I’d highly recommend downloading the A4 tutorial @ Macprovideo.com. Thavius Beck (I think that’s his name) does a really great job of teaching you the ins and outs of the A4.
Just a quick question guys, if i connect the audio input to my Octatrack main out, is there any way of recording the whole mix via Overbridge?
Yeah - you can use the A4 ins that way if you’re short of a dedicated sound card
if you want to capture the ins and internal tracks at same time, you may have to sacrifice something depending on whether you go 6tracks @24bit or 8tracks@16bit
everything out the mains together won’t be a problem or you can prevent the inputs appearing there too
there’s 8 feeds from the A4 … mains 2, individual tracks 4, ext ins 2
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thanks for the reply man.
I’ve got a focusrite scarlett 6in 6out in my studio but i do a lot of my sketching ideas in my lounge. Be nice just to keep my setup minimal, just the A4 and Octatrack.
So say i want to take a stereo master out of Octatrack into the audio input of Analog Four, the external input will show up in overbridge like an audio interface in the DAW? Or is there a degree of internal routing on the A4?
Excuse my newbie questions, I’ve never used Overbridge. Im just an old school Octatrack user.
Any help with setting this up id appreciate. Just to clarify id be wanting to record the A4 4 x synth tracks, and the external inputs on separate tracks in Ableton via Overbridge (if possible)
i don’t use a regular DAW so my experience there won’t be any use
I’m sure you can tap the external inputs pre fx and if this is set up to be a live part of the OB stream i/o then it’ll be locatable somewhere in your daw
you just set up 6 or 8 max channels of Ins or outs in your OB control panel and that should include the Ext In inputs … as for soundcard usage I only recall trying the digital routing back through the device, I guess the ins can be used isolated that way too . .there are loads of in depth threads on setting this up … I’m sure the flexibility is there
if you want to capture the 4 tracks + ins then you can do that with OB at 24bit if you want … folk have set up templates to achieve this, have a search
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sweet man, i just looked at an overbridge tutorial and it looks pretty simple. Literally just tick a check box for 4 x tracks and 2 x external!
Looks pretty great. Thanks for your help
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I’ve started taking the time to do this and it’s really well worth the effort; the performance macros give an incredible amount of control when playing live or jamming around - and add that to controlling CV parameters too and it’s all good.
I can’t remember who it was here who advised mapping the first vertical pair of knobs (ie A and F) to performance macros for track 1, the second pair to track 2, etc, but that an invaluable suggestion. I found that then the last pair (E and J) work well as macros for FX and/or CV if you’re using them. The certainly helps maintain a logical way of laying things out for developing good muscle memory for finding performance controls smoothly and easily.
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I do this as well!
It really helps!
And you don’t have to use Perf name characters to denote which track it’s controlling. 
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This is definitely a plus as they can be labelled more sensibly with what the encoder actually affects, more or less - though more than three characters would be handy (not that there’s room).
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I’ve resorted to using creative punctuation for the first 3 characters, going for a 100% emphatic nomenclature.
!$!BassFilter
F#!LeadFX
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Beware of latency. Overbridge is not the best for that.
If I were you, I’d keep my soundcard if it’s converters are good.
I keep my Rme Multiface, for the moment I don’t care, I like to record in OT, but for top recordings, as A4 is analog, as you can mod it to have 4 individual analog outs, I would record it with a better soundcard…
Just thoughts…
Yeah, seems logical, I planned 4 verticals macros for 4 tracks too, and 2 for all tracks, I’d control with Octatrack’s crossfader (Ep+). 
A basic acid filter setting :
A : Env Filter Depth
F : Env Filter Decay
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Looks like an A4 is heading my way as well!
Looking forward to this box, and to completing my trinity in august.
Multi map looks killer I must say! OT should be able to really mix things up with the A4.
Anything specific to get aquainted with the A4? OT, rytm and heat are already familiar to me, so most of the things on the A4 are familiar to me already… Thinking about feeding the CV to my x0xb0x, unless someone has had a far too good of a time controlling their heat with the A4?
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You should know that Multimap on the A4 requires an external keyboard controller for smoothest use. On-board KB requires staying in edit mode, which can be cumbersome.
If you are familiar with Rytm + standard subtractive synthesizer architecture, A4 workflow will be quick to pick up for you.
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You can actually play/rec it fine whilst it is in edit mode and just traverse the octaves, better than nothing as a way to get use from it, which it had a faux MM entry mode to keep it cleaner, even though it’s just one octave at a time
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post edited accordingly!
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Thinking about using the MPC live to bring some multimap heat, combining A4, rytm, OT and blofeld sounds into one pad mashing hell of a “kit” If I can get the OT tracks to play with MIDI notes, I can even add fx embellishments and resampling mayhem to the mix 
To be able to rec it all into the MPC seq (with nudge and note repeats) will be the icing on the cake!
If I had realized multimap potential earlier, I would have bought an A4 long ago… This is great stuff, I’ve dreamed of this kind of setup for almost 7 years! (and spent a small fortune trying out various gear to pull this off)
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Basic use is, as said above, inputting any other gear such as OT and possibly use the send FX.
My favorite combo is controlling external gear such as 0-coast with A4 CV outs and get its sound in A4 inputs.
As you can use e.g. Track 4 to trig your external gear through CV, you can also use this track filters and countless modulations by setting the inputs as oscillators source.
Give A4 some time, as said above it’s a very powerful synth that takes time to really appreciate
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Agree 100%.
Still my favorite synth ever.
Whenever I consider spending anything around $750-$900 on a new synth, I always pause and consider adding another 4 voices of A4 instead.
A single A4 voice can do so, so much.
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Hey @lescour1 !
I saw that you are firing in every direction tonight 
Keep it simple for now, 1 track at a time ^^
It’s normal to feel the need to understand it all but you won’t know it all in a couple hours. Nor a day, nor a month 
So take it easy, let it grow on you, just play with the basic part for now, there will always be time to get deeper…
Multimap should be in next month meal 
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