Hey fam, so just starting to experiment making full tracks on the octa.
I started out using drum racks but have stopped mainly because of panning issues. It bugs me that you have to share say kicks and snare on one track, but then have to p-lock the pan for the snare if you want it to the left for example. It gets even more ricky if you have lots of hi-hats and percussion sharing a track and want the hats and perc to be in different spots. Any solutions? Is there a way to permanently pan a slice. Jealous of RYTMās scenes, this is what I need for my drum chains so I can make a kit with each sound p locked the way I want to start and then just play the notes in. Any tips would be great!
all samples are stereo internally, create a panned āoriginalā (or two)
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great idea, why didnāt I think about that earlier! set the panning up when creating the sample chain. of course, the OT can handle stereo samples, Iām still thinking in mono samples 
thx virtual for asking the question and avantronica for giving the hint.
EDIT: my procedure so far was to use two tracks in the OT for kick&snare, panned to the center, and two tracks that share percussions&hihats. the latter two tracks being panned -/+ 15. by deciding in which of the two tracks you play a percussion or hihat, you decide about the pan. thatās been sufficient for me so far, but with Live PAās in mind, not full tracks.
Hey thanks for the tip avantronica, it seems this might work for MK7.
My problem is I canāt make mixing decisions in the sample prep stage, I need to make that decision when Iām creating. Flipping through versions of the same sample panned to different spots, would probably take up the same amour of time as P-locking each step. That being said, might still make a few āPre-pannedā chains and try it out!.
How do you pan the tracks?
Itās the āBalā Parameter on the amp page.
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You donāt āpanā stereo tracks. You adjust the balance between L & R. If you want to pan a mono source in a stereo file, it should be done in pre-production. Itās basic acoustics. The OT is a all-round stereo sampler not specifically designed as a drum machineā¦ I guess the Digitakt should do a better job in that domain.
I never even thought about the difference between panning and balance. Thanks for making me think about this really basic thing! First google result returned a one minute video with a clear demonstration.
Thanks for your consideration. I am fully aware of all the tenets of sound engineering, I am a professional. However, what I am experiencing on my mono sample is the decrease of volume when I tweedle the BAL knob, no panning is perceived. I have started off with factory settings, is that a routing issue, what am I doing wrong?
Do you mean everything gets converted to stereo once loaded to Octatrack? Thatād be weird, wouldnāt it?
You can load mono samples in Flex or Static slots. It does save RAM compared to a stereo file.
Recordings are always stereo files.
I find that the balance doesnāt produce the panning effect on mono files either. So, basically, all i get is a volume decrease. Something wrong with my machine?
Tried headphones?
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yes, it turned out to be the fault of the audio interface, the silly input/daw mix. In the daw setting, i can only get a true stereo, but i must arm a track for recording in order to monitor.
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