Any Octatrack users?

[Sir Nose]

In the US, the MD and MNM seem to have stayed the same but the OT and A4 bumped up $100.

I'd definitely go B-stock, just make sure it has the full warranty.

[Dapifer]

Anyway my OT arrived at the weekend. I can tell its a powerful tool but one thats gonna require a lot of dedication and patience.

Has anyone had issues with distortion when loading the default presets on the soundcard? I can't seem to register at the Elektron forum.

[GovernorSilver]

Has anyone had issues with distortion when loading the default presets on the soundcard? I can't seem to register at the Elektron forum.

I did not notice distortion when I tried the presets in Demo Mode.

Try creating a blank project and see what happens.

[GovernorSilver]

Also, the elektron-users forum seems to be retired. This is one everyone moved to, and it appears to be quite active:

http://www.elektronauts.com/

[Dapifer]

Thanks, yea it seems to be fine with samples I load of my own so I'm sure it's something simple, just need a full day to sit down at this but a few things are starting to click.

[Hecate]

I really enjoy using the Octatrack - it takes a lot of patience, but once you get more familiar with its many operations and get it set up how you like, it's great. I use it to control and sample my Sub Phatty and Mopho x4 on the fly. Once you get the MIDI and CC's routed, you'll find yourself getting a lot more out of your synths...

[robml]

a friend of mine has the octa and the machinedrum. he's a successful producer with high aptitude.

i asked him what he thought of them. this was his response.

"they are great, but they took me ages to master. 6 months"

6 MONTHS! are you f kidding me?? that is a joke!

if a product is designed well you should be able to pick it up and use it.

ive had machines like the mpc2000 and the roland 307 where you spend more than half your time figuring out how to do something or figuring out why the thing is making a sound you dont want it to make. back to ebay you go!

needless to say i have stayed away from the elektron stuff. i want to make music, not read manuals.

sucks though the market really needs a good drum machine loaded with all the classic drum machine samples. arturia came close with their spark and spark le, but the poorly conceived and unintuitive software dropped the ball big time - which is a shame because the hardware is awesome.

watched a vid on abletons push used as a drum machine sequencer the other day. i love the ableton stuff. they've got someone over there in UX with their head screwed on straight.

cheers

[stiiiiiiive]

a friend of mine has the octa and the machinedrum. he's a successful producer with high aptitude.

i asked him what he thought of them. this was his response.

"they are great, but they took me ages to master. 6 months"

6 MONTHS! are you f kidding me?? that is a joke!

if a product is designed well you should be able to pick it up and use it.

I half disagree: some will click with an instrument that doesn't inspire others.

More specifically about ht eElektron instruments:

The MachineDrum is one of the most immediate instrument I've played. Everything makes sense quickly. Still you can discover her deepness during years. That's what I call an inspiring instrument, really. On a side note I think it's the most easy Elektron instruments to learn.

The OT -from what I know although I haven't used one- is another beast. It makes many many things and has to be configured for this or that, in a way. Mastering it entirely must take more than 6 months, but doing what one wants to do with it is shorter in my opinion. You cannot have such a deep instrument without paying a bit of technical debt.

The advantage of knowing one Elektron instrument is you also know partly the other ones since they all rely on the great sequencer.

When the OT was realeased, I was like a kid before Christmas. I chose to let go the first OS versions to the real fanboys
Over the time I realized that I would find it wonderful but too deep for me (or was it me becoming lazier...?) I was loving the specifications, the possibilities of it, but I decided not to invest so much time into mastering it. I did not buy it. one day maybe.

