Nice video, weirdest musictool I own. I wouldn't grudge too much about the sample rate issue other than maybe for inconvenience's sake - might be your ears are better than mine, but I struggle to hear any meaningfull differences between say 24 bit and 32 bit. I would assume it would make sense for people recording high end orchestra stuff with insane dynamics, but for a quite gritty tool like the Octatrack I dont see it contribute to anything other than filling up the rather small audiobuffers even faster. Plus of course maybe ease up certain workflows, but I still see it primarilly as a live-tool that doesn't care about sample-rates. Gonna keep watching :)
Good video, great to see you learning Octatrack. I agree that it's not as difficult as people think, you can get the basics in a day or two. I'd highly recommend referencing the manual though, you have made a couple of moves which made it much more difficult than it should be :) (example it's not necessary to put a trig down to sample), but what counts is the end effect. I'd highly recommend plugging Syntakt _into_ Octatrack for realtime sampling.
So the routing is free when it comes to the octa. Right now the heat captures audio from my computer and runs into the octa but I can easily cable swap and send the syntakt into the octa into the heat back to the daw ^^
Respect for getting into the Octatrack, it's a nice tool as you are finding out. You made a few more mistakes than you maybe realized, but it takes time, best of luck. Maybe a couple of tips for you in case you don't know yet. Holding FUNC while moving slice points will snap to zero crossings. Be mindful of being in the playback sequencer or in the recording sequencer. Scene locking track Level to MIN will bring audio to zero.
Thanks for watching, I hope you didn’t get the impression that I was going to be an expert on the matter but I still stand by the approach I proposed even if there were technical hiccups :) Thanks for the tips!
Well, no. It’s unique in the way it handles audio and stretching when sound mangling but it’s not a saturator by any means. It also down samples to 24/44.1 It does however mess audio up in a really cool way and is very fun to use as a hardware companion
You can add some distortion to the filter and there is a lo-fi effect. Both are decent, but something like Heat or OTO BOUM have this "true analog" sound. Whether it's better or worse, it's situational.
without any processing no .. BUT .. it has pretty good sounding filters and saturation, as soon as you start apply those you can add pretty nice “moji” to the sound..
You can just slice using the slice grid then create linear locks that will play in sequence best of luck in your journey but there are a lot of easier ways
Sometimes you want a finer means of control but yeah that’s one way to do it for sure. ^^ I didn’t sync it to bitwig because it doesn’t have overbridge and I don’t think I had a midi cable at the time
@@Alckemy Honestly man, I own use and love both and could not disagree with this more. The Octatrack is nowhere near as intuitive as the digitakt, and the workflows aren’t similar in the slightest beyond using the sequencer. I think convincing people otherwise is setting most of them up to make a very disappointing, discouraging, and expensive mistake.
Btw, you can just use neighbor tracks for extra effects on the channel above it. The Thru tracks are typically best for external gear even though they can technically do both, the neighbors are simpler to set up.
@@mageface.I mean you’re fine to disagree with me but I picked it up in a matter of days and am sharing my experience with you. However you want to cut it the way I broke the workflow down is as straightforward as described and backed up by me doing it in the video. If you don’t see the connection I can’t really understand it for you, you know? I have a syntakt and it’s no different tweaking a sound to me than chopping audio to get it just right. Thats the editing part (stage 2) The sequencing aspect is the most important part of the entire device! That’s how you make music on the thing lol. I also mentioned neighbor tracks in the video. Did you maybe skim through it and miss the key parts by chance?
My biggest issue with the Octatrack is sound quality. It’s literally my worst sounding sampler. I do love the flexibility and the real time mangling potential though. It’s a happy accident machine for me.
I hadn’t really noticed tbh. seeing people like Jon Wayne cook I feel like the audio is fine. There is a limitation on it only accepting 44.1 audio but honestly I can’t tell a difference
lol I absolutely disagree. I think it has a quite intimidating learning curve. One reason is because its still like the only thing that does what it does. Its not impossible by any means, but trying to wrap your head around all the different ways it can record and play back tracks, scenes, parts, etc took me a minute to get acclimated to, and theres plenty of others who had similar experiences. It can just take some time - or a really good teacher.
Everyone’s experience will vary but I read the manual and spent about thirty minutes on it and am like, yep. Good to go. There’s a big difference between learning to make music on the thing vs mastering it as well- But the workflow with the octa is very similar to the other boxes sans the scenes and parts. I think people get intimated by those other features because making material to even use different parts or resampling comes off as daunting for most. But, as with everything, it scales.
Heheh, I TOTALLY hear you! Some minutes?? I was one whole day almost tearing my eyes out because of this freak-machine ;) Now it's easy peasy but It was totally counter-intuitive with both setting up the tracks for whatever they were gonna be AND - for the flex machine atleast - select the right track to record on. It felt totally random in the beginning, sometimes I managed to record and sometimes not. Luckilly I prevailed hahah.
absolutely agree with title of video 👍
Nice video, weirdest musictool I own. I wouldn't grudge too much about the sample rate issue other than maybe for inconvenience's sake - might be your ears are better than mine, but I struggle to hear any meaningfull differences between say 24 bit and 32 bit. I would assume it would make sense for people recording high end orchestra stuff with insane dynamics, but for a quite gritty tool like the Octatrack I dont see it contribute to anything other than filling up the rather small audiobuffers even faster. Plus of course maybe ease up certain workflows, but I still see it primarilly as a live-tool that doesn't care about sample-rates. Gonna keep watching :)
Good video, great to see you learning Octatrack. I agree that it's not as difficult as people think, you can get the basics in a day or two. I'd highly recommend referencing the manual though, you have made a couple of moves which made it much more difficult than it should be :) (example it's not necessary to put a trig down to sample), but what counts is the end effect.
