There’s room in there for API 2520’s right? 
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So, no significant audible difference between a raw sample and one recorded from standard outs on octa mk 1? I mean, that figures with my experience (I’m not fussy) but I’ve read the odd person complaining of the octatrack ‘colouring’ their samples. Always seemed a bit funny to me. I definitely won’t be opening the lid on my box of goodies.
In my opinion people that say things like that are either audiophiles with super expensive setups or people that have super crappy setups.
Plus what coloring even means lol. OT has its sound which is unique to it. Hows that a bad thing?
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So yall against modding the OT??
My current OT’s still under warranty; there’s no way I’m opening it up 
But kudos to those brave/skilled enough for the mod.
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After some time with my OT today (finally arrived) I compared some samples directly from my PC through Scarlet 18i8 and then from OT and to be honest I can’t find any audible differences.
Checked on spectrum analyzer and again I’m having trouble finding something that would make the signal noticeably different.
I’m blaming this opinion (from certain people) on poor setups lol.
This thing sounds GREAT!
I don’t have an issue with the output, but the inputs I could see possibly benefitting from an op amp upgrade. Any test that people are doing should include a DA/AD loop back recording and then the sampled thru OT recording both pre and post mod. Would be very curious to see those results.
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Yeah, I can hear the difference between direct outs of my synths and when they go through OT too. They loose something when through OT. Not sure what, either dynamic range or bit of clarity and “3D” spaciousness, all sounds more “flat”. Sorry for the lack of better terms, I’m no audiophile by any stretch. This “quality loss” also gets captured when samping into OT. Most of the audience would never notice and OT is great at what it does so it’s not a real issue. But any improvement on input stage is welcome.
Thanks for all the shared experience above!
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well, I don’t want my sampler to color my sounds. That for I have several other equipments. The “coloring” in the OT is not something so “unique” anyway, it comes from D/A converters and op-amps. It’s like saying that recording at 22 KHz/ 8 bit has its sound which is unique. We are not talking about boutique analog gear.
I do notice a difference, a very small one (a small lost on the drums transients), but big enough not for recording everything and play it back through the OT in a production environment.
In a live situation it is a different story.
If the audio quality in the octatrack wouldn’t be questioned, then how did we managed to read all the previous posts in this thread? 
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Don’t blame peoples setup when comparing audio with a Scarlet 18i8 
I feel this way too… Never really understood what happens to the sound… Like, I take two mono synths, say x0xb0x and a moog, add a drumbox… and if I use the OT as a mixer for these, everything sounds a lot less exciting/engaging somehow than if I plug the same bits of gear to a lil 6ch mackie VLZ4
One more thing I’d like to point out - very often, little tweaks like this (output stage modding) can be very hard to quantify/judge in a simple test. That does not mean the change is not meaningful in a cumulative context and/or over a longer time period. “Audio excellence” in terms of fidelity is often achieved by small tweaks around the whole system (eliminating bottlenecks from every point of the signalpath), small changes accumulating into a greater difference in the end.
But still at the end of the day these things are subjective, and certainly will not prevent anyone from making compelling music. So if you are happy with how things are sounding, and do not enjoy modding or geeking out on this stuff, never feel compelled to do so.
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Lets say you Sample with a recording buffer and immediatly playback.
For me the audio quality loss thing comes from the fact that the volume is lowered at the input stage and then (digitally?) boosted on the sample playback engine in order to achieve the same volume. This is where there is a quality loss I think, hence the MK2 input stage upgrade. No?
Appart from that my only gripe is that there is no visual idicator for the headroom on the master track…
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I believe both issues will be helped by the mk II upgrade (improved input section and SRC3 led metering)
Exactly.
Appart from that, I don’t see anything really annoying concerning audio quality on MK1!
btw, for anyone interested in impedance balancing:
http://www.soundonsound.com/sound-advice/q-how-impedance-balancing-audio-different-normal-balancing
So there really is no level benefit with impedance balanced, the level remains the same in both unbal and bal interconnections, as the signal only travels through one pin. But improved CMRR is never a bad thing I guess!
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Very interesting thread👍🏼
I think a lot of the concerns regarding sound quality are related to input and output gain staging and headroom, I think the lack of proper metering on the OT contributes greatly to the sometimes unsatisfactory results.
However I’d be interested to see if any improvements can be made by replacing the opamps, certainly seems feasible.
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It’s true that proper gain staging improves things. I’ve spend quite some time to playing with levels and it’s possible to get things sounding less mushy.
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It seems very likely to me that the complete input/output stage design including convertors ain’t that top notch, so that the whole thing works best at a certain optimum level (were components are spec’ed). My guess is that’s also why it is important to follow the input LED indications to get that optimal level (not only to prevent clipping the input).
Regarding the Mk2 SRC3 led hardware upgrade
Adding a LED that would reflect the level reaching the main output stage and the DA with a color code (same as for the inputs) would help a lot for gain staging to reach that reference level…and also prevent clipping the output!
Way back in the OT beta I asked for proper metering (and threshold sampling - nice to see these on the DT!) I’m hoping that the mk2 OT OS will include them. The single LEDs are insufficient indicators IMHO, and there is plenty of room on the LCD to have a simple bargraph style meter, even if it means losing the spinning tape reel - which is not very useful anyway.
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We can finally hear samples!
I just modded the outputs and I publish here two loops. There is a file for each loop:
- the original file
- the sample played from the OT and recorded again with stock op-amps
- the sample played from the OT and recorded again with modded op-amps
every file is normalized for a better comparison.
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/pdrfbczjoj4ksc4/AAAmVucT3GzyLKI-7_qpvLC3a?dl=0
please share your thoughts, I will share mine later.
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