[robml]

I half disagree: some will click with an instrument that doesn't inspire others.

yeah maybe some people have the patience to sit down with a machinedrum and learn it.

maybe the machinedrum is easier than the octa.

i had a flick through the machinedrum manual and this is what i saw at first glance

machines
+drive
snapshots
dec
rdec
mfreq
layer edits
trig
data entry points
routing keys
parameter locks
amd
amf
eqf
eqg
flth
DYNAMIX DYNAMICS PROCESSOR < LOL

and i have no idea intuitively what any of them are. and this is what makes it a bad design. be honest, how many times do you have to refer to the manual? how many times do you change a parameter to see what change it makes to the sound before you know what it is? and ok, you learn it and then you can use it. but then 6 months later you go back, and you will have forgotten it, so out comes the manual again.

i think the main problem is whoever came up with the terminology for naming parameters and functions dropped the ball.

the first video i watched on the machinedrum years ago (i dont know if it's still around) - the guy had to explain what a "machine" was. a "machine is a sound". - well no, a machine is not a sound, a machine is "a tool containing one or more parts". and it gets worse from there. the whole thing seems to go against intuition.

the display looks like a re-release of a shitty old roland machine from the 90's where all the controls require the manual to figure out.

i love the concept. the hardware looks great. implementation of the UX, i wish it was better, i would have bought one.

cheers

[Voltor07]

a friend of mine has the octa and the machinedrum. he's a successful producer with high aptitude.

i asked him what he thought of them. this was his response.

"they are great, but they took me ages to master. 6 months"

6 MONTHS! are you f kidding me?? that is a joke!

if a product is designed well you should be able to pick it up and use it.

I kind of agree, kind of don't. The Little Phatty was my first analog synth. I was able to play it and get some decent sounds from it right away. It took me about two years to go into the menus and learn how to work different settings from the menus, heck, it took me a month to figure out how the envs changed the sound! So, six months to master an instrument isn't bad. See, there's a difference between using something and mastering something.

[GovernorSilver]

a friend of mine has the octa and the machinedrum. he's a successful producer with high aptitude.

i asked him what he thought of them. this was his response.

"they are great, but they took me ages to master. 6 months"

6 MONTHS! are you f kidding me?? that is a joke!

What does he mean by "I mastered the Octatrack and MD"?

The Octatrack is a seriously deep machine. There is no way that guy achieved mastery of that instrument in just 6 months. Can he do something like this with just a 1-second sample?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6wKg30cy1w

It'll take a couple of days maybe to learn the basics of sampling and sequencing the Octatrack way. After 6 months experience, you'll probably fairly comfortable with the Octatrack and making music with it. But mastery? Not likely. There are Octatrack users who still learn new tricks on their machines, 2-3 years in.

[stiiiiiiive]

maybe the machinedrum is easier than the octa.

Definitely, indeed.

i had a flick through the machinedrum manual and this is what i saw at first glance [...]
and i have no idea intuitively what any of them are. and this is what makes it a bad design.

And that's the point: you read the manual. Try it for a couple of days and tell me I'm not saying you'll be convinced, I would be curious to hear your feedback (not intended...) as Im' sure the Machine Drum is easier to use than the manual lets assume.

be honest, how many times do you have to refer to the manual? how many times do you change a parameter to see what change it makes to the sound before you know what it is? and ok, you learn it and then you can use it. but then 6 months later you go back, and you will have forgotten it, so out comes the manual again.

Honestly, I read the manual once before buying it and made my first pattern + kit a couple of hours after I first turned it on with no manual.
I had to go back to the manual on a regular basis, neither more not less than for say the Little Phatty.
Finally, I can say the MD is the instrument I'm the more confident with.

But hey, that's me: I love it and used it for much more than the vanilla beats: improv with kit / pattern building from scratch, live processing or sampling of myself or other musicians, reinjection of the samples in the patterns,...
Plus we can disagree on some points.

All that being said, honesty has me saying that I can see you point. I can imagine that, coming from a guitar or knobbed-out synth environmenent, meeting the MD can be confusing. I'm jsut saying that the potential / use difficulty ratio is quite high for a hardware instrument, plus the live factor is great. But then again, you're right that does not make everything for anyone

[robml]

The Octatrack is a seriously deep machine. There is no way that guy achieved mastery of that instrument in just 6 months. Can he do something like this with just a 1-second sample?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6wKg30cy1w

