I recently put some stems from a project into my OT only to run into issues when it came to play them. I’m not sure what the protocol is. But anyway, I would have an exact 4-bar loop at 116BPM for instance, and put 116bpm in the track title, but when I went to play on the Octatrack it was pitched down and it said it was 106 bpm.
So, what is it I need to do to make this all good? I’m not even sure what the sample rate of the wav files i exported from Studio One were. I just assumed they were 48KHz?
The manual and all online resources Clearly state the octatrack can read 16 or 24 bit @ 44.1khz wav files.
So make sure your samples match that.
Additionally, when you load a sample to a slot if you know the sample is 116 bpm (or what ever) and octatracks audio editor says something different, you can correct it on the attributes page.
So there you have your problem. The OT expects 44.1kHz files. When you play back the 48kHz stem which contains around 10% more sample values than required it takes 10% longer (thus the discrepancy in BPM).
A 10% difference is always a big telling sign for a 44.1 vs. 48kHz mismatch …
Yeah, sampling rate is pretty closeley analogous to tape speed (one is more samples per second, the other is more iron oxide particles passing the head gap per second, and a bunch of other parallels that aren’t relevant here) and the Octatrack doesn’t obfuscate that like most software and modern saplers do by resampling on the fly or giving you an error message (unless you have time stretch on, of course).
When the cursor is moved over a sample, the smiley symbol at the bottom of the screen will show a happy face if the sample is ready to be loaded without any problems. If the file is too big to be loaded, or if the file is incompatible with the Octatrack MKII audio engine, the smiley will look sad. Samples with an unsupported sample rate, like 48 kHz, will make the smiley look indifferent, indicating the sample will be played back albeit at the wrong speed. To the right of the smiley the sample rate, bit depth and number of channels of the selected sample is shown.
well i went back and exported the stems making sure they were all 44.1 khz. the samples are labeled “116bpm” but still the octatrack thinks they’re a 4-bar sample at 120 bpm for some reason. they are definitely just four bars as I selected only a four bar region in my DAW. if i go into the attr of the OT and change them to be 116bpm then the octatrack thinks it’s only a 3.8 bar loop or whatever. weird and lame.
Is there a lower limit on what can be changed to 44.1khz? I have all these amiga tracker samples that are like 8khz and dbpoweramp always gives errors when I try to convert ‘em.
Anything less than 44.1khz can be changed to that without loss. Above that it’s possible to lose information but if samples are pre filtered to 22khz then there wouldn’t be information to lose. If not then you could have issues. But with 8khz samples you’re fine.
I think the issue is that my Studio One project was 48KHz, even if the stems themselves are 44.1 16-bit. I played the stems with my band yesterday and they were just slightly out of tune and out of time. What a pain in the butt. I was bitching about it and everyone else was like “dude i didn’t even notice and i’m sure no one in the audience will either” which is fair haha.
You have to select the whole sample, by pressing TRIM twice. Turn END knob in order to have samples value.
Would help to calculate if if corresponds to 48khz.
Playing 48khz files with OT lowers the pitch a little bit more than a semitone…
Originally at 116 bpm, samples are played at 106.5 bpm (116×44.1÷48=106.575)
that’s what it said the first time, so that checks out.
this second time, i exported the stems as 44.1K and the samples according to the OT are supposedly at 120bpm. sadness. i even wrote “116bpm” in the sample title which is supposed to help right? idk if i told studio one to “write tempo to audio files” but that’s usually checked anyway.
My newly downloaded samples in my OT sound slower than the originals and I just learned why. I suppose I needed to convert to 44.1kHz (from 48kHz) before downloading about 2000 samples. Ugh. Is there a preferred solution to get the samples back to their original sound/pitch without having to start over? For instance, I use only chains of one shots throughout my workflow, so can I just simply put my chains that are already normalized and sliced in the OT into Audacity and convert them one chain at a time? Or have these chains already been converted negating my efforts to correct a huge error I’ve made.
Does anyone know if octatrack converts the audio to 44.1kHz permanently and it sounds different as a result of this permanence or does the the sample remain in the OT’s audio folder as a 48kHz sample and simply gets processed/played at 44.1kHz thus causing it to sound lower in pitch? Thank you.
