Why haven't Elektron updated the OT delay, reverb, and chorus?

[nikofeyn]

The effects on the Analog Four blow their Octatrack counterparts away. I am curious why Elektron never bothered to update those on the Octatrack.

[Accent]

I was thinking a little about this the other day, when I realized that the A4’s effects were all digital. Surely they could apply something from it to the OT.

[nikofeyn]

that’s exactly where i was at. haha. i have been messing more with my analog four lately, and returning back to the octatrack, i found myself particularly underwhelmed with the delay and reverb, at least when compared to the analog four.

it seems like it would be a no brainer update, but i’m curious if they happen to have a dedicated effects chip or something on the analog four compared to squeaking by on the octatrack.

[Accent]

Of all Elektron gear, the OT really needs the best effects, due to the limitations with the outputs and the ways in which one would use it. The Analog series could have total dogshit effects, but with Overbridge I see that as much less of a limitation.

[coralhex]

I agree with all of this.

I do think it some of it comes down to architecture and pure CPU crunching. The Analog series offloads many of its tricks (filters, overdrive, tone architecture) to analog circuitry, leaving the CPU more dedicated to the 3 digital FXs. Running 8 instances of a delay, with 8 other effects in tow, along with 24 LFOs (vs 8) and a MIDI sequencer, on same-or-previous gen brains, should reasonably be a more corners-cut type affair.

If you approach the OT effects in a more DIY modular way and use LFOs and p-locks to introduce irregularities, they can sound very organic and interesting.

• With the right kind of subtle, irregular filter and delay time warpings, the delay can sound very tape-y.

• Tiptoeing the CNTR parameter of the phaser around the periphery of your frequency range adds a lot of depth to it.

• The Dark Verb lacks some of the layered modulations commonly found in high-end studio reverbs (thus easily “stalls” at longer decay times). Use a neighbor track with a chorus and phaser and hear it refract and deepen.

In fact, I often find myself using the OT as a 4-track sampler with 4 FX blocks + 6 LFOs per track. By the way - that would actually be a fairer comparison to the A4.

Another trick for effect layering is running a THRU machine CUE loopback on track 5 (as an aux bus of sorts) followed by 2 neighbors and a master. That gives you 2+6 FX + master, all individually LFO- and sequencable.

But really - if you want a good delay - use recorder trig re-sampling. That’s the unholy godmother of any time-displacement effect you’ve ever heard.

Just the proverbial 2 cents…

[CallOffTheVote]

I agree with all of this.

I do think it some of it comes down to architecture and pure CPU crunching. The Analog series offloads many of its tricks (filters, overdrive, tone architecture) to analog circuitry, leaving the CPU more dedicated to the 3 digital FXs. Running 8 instances of a delay, with 8 other effects in tow, along with 24 LFOs (vs 8), on same-or-previous gen brains should reasonably be a more corners-cut type affair.

If you approach the OT effects in a more DIY modular way and use LFOs and p-locks to introduce irregularities, they can sound very organic and interesting.

• With the right kind of subtle, irregular filter and delay time warpings, the delay can sound very tape-y.

• Tiptoeing the CNTR parameter of the phaser around the periphery of your frequency range adds a lot of depth to it.

• The Dark Verb lacks some of the layered modulations commonly found in high-end studio reverbs (thus easily “stalls” at longer decay times). Use a neighbor track with a chorus and phaser and hear it refract and deepen.

In fact, I often find myself using the OT as a 4-track sampler with 4 FX blocks + 6 LFOs per track. By the way - that would actually be a fairer comparison to the A4.

Another trick for effect layering is running a THRU machine CUE loopback on track 5 (as an aux bus of sorts) followed by 2 neighbors and a master. That gives you 2+6 FX + master, all individually LFO- and sequencable.

But really - if you want a good delay - use recorder trig re-sampling. That’s the unholy godmother of any time-displacement effect you’ve ever heard.

Just the proverbial 2 cents…

All interesting stuff, thanks for sharing.
Could you poss elaborate on ‘if you want a good delay - use recorder trig resampling’, or please link to a video if you’ve seen one that covers it? I’ve only sampled/resampled standard loops/one shots so far. Seems like placing recorder trigs on the sequencer is where a lot of people are having the most fun.

