Will there be any future OT updates? / Could it ever become open source?

Elektron Gear Octatrack
#38

We love our elektron machines to death I guess.

The OT is the best machine I ever had, 6 months with it now and I’m still enjoying it more and more, I love the sequencer, the scenes fader, the audio quality, the samplechains, its restrictions that push me to work harder and pull some magic out of it, its open mind, live resampling, tricks, workarounds, and son on.

But

  1. there are still some bug to be fixed so as to be able to really be 100% operational. I don’t want any additions (I could live with some additions, though), but only the OT features all to work as promoted. For me the biggest bug is the scene-locks that won’t stick on pickup tracks. I can use workarounds. But still, it’s a “black zone” of my beloved machine, and I don’t like having blind corners, or a defective piece of my engine.

A bugfix request isn’t a silly request. We’re not speaking of freeware here, we’re speaking about some 1300€ machine here…

  1. I guess a lot of the “heat” here these days comes from this precise 1) fact : lots of us are still waiting for this final OT bugfix update to be finally released / or the OT2 release… and we get the (good) Analog Heat… ok… then soon after there’s another new elektron box to be released… and that’s a (good) guitar pedal…

  2. So Elektron seems to HAVE time, money, and team to work HARD on their gear… but still nothing about the OT final bugfix, neither any OT2.

  3. People are pissed, and turn this anger into creative threads here, rather than ranting again and again, and I find this rather cool and interesting. (Elektron should really be more in touch with their customers I think, because it’s a goddamn fine and smart creative community here, and they should sherish such a thrustful userbase…)

  4. and anyway, we’re all gear passionate, and we love Elektron machines a lot, so we can’t help but dreaming here out loud about the magical machines Elektron coud still be creating, improving, or even finishing ah ah!

(and by the way, I don’t think people here do spend more time on the forums than working their music on their machines… Dreaming about updates or new gear doesn’t prevent me from being very creative, especially with the OT being my main machine :smiley: )

Salut à toi :smiley:

3 Likes
#39

Bonjoir :slight_smile:
I don’t really consider Pickups limitations as a bug, because it works differently. I mostly use Flex instead of Pickups, even for overdubs.
I would use Pickups only for layering pads, because layers can be crossfaded (fade in + fade out) to avoid clics. After recording I save the sample and assign it to the same Track with Flex.

1 Like
#40

There’s definitely some bugs that are not limitations or intended outcomes with the pickup machines, would love to get them sorted. I use a pickup/flex combo for looping and realtime flex audio tricks, I only have a few samples that are pre saved. Main issues for me are scenes not recalling and slave loops upon first repeat (sometimes) start there loop from the middle of the recording instead of the begining. Soon I will dig back into these and see if I can send back to support some more details…

1 Like
#41

Open source only works if the code is made to be understandable by a third party. If the Octatrack source would be released tomorrow, you would need to spend a ridiculous amount of time figuring it out.

There’s a lot of people able to work on badly documented spaghetti code. That pretty much describes a lot of open source :smiley:

But even if that’s accepted an unwillingness to open up protected IP is a pretty solid reason and one not likely to ever be surmounted.

That said you release any documentation you have on the hardware with information on what you’d need to do to flash your own OS.

Someone may take that up as a project and do something interesting with it

2 Likes
#42

on what i read here and there… (so not only here)

i do not target anyone in particular here. I know there’s people who actually make real music out there. But i know there’s people like i describe, because i discuss with… i mean a lot IRL and i try to make them less angry and to understand why they make less music and spend they’re money in a constant flow… it doesn’t mean nothing at some point, gear, system take a huge amount OF TIME to learn, handle… But in a normal way you buy gear to make music at first. So yes i can said what i said. That’s just people we’ll read that, think about it and maybe some of those will have a personal reflection and take actions there (and if it’s help us i mean…). and i really think market keep that for a very excellent reason. Play to our frustrations and our demons is profitable in some way

NB: i perfectly understood too that i know nothing about the people’s life and people’s problems here and all is mixed… we all have our good days and our bad and I think it play a role on our content posts

#43

This is something I was determined to do methodically too, it was going to be an appendix of a ‘how to get the best of PUM’ thread so that they didn’t just have this generally bad press … I agree there are certainly glitches and they are not just about usage constraints

Perhaps collate these observations here too (for example, there may be other threads) so the general community can see and discuss what we have all found and reported and perhaps discuss workarounds or steps to avoid

2 Likes
#44

@sezare56: The workflow you describe is a valid one, for sure. But to me it sounds more like something possible in the studio, when one has time.

When I am performing live with the OT, I improvise with my modular and layer things in the pickup machines. In that context, I don’t have the time to save the sample, remember the name I gave it, change the machine from Pickup to Flex, and load that sample into the Flex. And what if I decide that I want to put another layer on top that sample again?

