Another thing to consider is the price. New, $1,500. At Reverb.com, there are plenty available in Mint or Excellent condition for roughly $1,100. That’s just $400 more than the DT.
Mk. 1 is 600…
No, but its sound quality is.
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The problem with a complex piece of kit like this is that it’s got a lot of love/hate moments spread out over 30 days, 30 weeks… and it’s sometimes hard to quantify how much it frustrates you because you sometimes set expectations differently and expect more when it legitimately does so much.
…but also they are not the same and offer quite different feature sets even with some overlap.
The OT is freaking amazing. The third or fourth box from a boutique company. It does so much. It’s a small DAW (midi, sampling, audio editing, recording, a USB hard drive) and mixer in heavy duty metal. It has a bespoke realtime OS, it’s own GUI/windowing system, custom hardware controls, solid, very fast, (shit) audio I/O in 24-bit, an insane sampler that’s nothing like any other on the market, (arguably) good automatable FX (you an chain 16 of them if you’re willing to lose tracks), that sequencer, scenes, and comes with enough space for your whole sample library. All designed + tested by just 30 people (give or take); and sold for an acceptable price for what might not have been a sustainable run at launch.
You could replace it with a generic laptop, audio I/o and some Max/MSP instruments (or a DAW but you’d have a less-unique music environment then) and a MIDI controller… but it would weigh more, take up more space in your bag, be more delicate, need more config, use more power, be much less cool, and you’d have suffer with Windows (or linux I guess).
It might not be for you (I’m not yet convinced it’s for me, but I’m learning)… but it’s definitely amazing.
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You are wrong, the OT is a masterpiece
in music equipment history.
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I guess sarcasm doesn’t translate well for some people, over a text oriented medium.
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This is my current setup for live performances.
I have paired 2 devices (Digitakt and Digitone or Analog Rytm and Analog Four)
When I’ve played a pattern enough, I loop the sound with the Octatrack and process it there.
Filter, Delay, Reverb, Attack, Release, Pitch etc.
Then I start the transition to my next pattern.
I also have thousands of my own loops in the Octatrack, which I also use.
Actually, I only need Octatrack live. But with more devices, it’s more fun.
Digitakt and Digitone make a great pairing.
(Also AR and A4)
I can mix my own sound like vinyl. And change it live.
That’s great.
Overrated? No. It tends to be underused because the company’s other devices are great too and they overlap in usage.
That’s why I use my Octatrack as a looper and not as a sampler.
Because real time looping on 8 tracks does not master any other machine in terms of quality and usability.
Ok, it takes some time to get used to it …
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This is very true. Part of the initial difficulty for me was setting things up and basically conceptualizing what to do with a “blank piece of canvas”. ANd I think one of the big hurdles I got over was a couple years in when I had a huge library of samplechains, to pick and choose from.
I actually got the OT because a friend told me I should. A freind I really respect. I got a DT first. Loved it, but the OTMK1’s came way down in price, so I got one (just bought a second). I still respect my friend. He gave great advice.
The DT is fun tho. If you don’t feel you “need” an OT and are getting loads of music done right now, I would say just keep doing what you are doing. Don’t try and fix something if it’s not broken. If you have time to spend getting to know a machne and curating samples and set-up, do it. Otherwise enjoy. and God luck.
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The Octatrack probably falls very nicely into the cliche of “a jack of all trades”; in that in can do a whole bunch of things, but also doesn’t excel at any thing either.
As such, it is a far less capable and immediate then any other Elektron, yet by the same token, is more complicated and deep then any other Elektron.
Wheter it is overrate or not, really depends on your usage and what you do with it. Which is obviously a bit of a useless and vague answer.
A flawed masterpiece in my opinion.
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you’re joking, right??
I’m not the biggest fan of the OT, but that’s because of how I approach music making… but, even as a listener of how some others use it, I can see from a mile off that it excels at a lot…for one, it’ll manipulate samples and live inputs in a way that no other hardware can.
No, not in the slightest.
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Not sure I understand this.
Is the octatrack overrated? No.
But the digitakt is.
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MachineDrum, Analog Rytm and Digitakt are all better drum machines then the Octatrack.
MonoMachine, Analog Four and Digitone are all synthesizers then the Octatrack.
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But it’s not a drum machine or a synthesizer.
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Seems like people already got you covered. I love the DT, but I wanted specific features of the OT, and unless you really feel it is a need, believe me, the DT is killer enough. I wanted the memory for using full tracks instead of one shots and the extended 1:30 sample length, and the crossfader. The other features were just my future bonus and have yet to really use much of them. It took me months to get used to it and I missed my DT often. hope this is of help if not just some reassurance that you sound like your pretty happy where you are.
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Aww you sold! I didn’t realise! I was waiting for some more Eaves OT vids 
Do you think you’d ever try rytm? 
I like the Octatrack, but I also dislike it. The UI is a mess with those double key combinations that also change within a different mode for the same key combos. You literally have to remember hundreds of those in context.
Elektron understood this, and their analog series and especially the Digi series and even more the Model Series have a streamlined much more refined UI.
This is something to take into account and is my biggest complaint about the OT. On the other hand, it’s a feature monster.
I decided against it. Not my kind of tool because of that. It draws too much attention.
Overrated? Yesno. Depends on, who you ask.
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I don’t think it’s overrated but I think people really overstate the difficult learning curve. It’s not nearly as difficult as it’s made out to be.
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