[michalronin]

I’d love to learn more on the recorder trig resampling, too. I’m using the retrigger / LFO “delay” often as it gives a decent pingpong, but it’s eating up 1-2 LFOs in the process.

And for the OP, it’s been stated quite often that the OT is the most DSP-intensive device of all the black boxes. And for all the OT can do sample-wise, I think they’re fairly good sounding (or just learned to love them, but I have to admit it took some time).

[coralhex]

For sure - trig sampling is a unique OT feature.

So think of a flex machine track. Sample the output by dropping recorder trigs at (for simplicity) 1, 5, 9 and 13, with playback trigs at the same steps. Micro-time the recorder trigs a few steps ahead of the playback ones to allow for the audio to pass through the A/D, D/A and buffers.

What you’ve now created is a custom multi-tap delay with most of the playback controls of the OT. I say “most” because pitching up and reverse defy the universal time/space continuum. Unless you’re jamming out in a spaceship in the proximity of a black hole, stick to the other controls. With sufficient record/playback trig offset, however, sped-up and reverse tails are doable.

Note: if using sample locks for the “delay” trigs, this is theoretically possible on one single track (feedback issues may materialize). Otherwise, just use 2 tracks.

Needless to say, live input works just as well.
Potentially needless to say, several tracks may use the same (or any of the other tracks’) record buffer. Read that sentence again and think about how that translates to music. And/or mayhem. I don’t mean that in any dick kind of way. There’s a mad scientist MWAHAHAHA waiting to happen at the end of that thought. Unless you’ve had it already.

Extrapolate.
Integrate into parts that your music flows through.

Have a lot of fun!

[CallOffTheVote]

For sure - trig sampling is a unique OT feature.

So think of a flex machine track. Sample the output by dropping recorder trigs at (for simplicity) 1, 5, 9 and 13, with playback trigs at the same steps. Micro-time the recorder trigs a few steps ahead of the playback ones to allow for the audio to pass through the A/D, D/A and buffers.

What you’ve now created is a custom multi-tap delay with most of the playback controls of the OT. I say “most” because pitching up and reverse defy the universal time/space continuum. Unless you’re jamming out in a spaceship in the proximity of a black hole, stick to the other controls. With sufficient record/playback trig offset, however, sped-up and reverse tails are doable.

Note: if using sample locks for the “delay” trigs, this is theoretically possible on one single track (feedback issues may materialize). Otherwise, just use 2 tracks.

Needless to say, live input works just as well.
Potentially needless to say, several tracks may use the same (or any of the other tracks’) record buffer. Read that sentence again and think about how that translates to music. And/or mayhem. I don’t mean that in any dick way. There’s a mad scientist MWAHAHAHA waiting to happen at the end of that thought. Unless you’ve had it already.

Extrapolate.
Integrate into parts that your music flows through.

Have a lot of fun!

Thanks a lot for the walk through A lot to get my head round without being in front of my OT to work it out, and sounds like there are endless different ways to go with it once I have the basic setup laid out. looking forward to trying it next session!

[giftown]

When jamming with guitar players they often get a huge kick out of resampling their input with trigs.

If you put the recorder trig somewhere easy to figure out like the middle of the first bar, then place playback trigs across the second bar, it’s easy for them to follow. When I pitch up and reverse the playback trigs, my guitar playing friends adapt quickly and start making some really cool song parts. After that I let them tell me where to place the recorder trig(s) and we really go to town.

Coralhex had some great tips there, thanks for that!

Definitely look up the technique involving using custom LFOs to do more finite parameter manipulation. It can be found in the Monolith project if you want easy access, but basically you dedicate one LFO with a parameter to a custom LFO shape that is a straight line just a few notches above zero. Then you modulate that LFO with a second LFO in order to do very subtle movements.

Apply that trick to stuff like pitch, delay time and so on for some really great effect manipulation.

Again to support Coralhex’s great post, start thinking about using neighbour tracks and all the LFOs you can squeeze in to really design some awesome effects. Think hard about just what elements are missing from the effects and challenge yourself to add them on your own. Even if you can’t do it you’ll find new techniques along the way.

