Octatrack 2?

Countersigned.[/quote]
Yep, still (probably very foolishly) hoping the rumoured Roland standalone sampler/sequencer wasn’t a total lie and they’ve nailed something great… We’ll see. If not then I also have pretty strong faith that Elektron will do it at some point but like you say, not an octatrack 2.

Is this a hint that you’d be able to finetune the OS in a JJOS kind of way after Elektron wash their hands of it? I’d love to see someone do that!! [/quote]
Moonbeams answer:

Love to do that and I’m sure that I would have fun, or a mental breakdown trying… I know that I’ve got a list of things I’d want to do… sure, why not? :stuck_out_tongue:

Pragmatic answer:

Elektron have a whole bunch of developers, engineers et al, with a whole bunch of very serious and varied skills, no question there.

They are a bunch of very intelligent, highly skilled and passionate people… no doubt they have their very good reasons for everything, why the OS is the way it is, why it was desgined the way it is, its limitations etc.

Its amazingly easy, regardless of field/discipline/scenario etc, to throw assumptions and presumptions around… with full clarity and knowledge, the truth can often be quite different.

Regardless… I wouldn’t hold your breath on that happening any time soon… I’d either have to:

a) Go work for Elektron, and be put in charge of Octatrack development. Refer the pragmatic answer re skills/resources. They’re better then me.

b) Be given the OS, doco, code etc. Pretty much zero chance of that happening. Can’t imagine any company doing that, no?

c) Rewrite the entire OS from scratch… umm… thats complicated, and who’s going to pay me to do that? Reckon Octatrack users are going to kickstart a year or two’s worth of my salary to do that?

That, and I’d much rather design and build my own hardware, from scratch then do that project… to the kickstarter!

PS: JJOS is a total anomaly. My understanding is the JJOS guy used to work for Akai on the MPC’s for like 10 years… thats a world of difference when you have all that knowldege, have been working on the same hardware, code, tools etc then attempting such a project from scratch.[/quote]
Ah man, I like the ‘moonbeams’ answer best :wink: Shame it’s such a huge undertaking for anyone with the right skills to tweak it to perfection. Sounds like it would be a total nightmare/long commitment for you. A shame but it’ll always be pretty great as it is.

Sweet. At least I know your guarenteed for my kickstarter. Well… at least for a dollar :stuck_out_tongue:

But you know, like the old woman said when she was pissing in the sea…

a) Organise petition and kickstarter
b) ???
c) Profit

:stuck_out_tongue:

Haha :slight_smile: Maybe someone with an OT obsession and the skills will do it as a (long and stressful) labour of love just so they have their ‘perfect’ box… And then sell it to the rest of us :wink:

Not this horse.

I’d want a guarenteed wage or cash up front, and legal contracts/waivers. I’ve still got bills to pay, and mouths to feed.

And putting that much time, energy and effort into a project is no problem for me, but I’d rather do it with my own baby if theres no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Yeh man, fully understandable, was thinking more along the lines of some hermit dude out there tinkering away manically through obsession :wink:
Would love to see what you’d come up with yourself if you ever do your own thing. Can never have too many sampler/sequencer/groove boxes :wink:

Elektron don’t just make decisions based on hypothetical technical limitations, but rather artificial ones for economic reasons. i.e you can’t make one product too proficient at one function, that is a significant part of another product’s selling points. midi sequencing for example, audio output count, varying internal track lengths, etc or even the fact that making a unit too proficient today limits what you can implement in a mkII version and expect to entice upgrades, for instance a polyphonic patch implementation of the 8 voices/tracks of the Octatrack … if there would be an Octatrack mkII, and the mkI functioned as it does now, and the mkII could sum the 8 voices together for a polyphonic patch… you can bet that would be a draw for upgrades. Not so much if the Octatrack mkI can also do it…which would be easy to implement. yes, easy. it does nothing with the dsp, just pipes around the midi a wee bit differently. … but i digress. there are many such examples.

it is just as equally naive to assume that the reason every head-scratching ‘bug’ or limitation hasn’t been addressed is owing to mystical technical reasons, as it is that every feature request should be technically ‘easy’ to implement.

there is always, imo, an underlying economic question asked before any feature request or ‘bug’ fix request is considered…and that question is: “how will this impact sales of the other products we sell, or plan to sell at some point in the future ?”

so long as the answer is “not at all” …or “not significantly” … then you have a much better chance of seeing it implemented - and this is totally irrespective of technical difficulty.

ymmv.

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^ dunno.

