Forgot to mention: Octatrack needs at least one good separate midi controller.
To get an OT under control (mostly but not only) in a live situation needs a flexible controller.
I think of a slider for volume per track and a few knobs for each channel.
I have an old UC33 which covers the standard use cases, faderfox EC4 and recently started to incorporate a tablet with touchOSC.
It just also makes so much more fun if you don´t have to menu-dive all the time for even the simplest adaptions.
@TheWhistler What are you mapping besides track volume? What are you using the encoders for primarily?
@OP personally I love my Octatrack, it’s my favourite piece of gear and I have plenty. The DT is fantastic as well, as you say, it’s immediacy is what makes it stand out. I use my DT for drum duties so as to liberate the OT to do melodic and harmonic content. The OT is phenomenal for performance, once you’ve decided on a use case, as @ghostbuddy suggested you do earlier in the thread, the menu will become very manageable and you’ll be ordering dishes to mix and match at your table creatively.
That is, if you’re into live manipulation, experimentation, a tactile interface to your sample mangler etc…if none of that matters for you then maybe the OT is just not for you. Which would be OK as well, hard as it may be to believe on here sometimes 
Yeah, I’ve been thinking about getting a midi controller for it for years, with faders and a few knobs per channel but have always kind of found more interesting stuff to buy when I have extra funds. It would open up the OT a lot more, agreed.
My case: I own and love the OT but stopped using it and now I only jam with M:cycles + M:Samples
Main reason? little time and when I sit in from of a hardware I can get easily lost in OT, even if I know what I’m doing. Also sometimes I get some kind of paralysis, like been overwhelmed by the possibilities.
Whether with the Model series it is just non stop fun and 0 worries.
So everyday I wake up and think if I should sell it.
Also use Ableton (and push 2) a lot, where I actually make full “songs” in combination with hardware or sometimes just software.
EDIT: just connected the OT again, turned it on and had lots of fun, so I’m not selling it today!
That depends on the needs of the piece I perform. I use the UC33 for standard.
This device has 3 knobs and 8 faders in a row (think of a mixer).
This fits the 8 tracks of the OT. I have volume (fader) , LPF and Reso as parameters in the first FX block of the OT.
The third knob controls the mix of delay/reverb of the 2nd FX block.
For every special thing that depends on what the track needs I use the Faderfox EC4 because i can name the knobs and have a set of controls that I can switch on a per track basis.
Right now I am about to transfer a lot of that to a tablet (Samusng cheap 10") via touchOSC that I am still about to learn.
I nearly never use the encoders when playing live. But I use the cross fader.
I’d say definitely give it a bit more time then in that case. My personal favourites were always the LFO designer (which for e.g can really bring the FX to life) and the midi arp, and i totally overlooked those the first time i had an OT, so were a revelation when i finally got around to using them. Ultimately i came to the conclusion that I can do that stuff to a much greater complexity in Max/Ableton, which is when i finally decided to get rid of the OT for the last time, but of course YMMV.
“What Is Love (Baby Don’t Hurt Me)”
OT is a tool. Thousands are happy using it. It will make someone else happy if you sell it, someone who can’t afford getting a brand new one.
If I may use your own analogy of relationship between humans, a good divorce is better than a bad marriage?
Also: you will buy it back
My jam partner who owns an OT just got into SLICES mode with a long vocal track and a short envelope. Really powerful technique.
Why struggling ? Let it go, it will make two persons happy instead of one frustrated…
Let it go…I have 3 times. I like it, just not love it. Now, i do have other Elektron stuff as I love the sequencers but use a pyramid for main duties over the OT. I dont sample much so it’s not needed for my cases.
I can’t help you fall in love with the OT. It’s not for everybody. For those who it is for, it’s an incredibly versatile tool. If you only want it as a “drum machine”, it’s probably overpriced and overly complex.
If you’re not vibing with it, by all means, let it go. But the worst mistake anyone can make with the Octatrack is to give up on it before you yourself have gone through and tried all of the ways it can be used, and determine if those uses are things you’d do in your studio. If you need clues on some of that functionality, check out EZBot or Max Marco on youtube. Max does some particularly experimental stuff with it and digs super deep in ways that I think OP would find more useful.
You’ve really only scratched the surface, so I would encourage you to keep it and dig in. The Octatrack rewards time and dedication. There is a lot of fun things it can do, and this forum is full of advice and cool tricks.
You can design a custom LFO shape and apply it to different tracks at different speeds and depths. I use this trick to modulate the filter on 2 tracks panned hard left and right, so the modulation is the same shape, but moving in a polyrhythmic relationship. Makes amazing stereo rhythmic drones.
You can create a bunch of scenes, then if you hold either Scene A or Scene B button, you can play the scenes like a keyboard! Especially cool if the scenes involve pitch changes.
The comb filter is a source of fun for sure. The retrig feature is also wild.
The Octatrack is more like collaborating with a machine, than a straightforward tool to realise your musical ideas. So when I start working on a new track, I always end up somewhere different to what I expected. If you’re open to that, it’s very cool and endlessly surprising.
If you’re looking to make music with it, it’s about melodic sampling. Imo.
How you choose to sample is your choice, how you choose create it your own choice.
I know this was in a large aspect made with the OT https://on.soundcloud.com/whGJW
It’s filter envelope and pitch, with drums and ornaments. That’s it, and it sounds fucking amazing.
If you never sample, or resample your own material to create then it might not be the right tool.
Look back at how you make music that’s satisfying to you, that you resonate with, you want your tools, gear and instruments to follow your standard. Not the other way around.
For me, for example, it’s tapping in drums in some way, mangling samples to chords or effects and keyboard synths.
In this forum we can all get steered toward the crowd, and the crowd isn’t wrong, it just isn’t necessarily right.
I think, like a lot of people here, that the A4 is great. But for me, how I create, it’s not right.
Max Marco vids are awesome. Wish he kept up with them but there are a lot of cool tips and tricks I hadn’t thought of. Just search his Octatrack vids.
https://www.youtube.com/@maxmarco
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwc8ITzX9he6e-6u6bfmz33cmz0FvIouQ
Edit: added playlist link.
Took me 20 hours to realise it wasn’t plugged in.
I like this one. Never thought of that. Thanks 
Max Marco and Ned Rush are my favourites, both are funny and know their way around the OT. And most importantly, they’re more interested in making actually good tutorials, not “being a youtuber”.
I have had the OT twice, and sold it twice. It certainly let me come up with some ideas I would not otherwise have arrived at, and sometimes I wish I still had it.
But every time I think about buying another one, I remember that Drambo on the iPad can do pretty much anything the Octatrack can do, often better, always easier, and more portable.
You have to love and learn deep your instrument. Nothing is better than other thing. I know a guy that make banger with the cheapest looper pedal.
If you don’t like the OT, don’t use it. If you prefere the DT, go with DT you will make dope track for sure.
You feel more confortable in a warm tiny house than a giant mansion.
I’ve spent the best part of last evening yelling into a recording buffer while having a bunch of flex tracks turn recording of said yelling into various percussive elements making beats. Then proceeded to yell different things all the while laughing my ass off from all the weird and wonderful stuff that emerged in real time.
That’s my sales pitch I guess. 