Stimming OT review

[captain8]

I was anti ableton, until I had an eureka moment lol after that I never looked back

[Cosmic]

I have bitwig which meets all those needs and I dont often use that either, but far happier with the functionality and UI. Studio One is also great (but thats for another topic I guess). Octatrack above all!

[GovernorSilver]

I’ve had both Ableton and Octatrack for quite some time now, although until the Live 11 update I just used Ableton as a multi-track recorder.

Neither of them can replace the other for what i like to do. That’s why I intend to keep using both.

[Grumo]

I use the OT with Ableton as a mixer, the only problem is handling latencies of the OB devices.

[soulfood]

OT - Band

Ableton - Studio

Ableton + OT = Band in a studio.

Ableton + Push = Band shackled to a studio

[Rid_im]

anyone “experimented” with any of the iOS “mastering” apps? I have this iTrack dock, gonna do some reading and see how close to the HEAT i can get one of these apps…

[igtheflig]

Sorry to bring this up…about the OT sound…I looked for threads, there are some…nothing recent / canonical I could find…

Does it have “a sound” though? I have only lately acquired one and after playing with it for an hour, and then going back to my AR/A4 I thought that my A4/AR really lacked mids. I had to go and change a load of filter settings, and really “de-mud” my AR/A4. Is it cos the OT samples I was using were well mixed/well balanced and had a nice mid-range punch? Or the machine, I dunno. But yeah, it seemed airy and open in the mid-range compared to the analog duo.

[randy909]

Here is my theory. OT is flat by design because of what it is made to do. You want to be able to sample and loop other synths and itself and switch over to the loop without noticing. If it was adding color it might build up over time with all the crazy ways you can resample through outs/ins etc.

So no, it doesn’t have “a sound” any more than any gear that aspires to be transparent does like an audio interface or basic mixer (everything does technically because nothing is perfect).

If you add effects all bets are off. Note that the filter is enabled on all tracks by default and might be rolling off the high end a tiny tiny amount (yet to be proven as far as I know). Disable it for peace of mind.

[Supercolor_T-120]

I hear a little bit of difference in soundstage, nothing that’s going to be noticeable without a side by side comparison, about the same as the difference between rendering dithered vs. undithered 16 bit audio in a DAW.

That’s running at 24 bit through a thru machine without filters on it. Once you introduce timestretch and some of the effects that are audible even at their neutral settings (filter, lo-fi, EQ) it does have a sound, but not a bad one. As far as other samplers I own, it’s WAY more transparent than the MPC2000xl but not quite as transparent as the S-4000.

I’d say don’t worry about it, what sound it has isn’t enough to make or break a track by a long shot.

[acidhouseforall]

As much as I love to hate the OT, its sound has always been fairly transparent for me. No problem here…

[Prof_lofi]

The OT sound quality lives on!

[roadmoviemusic]

@Supercolor_T-120

I hear a little bit of difference in soundstage, nothing that’s going to be noticeable without a side by side comparison, about the same as the difference between rendering dithered vs. undithered 16 bit audio in a DAW.

I have all my gear routed though a external mixer. The main outputs of the mixer feed a OT recorder. That recorder is assigned to a track that is in cue mode, with a trig on step 1. The cue outputs go back to the mixer, but is muted. So I go ahead jamming, and at one point I hit “rec” on the OT, which will then record 4 bars (or more: 8 bars with 1:2 condition on the playback trig for instance) of the main mix. When finished recording, it plays back automatically, but because the recording goes to the cue outputs, into a muted stereo channel of the mixer, we can’t hear it (yet): we still here the main mix running (all sequences or whatever else) . Now here comes the magic: When I solo that stereo channel (provided the solo mode on the desk is set to “in place”) the main live mix is replaced by the sampled mix from the OT. This transition is seamless. I can switch back and forth between the live mix and the sampled mix without noticing whatever difference. It a brilliant trick I use a lot, and is made possible only because the OT’s sound quality is transparent. There have been many threads on the subject, most of them I don’t understand. If properly gainstaged (and this is a piece of cake, no menu-diving or fiddling with gain internally, it’s OK as shipped) OT is “what goes in, goes out”. If some fellow users notice a difference between original and sampled sources, there must be, IMO, an issue up front. FWIW…

[DaveMech]

@Supercolor_T-120

I hear a little bit of difference in soundstage

Can you elaborate on what difference you hear exactly? Using the term soundstage in this context seems odd to me since it’s used mostly in context with (high end) audio reproduction (speakers) and the way they throw the sound in front of you in a three dimensional manner. Are you saying that the separation of instruments and location of them in the sound is altered by octatrack somehow?

[igtheflig]

I think that should be the last word. Thanks! (For my own part I put it down to looking for it, and imagining it after reading too many OT scary stories.)

[LyingDalai]

I thought absolutely everything had been told on the subject.

OT - sound quality

OT and I got friends. Nevertheless I need more time to evolve a fluid workflow, but I think some hard nuts are already cracked. Thanks guys for helping! What really keeps me thinking at the moment is - after watching Cuckoo´s video where he´s comparing the OT (…MK1) with the Digitakt ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmA2vSoYL94 ) - the overall worse sound quality of the OT: Even before this issue was quite obvious to me, but hearing the units side by side, you might get it - the OT it´s pr…

OT sound quality improvement by disabling filters?

Somewhere in the vast online resources of people complaining about the OT’s sound quality (namely that it sounds) I came across a post where someone mentioned hearing a significant improvement in sound quality when disabling all track filters (which by default are enabled). I tried this and noticed a slight improvement but not sure it’s worth the trouble to disable for playing live. I may need the filter on a few tracks for live improv. Has anyone here performed live with filters disabled (or mo…

OT Sound Quality & FX

I haven’t had my OT long, just a few weeks. I haven’t tried to build a track yet, I’ve just been intensively learning its different functions using single samples by reading the manual, guides and asking questions on here. But, what struck me when I first got it and the more the I play with it is that the sound quality overall is weaker than I expected it to be. At the moment I’m using it through the headphone-out and I’ve made sure time-stretching is off. I use an Apogee card for my Mac and I…

Do you think the OT SQ thread should be reopened?

[igtheflig]

Probably has all been said, but for such an enduring machine you have to expect/accept some “eternal September” effect on the forum.

[sabana]

Nothing to see here. Move on.

[darenager]

Not to mention sample accurate duration of synced recordings, and almost perfect (less than 250 microseconds jitter) triggering of those recordings.
I am yet to find another machine that can do this.

I think probably the simplest way that anyone can test for themselves is to have a machine with good sync connected to a mixer that has an alt bus, when the alt button is pressed machine is routed into OT inputs. This way they can easily and quickly A/B between direct to mixer, thru OT, and OT recording.

Then if you can hear any difference which bothers you, then fine, good luck on your quest for perfection, but I suspect 99.99% of people would not notice any significant difference.

[Microtribe]

You hit the magic number. End of thread.

[NoiseLab]

@craig

@NoiseLab

I was hoping more about a sound quality comparison between different kind (vintage/new or cheap/expensive) of hardware samplers.

That would make for a great thread actually. Why not kick it off yourself with some examples from different bits of gear? I’m sure there’s enough techy people on here who would contribute with examples from their own gear.

This would be a interesting aspect between all kind of samplers.

• neutral?
• time stretch and pitch shifting?
• filtering?
• onboard fx?
• summing?

So far too busy to start this, for making a new thread.
Anyone else maybe?