So yes, I am pretty much depending on pickup machines. Because they fulfill all of these conditions at the same time, all of which are essential for live improvisation performance:
(a) recordings can be longer than 64 steps
(b) initial recording length can be set arbitrarily with one button press
© loops automatically after initial recording (either going into overdub or play)

#45

Hi, please, would you mind providing detailed steps on what exactly is not working there? On my OT 1.25H, at least having different scenes on a pickup track and switching & crossfading between them seems to work, also when storing & recalling projects.

#46

Can you say a bit more about these

AFAIK A+B is designed to sum to mono, what’s the observation ? are you using the midi note to start the machine, in which case this seems normal, perhaps your mixer setting are allowing you to hear a and b un-summed

#47

Hi. I’m sure you’re woorklow is valid too.
I was thinking if there would be only one update point, I would choose AUTO SAVING RECORDS !

As you noticed, the fades implementation is bad.
They are exponential instead of logarithmic. :confounded:

The advantage of Flex is that you can apply real-time plocks on Pitch, Rate,(the too first page parameters), while you’re playing. You cannot do it with other machines. Of course you can play it faster than the recording, if you disable time stretch, or reverse it. You can do it if you delay the playing.

You can overdub with Flex, recording Cue or a Track.
You can choose a specific recording time with Max and Recorder Trigs, with for exemple an 1/8 Scale, you can record up to 32 bars!

For me, the main advantages of Pickups are the ability to choose the first record length and tempo, and the working fades on overdub, to layer sound like pads.

With Pickups, as MonstreJumo said you cannot plock anything, and you loose you’re recording if you stop the Octatrack. Edit : so MJ, I didn’t understand you’re “problème”. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

#48

hi,

I don’t really remember but problem occurs to me when switching from one part to another, both having a pickup machine on same track. switching parts seem to disable the fader impact to scenes activation… I have made a thread some times ago about it, gotta find a link to it :slight_smile:

#49

It has to do with switching parts, and I guess my issue is not that the pu scenes don’t hold, it’s that they take over scene parameters assigned to same track on another part, but I think this is somehow related(in reverse) to the pu scenes not holding that others have noticed. There is more to it as well.
Here is part of a bug report confirmed by elektron:

“While switching from a pattern linked with a part with a pickup machine on a track, then switching to another pattern linked to a different part with something other than pickup machine on the same track(flex lets say), if the pickup machine isn’t running before switching, the new part/pattern will trigger the pickup machine loop from the old part instead of the assigned sample of the new part, even if sample locked and starts silent is selected. Also scene behavior of new part might still respond to the old pattern/parts scene. Workaround has been to make sure pickup loop is running before switching, muted if necessary.”

2 Likes
#50

I have to say, since being involved in the development of a product that streams audio off an external memory source and involves realtime timestretching, I’m much more generously disposed to the OT’s developers.

7 Likes
#51

Hi avantronica, you are of course right, “A+B” is the mono sum. I just copied the title of the support ticket, in which I made the same mistake. So it should read:
• If a Thru machine set to “A B” receives a MIDI note, it collapses from stereo to mono (#13615)
The bug does not happen with inputs “C D”.

3 Likes
#52

Man i really think i am not the only one who would love to hack the firmware of the Octatrack.
The potential of getting Elektron to open source the firmware would be magnitudes compared to the neat and imo almost a little bit pathetic hype of the conditional trigs.
if you think it would be great to be able customize your OT to the fullest extend possible:

  • Any known efforts in this direction worth sharing?
  • Any suggestions how to approach this undertaking generally?
  • What you guys think about crowdfunder where we pay off Elektron to collaborate?

For now, please let us not talk about the worst case scenarios where we go reverse engineer/disassemble/rewrite OS from scratch etc… different topic?

#53

Yeah
and for me please the recipe of coca cola…
sorry, could not resist, being sarcastic…
:wink:

1 Like
#54

To dream is the apex of humanity

1 Like
#55

@sezare56 we need a funny image here quick :cherries:

2 Likes
#57

By reverse engineering OP-1, some operators found hidden FX, a way to change background image, and a few other cool stuff.

Don’t walk on someone’s hope so easily, you might find yourself in the position of the fool :wink:

2 Likes
#59

Sure, with the right amount of resources it is possible to reverse engineer the OS, set up your own build infrastructure, replicate whatever proprietary tools Elektron might be using, add your own features, get the code to build and the OT to eat the binary. I just think that the amount of resources you would need to throw at this problem is huge and I very much doubt Elektron would just stand by and watch if their IP is violated, let alone endorse or even support such an endeavor. Exchanging a few graphics here and there yes, rerouting some calls to functionality not intended to be used, ok. Rewriting the OS without the infrastructure the original author uses - no way.

2 Likes