Do stuff like recording a track then playing it back in three different tracks, each of them EQed to isolate the lows, mids and highs… then start working those. Different delay modulations and reverbs across a sound’s frequency range.

If you feel like you are running out of space, dig into banks and parts and start using different locations in your project to construct intricate manipulations to be sampled and played back in your performance part/bank.

Copy a percussion track’s trig locations over to a pad’s track as trigless locks, set an LFO to ONE or HOLD. Seems obvious, but if you start doing this with a couple different tracks and keep the effects subtle (perhaps even using the “offset modulators” trick above) things get deep.

If you never waste an LFO and keep things subtle, you’ll be comboing up stuff like Lo-Fi into Filter (amazing combo) with some deep results.

[CallOffTheVote]

When jamming with guitar players they often get a huge kick out of resampling their input with trigs.

If you put the recorder trig somewhere easy to figure out like the middle of the first bar, then place playback trigs across the second bar, it’s easy for them to follow. When I pitch up and reverse the playback trigs, my guitar playing friends adapt quickly and start making some really cool song parts. After that I let them tell me where to place the recorder trig(s) and we really go to town.

Coralhex had some great tips there, thanks for that!

Definitely look up the technique involving using custom LFOs to do more finite parameter manipulation. It can be found in the Monolith project if you want easy access, but basically you dedicate one LFO with a parameter to a custom LFO shape that is a straight line just a few notches above zero. Then you modulate that LFO with a second LFO in order to do very subtle movements.

Apply that trick to stuff like pitch, delay time and so on for some really great effect manipulation.

Again to support Coralhex’s great post, start thinking about using neighbour tracks and all the LFOs you can squeeze in to really design some awesome effects. Think hard about just what elements are missing from the effects and challenge yourself to add them on your own. Even if you can’t do it you’ll find new techniques along the way.

Do stuff like recording a track then playing it back in three different tracks, each of them EQed to isolate the lows, mids and highs… then start working those. Different delay modulations and reverbs across a sound’s frequency range.

If you feel like you are running out of space, dig into banks and parts and start using different locations in your project to construct intricate manipulations to be sampled and played back in your performance part/bank.

Copy a percussion track’s trig locations over to a pad’s track as trigless locks, set an LFO to ONE or HOLD. Seems obvious, but if you start doing this with a couple different tracks and keep the effects subtle (perhaps even using the “offset modulators” trick above) things get deep.

If you never waste an LFO and keep things subtle, you’ll be comboing up stuff like Lo-Fi into Filter (amazing combo) with some deep results.

This all sounds like stuff I’ll be in to doing/using often, thanks for writing it out on here.
Especially curious about guitar weirdness with the rec trigs on OT. Haven’t had the chance to really start experimenting and having fun with OT yet, just been learning the basics. But OT + guitar & amp/mic + Pedals + rc300 looper + sp555 (probably just as an fx box) + microsampler (for polyphony) is where im excited about getting to, in my head that setup (+ volcas/ms20/mininova for synth stuff) is pretty exciting and I can’t really even guess at what’s gonna come out gonna be even more chaos/fun when I get a midi splitter box…
pretty much done with the manual etc now so hopefully get some time to put everything together next week and disappear down the rabbit hole I’ll definitely try out all this stuff that you guys have described!

[nikofeyn]

i did a write up here about something very similar to this, where i played a guitar into the octatrack and had live sampling and playback. here’s the write up:

The Octatrack can be quite granular-esque [example inside]

hi all. so i told myself that i wouldn't get any new gear until i learned my current gear to a much higher level. well, that hasn't been easy with the recent release of the mutable instruments elements and clouds, which have me jonesing for a modular quite a bit. luckily, those modules aren't readily available. so i swallowed my gear lust and fired up the octatrack with a loose goal of making some sort of evolving, granular piece while i played my guitar. sort of a la frippertronics, but not goi…

and here was the result:

[CallOffTheVote]

i did a write up here about something very similar to this, where i played a guitar into the octatrack and had live sampling and playback. here’s the write up:
The Octatrack can be quite granular-esque [example inside]

and here was the result:
https://soundcloud.com/nikofeyn/rough-sketch-7-canyon-a-granular-guitar-piece

Good stuff, thanks. Nice vibe on the recording.

