably if the record and play trigs happen at exactly the same time).

This way you can avoid converting to analog and back to digital, and also free up a pair of inputs.

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Euro processing, easy stuff. Complicated is overrated.

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Either as a stereo output or two mono outputs or an FX chain, depending on how many sound sources I need to put into the OT.