This is a tough one. If you value performance and being able to heavily manipulate in real time… your needs will be different than prepared manipulation and some performance fun.
If you can spend a good amount of time in your DAW, I would advise using VSTs or other synths you have to record sound clips of things that will be too big/heavy/expensive.
OT into Blackbox alone would do wonders for this. A4 into OT with 4 mono THRU tracks would be utilizing a good amount of power from both the A4 and the OT.
A4 has performance built in. OT same deal. You can offload prepared samples to the Blackbox and samples you want to mangle into the remaining 3 or 4 tracks you have left on the OT (depending on how you use T8). You can also mangle all 4 tracks from the A4 in real time as well. Most will be happy with just the stereo out from the A4 and that totally works if you want more tracks on the OT.
Blackbox will get interesting depending on how you want to use the prepared samples. Large “slices” would give you many options per pad.
With Parts and Banks on the OT you can prepare essentially an entire large album with plenty of head room.
Lots of love for the OT because it is a very capable machine.
Glad to see Blackbox being mentioned so much as well!
I would probably do AH+OT+BB after having captured meticulous performances from my favorite synths and VSTs.
Right. You could handle almost any kind of synthesized percussion between the two, plus bassline, arps etc… then on the sampler have one-shots, phrases and drones from other gear in the studio and not have to take them out live.
And you could also swap out either (or both!) for a ST… depending on how deep you want to get into synthesis. But I’m sure you could do a TON with just, say, a ST and DT, and maybe a Typhon or Minitaur for your third box.