It'll take a couple of days maybe to learn the basics of sampling and sequencing the Octatrack way. After 6 months experience, you'll probably fairly comfortable with the Octatrack and making music with it. But mastery? Not likely. There are Octatrack users who still learn new tricks on their machines, 2-3 years in.

i doubt he bothered to do something like that youtube clip. im guessing that guy looped milliseconds of that sample, stretched them etc. trying to find interesting sounds. that isnt difficult. i could cut sounds like together like that pretty easily using any wav editor and any given sample player like battery etc. trying to do it on a piece of hardware would likely be a challenge, if you could be bothered. im guessing he's into the herbert thing.

learning to use a sampler for 2-3 years seems like a complete waste of time to me, but each to their own. it's hard to make a product that pleases everyone- but the elektron stuff seems to target a very niche market.

cheers

[GovernorSilver]

The Octatrack is a seriously deep machine. There is no way that guy achieved mastery of that instrument in just 6 months. Can he do something like this with just a 1-second sample?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6wKg30cy1w

It'll take a couple of days maybe to learn the basics of sampling and sequencing the Octatrack way. After 6 months experience, you'll probably fairly comfortable with the Octatrack and making music with it. But mastery? Not likely. There are Octatrack users who still learn new tricks on their machines, 2-3 years in.

i doubt he bothered to do something like that youtube clip. im guessing that guy looped milliseconds of that sample, stretched them etc. trying to find interesting sounds. that isnt difficult. i could cut sounds like together like that pretty easily using any wav editor and any given sample player like battery etc. trying to do it on a piece of hardware would likely be a challenge, if you could be bothered. im guessing he's into the herbert thing.

learning to use a sampler for 2-3 years seems like a complete waste of time to me, but each to their own. it's hard to make a product that pleases everyone- but the elektron stuff seems to target a very niche market.

cheers

If you (or your friend you were talking about) have that kind of skill already with sample manipulation with wav editors, battery (which I'm not familiar with), etc. it's not going to take you six months to learn how to do the same thing on an Octatrack. Your friend is being melodramatic saying it took him six months to "master" this device and the Machinedrum. I believe in the UK they call that "taking the piss". That is my point.

You misunderstood what I meant by "2-3 years", but that's ok. You and I have a different understanding of what "mastery" really means.

I'm quite familiar with software vs. hardware arguments. You sound like a guy who prefers software to hardware. I started with just software. I have Ableton Live Suite with Max For Live, Reaktor, etc.. I probably could have done everything that I've accomplished on the Octatrack in Live Suite/M4L alone. However, I prefer working with the Octatrack - I can get around fairly quickly with the button combos that I've memorized, the knobs, etc. To each his own indeed.

BTW, if your purpose for joining this thread was to stop the other guy from buying an Octatrack, you're too late.

[robml]

If you (or your friend you were talking about) have that kind of skill already with sample manipulation with wav editors, battery (which I'm not familiar with), etc. it's not going to take you six months to learn how to do the same thing on an Octatrack. Your friend is being melodramatic saying it took him six months to "master" this device and the Machinedrum. I believe in the UK they call that "taking the piss". That is my point.

You misunderstood what I meant by "2-3 years", but that's ok. You and I have a different understanding of what "mastery" really means.

I'm quite familiar with software vs. hardware arguments. You sound like a guy who prefers software to hardware. I started with just software. I have Ableton Live Suite with Max For Live, Reaktor, etc.. I probably could have done everything that I've accomplished on the Octatrack in Live Suite/M4L alone. However, I prefer working with the Octatrack - I can get around fairly quickly with the button combos that I've memorized, the knobs, etc. To each his own indeed.

BTW, if your purpose for joining this thread was to stop the other guy from buying an Octatrack, you're too late.

actually my friend and i are from australia, not the uk. it is australian colloquialism to use the term "master" in the same way we use "tame" or "had a good understanding of". im guessing you're not familiar with australian colloquialism.

anyway, im not really into arguing with people online regarding the definitions of words. and for the record i wasn't trying to stop the guy from buying an octatrack. i love hardware and have a considerable arsenal- but, let the buyer beware- you will be required to do a lot of reading.

cheers