I can see this being the case with something like the AR not being able to sample…
(I find it difficult to understand why they didn’t hook up an ADC to the inputs, for FX & filter duties :confused: )

but this logic totally doesn’t hold up with regards to bug fixes. the only actual reasonable thing I can think of which prevents bugs from being fixed, is limited human resources. surely there is nothing to be gained from keeping bugs in the devices?

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there’s a reason i phrased it ‘bug’ instead of simply bug.

because it’s questionable whether some things are bugs, or limitations, or indeed if elektron will see something as a bug

for instance…the MDUW midi machines are buggy … why in all this time hasn’t that been fixed ? … well, because the MnM is what they want you to own for midi sequencing … and despite the MDUW midi machine bugs, it is just about consistently good enough for triggering in a one-shot fashion, i.e drum sounds. so why fix it ? … that said, there are some other flakey midi issues on the MDUW that really ought to be fixed…such as some midi machines not triggering at all when a pattern begins, but again, I refer you back to the proposition that the MnM is the machine they want you to own (of the silvers) for midi sequencing. implementing midi in a solid way on the MDUW will surely eat in to MnM sales when folks are on the fence. Ideally they want you to own both.

even the Octatrack handles midi sequencing (CC) significantly, and problematically, different to the MnM … the MnM does it the ‘right’ way …with CC coming just before the note, and the Octatrack does it the much more frequently problematic way… CC coming after the note … for my money, the Octatrack way is clearly buggy and should have been fixed a long time ago … why hasn’t it ? … in the mean time, if proper CC sequencing is a priority for you (and this isn’t exactly an esoteric usage scenario) then the choice of machine is clear…MnM. or both. at least until such time as the OT CC bug is fixed. but, if the defeatist attitude of some vocal forum veterans is anything to go by…it won’t be… not least because people rather than support such requests shoot them down with ‘it will never happen, they’re past that cycle’ …etc

ymmv.

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Some random thoughts from a casual forum member:

The existing OT is hindered severely by many features being hidden and accessible only by odd button combinations. I would say a new performance sampler that carries the OT idea but has a significantly improved user interface and an improved display.

The OT already functions more like a USB stick or card reader for moving data to and from an external computer and I think any performance sampler should maintain that capability. The chose of compact flash over SD was a little odd given the market direction. I would say that the one major drawback of my RYTM is that samples have to be sent to the +drive over MIDI and can’t just be dragged over inside overbridge. Being able to drag and drop from the PC or DAW to a new and vice-versa would be amazing.

I think the ability to communicate directly with a DAW would bring wonderful sampling and outboard effects opportunities to a new performance sampler having something like overbridge.

There are many possible improvements to the basic sampler engine, for example multi-sampling with velocity and note switching. AFAIK this is not an available of the OT (was not when I owned one).

Well… since MIDI is a serial interface, there’s a good argument for prioritising note delivery over CCs.

I think the way they can develop the MK2 is by using audio over usb (from a4 or ar or ak to MK2)

Also they can optimize the usability. For me the machine feels like crazy, with a lack of overview and not glued to my brain at all…

off course better filters

If they throw in an analog circuit path and polyphonic playback per sample, along with the option for DAW integration, I’ll cry.

Put in a SID chip and I’d have a small religious moment.

They didn’t replace the SIDStation with a SIDStation MkII. They killed it and introduced the Machinedrum and Monomachine instead. Now those two are on the way out, presumably already replaced by Analog 4/Analog Keys/Analog Rytm

I’m with whoever say there’ll be no Octatrack II. It doesn’t fit the Elektron history.

They might do another “dynamic sampler” but it won’t be a new Octatrack. It’ll be a different animal with a different name.

JMO of course. Not even my 2 cents - more like my wooden nickel and worth just as much.

Precisely.

I don’t care about an MKII…and I know I’ll never get my wish…but…all I really want is the conditional triggers feature. Add that and I’ll be completely satisfied.

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What if the octatrack mkII could turn into an octopus. Seriously I think I may get a mnm too.

I’d be happy if you could paste patterns without having to switch first, like you can on the Rytm.

As soon as OB was announced I was convinced there would be a MKII OT. OB is the perfect interface to get the 8 individual track outs over USB. It just makes too much sense.
That and replace the CF card with SD or do away with that all together in favour of a plus drive with sample transfer over usb.

I also agree with one of the guys above who noted there were to many functions hidden behind button combos. When I had mine I felt like I had to re-learn certain functions if I ever spent on much time away from the machine.

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