I'd highly recommend plugging Syntakt _into_ Octatrack for realtime sampling.
So the routing is free when it comes to the octa. Right now the heat captures audio from my computer and runs into the octa but I can easily cable swap and send the syntakt into the octa into the heat back to the daw ^^
Respect for getting into the Octatrack, it's a nice tool as you are finding out. You made a few more mistakes than you maybe realized, but it takes time, best of luck.
Maybe a couple of tips for you in case you don't know yet.
Holding FUNC while moving slice points will snap to zero crossings.
Be mindful of being in the playback sequencer or in the recording sequencer.
Scene locking track Level to MIN will bring audio to zero.
Thanks for watching, I hope you didn’t get the impression that I was going to be an expert on the matter but I still stand by the approach I proposed even if there were technical hiccups :)
Thanks for the tips!
Does this give some mojo if you run tracks trough this sampler back to DAW to get rid of digital clinical sound?
Well, no. It’s unique in the way it handles audio and stretching when sound mangling but it’s not a saturator by any means. It also down samples to 24/44.1
It does however mess audio up in a really cool way and is very fun to use as a hardware companion
You can add some distortion to the filter and there is a lo-fi effect. Both are decent, but something like Heat or OTO BOUM have this "true analog" sound. Whether it's better or worse, it's situational.
@@mdeerocks6792 tnx
I defo hear a tonality to the machine/Converters...they're not neutral, was one of the things that drew me to it
without any processing no .. BUT .. it has pretty good sounding filters and saturation, as soon as you start apply those you can add pretty nice “moji” to the sound..
You can just slice using the slice grid then create linear locks that will play in sequence best of luck in your journey but there are a lot of easier ways
Sometimes you want a finer means of control but yeah that’s one way to do it for sure. ^^
I didn’t sync it to bitwig because it doesn’t have overbridge and I don’t think I had a midi cable at the time
Cool
How comes you did not just sync it to bitwig that’s how I have my Octatrack then the loops are quantised and perfect
I have a digitakt and I love elektron gear but the octatrack whilst being super powerful looks so not intuitive
it’s more similar than you think
@@Alckemy Honestly man, I own use and love both and could not disagree with this more. The Octatrack is nowhere near as intuitive as the digitakt, and the workflows aren’t similar in the slightest beyond using the sequencer. I think convincing people otherwise is setting most of them up to make a very disappointing, discouraging, and expensive mistake.
Btw, you can just use neighbor tracks for extra effects on the channel above it. The Thru tracks are typically best for external gear even though they can technically do both, the neighbors are simpler to set up.
@@mageface.I mean you’re fine to disagree with me but I picked it up in a matter of days and am sharing my experience with you.
However you want to cut it the way I broke the workflow down is as straightforward as described and backed up by me doing it in the video. If you don’t see the connection I can’t really understand it for you, you know?
I have a syntakt and it’s no different tweaking a sound to me than chopping audio to get it just right. Thats the editing part (stage 2)
The sequencing aspect is the most important part of the entire device! That’s how you make music on the thing lol.
I also mentioned neighbor tracks in the video. Did you maybe skim through it and miss the key parts by chance?
Rolling Sampler is the fucking tits. Do you know how to use it to grab system sounds though?
You need some sort of audio splitter like loop back
My biggest issue with the Octatrack is sound quality. It’s literally my worst sounding sampler. I do love the flexibility and the real time mangling potential though. It’s a happy accident machine for me.
I hadn’t really noticed tbh. seeing people like Jon Wayne cook I feel like the audio is fine.
There is a limitation on it only accepting 44.1 audio but honestly I can’t tell a difference
@@Alckemy same here. I’ve never understood that particular complaint.
lol I absolutely disagree. I think it has a quite intimidating learning curve. One reason is because its still like the only thing that does what it does. Its not impossible by any means, but trying to wrap your head around all the different ways it can record and play back tracks, scenes, parts, etc took me a minute to get acclimated to, and theres plenty of others who had similar experiences. It can just take some time - or a really good teacher.
Everyone’s experience will vary but I read the manual and spent about thirty minutes on it and am like, yep. Good to go. There’s a big difference between learning to make music on the thing vs mastering it as well-
But the workflow with the octa is very similar to the other boxes sans the scenes and parts.
I think people get intimated by those other features because making material to even use different parts or resampling comes off as daunting for most.
But, as with everything, it scales.
Heheh, I TOTALLY hear you! Some minutes?? I was one whole day almost tearing my eyes out because of this freak-machine ;) Now it's easy peasy but It was totally counter-intuitive with both setting up the tracks for whatever they were gonna be AND - for the flex machine atleast - select the right track to record on. It felt totally random in the beginning, sometimes I managed to record and sometimes not. Luckilly I prevailed hahah.
Digitakt is #1. God Tier.
If it had stereo samples I likely would’ve gotten that. But the fx builder on the octatrack is super unique
I sold my Digitakt when I got an Octatrack and don’t miss it.
The Octa still reigns supreme. Much deeper and creative.