[J.m]

Some great info in here, thanks all above for ideas and links.

[AdamJay]

I could imagine one reason why they haven’t done it is it might require OT users to go back and have to make changes in parts that use delay.

Look at what happened with the Rytm FX levels in the OB Beta.
It was improved and a loud minority fired up their WAHmbulances (even though it was BETA), then it was restored to previous configuration.

They’re damned if they do, damned if they don’t.

[miketheman]

IIRC:

The OS update 1.22 => 1.25 included Spring Reverb and Dark Reverb. Which were influenced by the effects from Analog Four.

As others have posted. You can be really creative with LFO´s on certain effect parameters along with other parameters that makes them sound in a quite unique way.

[dubathonic]

… trig sampling is a unique OT feature … What you’ve now created is a custom multi-tap delay with most of the playback controls of the OT. I say “most” because pitching up and reverse defy the universal time/space continuum.

NEXT LEVEL. Thanks for the tip!

[CallOffTheVote]

IIRC:

The OS update 1.22 => 1.25 included Spring Reverb and Dark Reverb. Which were influenced by the effects from Analog Four.

As others have posted. You can be really creative with LFO´s on certain effect parameters along with other parameters that makes them sound in a quite unique way.

After more time with with OT I have to admit that with combos of lfo/effects/plocks/neighbour tracks for longer fx chains etc etc, there really is a LOT of depth to the achievable effects in OT. Getting some really nice effects stuff happening here now.
But the other side of this is that it can often take a while to set up an effect which on other samplers is a simple one button press then quick tweak. It’s oddly satisfying to get engrossed in designing the fx details/chains etc but I have so little free time for music these days that I sometimes find myself missing the immediacy of the effects layout/presets on my sp555/404.
Both OT & SP fx layout have their strengths and weaknesses tho. OT is waaaaaaaaaaaay more tweakable
But I’d still love to see OT get amp/cab sim, tape sim, lo-fi compressor, grittier delay, pitch with wet/dry + feedback. I just feel like the only thing really missing from OT is some of this stuff that can change the colour/vibe of the sound in those ways. And quickly if needed without too much sound design.

[miketheman]

[quote=“miketheman”]IIRC:

The OS update 1.22 => 1.25 included Spring Reverb and Dark Reverb. Which were influenced by the effects from Analog Four.

As others have posted. You can be really creative with LFO´s on certain effect parameters along with other parameters that makes them sound in a quite unique way.

[ul]
[li]After more time with with OT I have to admit that with combos of lfo/effects/plocks/neighbour tracks for longer fx chains etc etc, there really is a LOT of depth to the achievable effects in OT. Getting some really nice effects stuff happening here now. [/li]
[/ul]
[ul]
[li]But the other side of this is that it can often take a while to set up an effect which on other samplers is a simple one button press then quick tweak. It’s oddly satisfying to get engrossed in designing the fx details/chains etc but I have so little free time for music these days that I sometimes find myself missing the immediacy of the effects layout/presets on my sp555/404. [/li]
[/ul]
[ul]
[li]Both OT & SP fx layout have their strengths and weaknesses tho. OT is waaaaaaaaaaaay more tweakable [/li]
[/ul]
[ul]
[li]But I’d still love to see OT get amp/cab sim, tape sim, lo-fi compressor, grittier delay, pitch with wet/dry + feedback. I just feel like the only thing really missing from OT is some of this stuff that can change the colour/vibe of the sound in those ways. And quickly if needed without too much sound design. [/li]
[/ul]
[/quote]
[ol]
[li] [/li]
[li]Totally understand. Designing fx combo´s is very rewarding sometimes, but can be very time consuming. Instant access to readymade fx algorithms is always an bonus.[/li]
[li]Tweakable should be the middlename of the OT… [/li]
[li]Agree. And you/me are not alone in this. Unfortunately beyond my influence. [/li]
[/ol]

[license]

For #2 it would be cool to share/exchange scene/part “patches” containing these setups that you could just pop onto your CF card. I’m not as intimately familiar with the OT’s file formats as, say, Rusty, but it seems like there’s a way to do this.