Ot abc test

Elektron Gear Octatrack
#1

This thread touched on a few areas of interest to me, not least of which the potential to capture things internally, albeit short ideas or very short as i like to use the flex machines ram for the content

So i did a little unscientific test, there may be flaws in my approach, but as it has bearing on my likely workflow choices i’ve stuck with it to see if there’s much to be gained from one approach to the other

i sourced a 24bit/192 recording snippet freely available online, first thing i found (couldn’t quickly find a 24/44.1 or 24/88.2), down-sampled this (Wave Editor OSX) to 24/44.1 and normalized to -3dB

Imported into the OT, assigned to a Static and played (think of this as the reference)

Then recorded in 24bit in a recorder, then added the +3db gain four times internally, to recover the reduction ‘inflicted’ by the audio engine (That’s Elektron language, straight from the pdf)

I also recorded the Static track at the headphone outs, this recording needed a small amount of gain to bring it to norm-3

So three files were there to scrutinise and i’m making these available for someone to see if they can discern meaningful difference for this particular material

There’s the converted original
There’s an internal re-sampling which had gain correction +12dB
There’s a ‘brand name not given yet’ field recorder tap (24/44.1) at the headphone out

The two recording methods are discussed/judged in the thread which piqued my interest

I wanted to see if my using the headphone method was such a big deal because it’s the method i use because it’s simplest and keeps the flow going even though i’m always sat in front of my motu equipped imac !

The files are 24/44.1 wavs, one full with three files back to back, the other with the briefer opening passage to allow easier comparisons on loop. I ended up doing it blind by allowing the file to loop (unsighted) and then trying to pick out the ‘original’

I’m not saying which order the recordings are in, but it’s the same for both tests, it was ordered randomly to ensure i didn’t bias the order

see if you can pick which is which by auditioning them (ideally on loop), primarily if you’re interested in the potential differences and so we can discuss the pros/cons of the OT recording headroom or field recorders tapping the headphone socket

There’s two wavs in a zip here - site seems safe !

fwiw - i could consistently tell the original when testing blind (with 1 exception), but then again i knew what difference i heard when i compared them before doing it blind

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#2

I felt like the third one was the ‘fullest’ sounding but it’s pretty marginal - they all sounded good. Admittedly there was some white noise from my computer fan smoothing out the sound for me, didn’t try it with headphones or in a perfect listening environment.

Mind you I have never had a big issue with the OT recording quality.

#3

I’m doing this to partly/hopefully appease my being perturbed by the 12dB drop in recording levels, i realised today, that’s both externally and internally !
I also tend to use the headphone record technique because it suits me best when inspiration strikes
I tried with decent cans, but only through an old iMac headphone out and there’s not a lot to discern, seemingly, on the surface anyway.
I’ll allow the discussion to unfold a bit longer before commenting, so as not to sway the listening, but thanks for the fbk

#4

Thanks for doing this! I was intrigued by the same thread.

My ears couldn’t tell the difference but my eyes could when I opened the cropped version in Audacity. And the differences were minor.

Like Anigbrowl, I’ve never had a problem with Octatrack’s audio quality.

#5

^ Not sure what difference you saw, but i did top and tail the snippets a little differently.

#6

Super curious to see how my ears measure up.
I do think the OT has a ‘sound’ per say, a darkness, kind of. But I’m comparing it to things like a Sub Phatty or EMU sampler. I just go with it. Lot’s of things have their own sound, like the Moog and the EMU, for example.
My notes on one listen:

  1. brighter, rounder
  2. darker, less headroom, more shriek(?) distortion?
  3. none of the charm of the first, none of the faults of the second
    I’m going to send the file to my band and see what they think
#7

^ Never mind. When I zoomed in even closer, looks like I was seeing the results of the display resolution, not the sampling resolution. All 3 decays look quite similar.

#8

interesting … , i’ll give it a day or two, to see if there’s some more curiosity, there’s no big prize or reveal as such, besides advising which was which and how i can spot the original, let’s just say … it’s hard to not listen to the thing you think you should listen to :wink:

#9

listened on sennheiser amperiors.

the differences are marginal to my ears too but i felt the first one was slightly more full bodied than the second and the third a little thinner in the high register than the other two.

#10

Cool test!

I thought 1 was the most natural sounding. Full with nice high end. 2 is a little duller to my ears and 3 is similar to 2 but a little thinner.

Sennheiser HD25 Aluminums.

I have the Amperiors too! Love them.

#11

Intriguing … Stay tuned, I think I need to listen harder or at least in a different area, to potentially hear some of these nuances, it’s encouraging that for the most part there may not be a lot lost when a good deal of gain is needed or when the headphone out is tapped with a ‘budget’ ADC field recorder !

Wish I’d also tried resampling via the outs back to the ins or straight into my ultralite although that’s not a likely workflow route for me

#12

One last bump before I say what was what. I found the space around the lines the most revealing aspect about which was the original version.

#13

The top of 1 has the noise floor of the original recording? Whereas the other 2 are clean in the silence at the top but you can hear the noise floor once the track comes in?

#14

Here’s the order of those recordings:

1st up was an original Zoom H2 recording via the 'phones out

2nd up was the ‘reference’ recording (down-sampled from source)

3rd up was the OT internal re-smpling with internal gain

The way I heard it was that the reference recording had a lot more air/space underneath the instruments, that aspect seemed more open and broader

The OT internal rec ‘space’ was different as though the ambient white noise had been through a filter with a gentle peak

The same for the Zoom version but with a narrower peak and overall less muffled than the OT version

That’s all a bit subjective and it’s in particular referencing the noise floor for the shorter clips - either way, that aspect was repeatedly evident to me when listening blind on loop. I also think I least like the 3rd version funnily enough, maybe the process of adding gain 4 times internally is the key to that ! (I didn’t try one-shot normalizing internally as i wasn’t sure if you can keep some specified headroom)

Either way, there’s nothing too alarming about the ‘spontaneity friendly’ method of just recording at the headphone out, or presumably even better(hotter) via the cues if they were free !

#15

Another thing you could try would be taking the original file and running it through the OT with the gain boosted sufficiently so get the same levels in and out.

Then put it in a DAW playing alongside the original, phase flip one of them, if it was “perfect, what goes in is what comes out” then it should go silent… any noise left is distortion caused by the OT/the resampling process into your DAW etc… but if you have a clean signal chain the real culprit will be the OT by the sound of it… no pun intended :stuck_out_tongue: