Octatrack has a huge usability issue. It has a lack of visual feedback, unpleasant menu diving and not so difficult to use, but easy to lose controle. But once you master it, it can do things other samplers cant do.
With ot i go deeper into the sample
I love looping and transition
I love the x fader, it feels better than sound locks, but i need more practice with maschine to be sure.
With ot i have more happy accidents
With maschine i have more control
I thought of buying maschine and selling ot
I ended up with both, but use maschine 95% of the time
Maybe people don’t like it when i say this
But once people understand the ot
They invested so much time in it
Their brain tells them this ot must be super cool
Otherwise it was a waste of time
Many people love and hate the ot
Many people here bought and sold their ot multiple times.
I think the positivity is there because with ot you can do things you can’t do with other samplers, it doesn’t feel like a computer (like maschine+ or Mpc live).
But for many people it has to do with identity and with coping to deal with own investment of time.
If elektron makes a stereo sampler in ar/A4 style and improve usability
They make the best stereo sampler
I expect them to make this and release it this or next year
But I don’t know
So: ot is amazing and sucks at the same time, the positivity on this forum can be seen as biased and misleadingly positive. Don’t underestimate the investment in time to tame this monster.
And dont under estimate that you have to Octatrack several times a week, if you come back after 2 weeks, you sit there and wonder again how to do it. With Maschine and its 1000 page manual - no comparison. Mostly due to limited user feedback and double combo presses, you need a print out besides the OT for some weeks.
I’ve had my OT for just over a month now and have never owned anything like the Machine.
I only use hardware and use a lot of Elektron gear because it seems to work the same way my brain does.
I don’t use gear like Machine because my brain just doesn’t work that way, looks too much like using a computer, and I really don’t like computers.
If you’ve used other Elektron gear and got on with it, I see no reason why you shouldn’t give the OT a go. It isn’t that complicated if you approach it right.
I think @wouzer is a least a little bit right, there’s probably a few people whose enthusiasm for the OT is some sort of psychological justification for the work they’ve put into it because yes, it can be pretty frustrating at times. I do think though, that for everyone cheering it on that way, there’s another person who’ll tell you it’s too difficult or shit because they didn’t get what they wanted out of it after a month.
If you approach learning the OT like you would learning a proper musical instrument and take your time, chances are you’ll love it.
PS: The two issues I’ve had with mine so far were a result of broken midi cables and reading the manual pertaining to the wrong firmware. Beyond that I’ve found the OT to be fairly intuitive so far, because that’s just how my brain works. Other brains might not get on with it, but no-one really knows until they try.
Also OT is one machine that people tend to buy back after selling, sometimes more than once, and some people have more than 1, I know there is at least one person with 3 of them.
Some people replace the OT with another sampler, others use other samplers in conjunction with it.
I own both.
Octatrack leads more to experimenting, discovering unknown territory with samples. It feels more immediate for live perfomance, mainly because of the live sampling and the lovely crossfader and its scenes.
Maschine has a similar feature like OT scenes now (lock feature) which is also really powerful. It could be great for live perfomance as well, but I didn’t try so far, only had it for a few months. OT I use for 7 years.
What I love about maschine is having the power of a laptop, and the sound of all these great plugins, but without the need to look at the computer anymore. To me it feels like a great instrument, I can do everything on it (besides naming projects). Surprisingly, even though it’s dependent on my laptop, so far it’s the best groovebox kinda thing I tried, for achieving whole productions on a machine. The OT arranger is pretty cool for a hardware box, but maschine scenes, clips and arranger work better for me. I arrange the whole track from the unit.
The pads are awesome, and totally make up for the rather rudimentary step sequencer, cause it’s just great to play everything in real-time with them. Sampling and the looper is super straight forward, polyphonic sample playback is a big plus, recording long phrases easily is great.
For me it’s just one of the best things I touched for sketching out and even finishing tracks.
Octatrack is great fun for experimenting and jamming, and sure, you can make full tracks on it but I don’t think it’s as inviting for that as maschine. Maschine workflow is easy, straight-forward - muscle memory develops quickly. I love that I don’t have the struggle to record into the computer, struggling about whether to record single tracks one after the other or just having a stereo track, it just happens all in the laptop, but feels like using a great instrument. That’s how I feel about maschine
I’m super happy I finally got one.
If you’re more a step sequencer guy, don’t like to play stuff with the pads, and want to experiment with smart sequencer tricks, then elektron all the way
‘What I love about maschine is having the power of a laptop, and the sound of all these great plugins, but without the need to look at the computer anymore.’
I’m curious about this. How do you program/edit stuff without looking at the computer? I had a M+ for a couple of weeks and sent it back because this synth weren’t programmable. Is this different with the MK3?
no, exactly the same.
If the synth is more complex, I just tweak presets. Some of them have macros assigned which lead to interesting changes already. But mostly, I use simple subtractive synths that are easily editable. Monarch, TAL UNO lx, TAL Bassline and Repro 1 + 5 and abl3 are my go to.
I wish you could jump between parameter pages and not just skip through them one after the other… Lot’s to improve, but I’m fine with it, given that I have all these great sound sources available from one controller.
The play series from Komplete is also great for maschine, cause it has macros prepared, which change the sounds a lot and in a sweet spotty manner
The OT is probably the most powerful loop player on the market. You can actually set up one of its sample engines to handle 128 loops of any size! You can launch the loops quantized to the beat very much like Ableton’s clips. That being said it’ll take some time to set that up. Once set up though the OT can be a loop launching machine, mixer/effects box, live sampler, drum machine, synth and midi sequencer all at the same time. The only thing that can almost replicate this is a laptop with Ableton or bitwig maybe.
No, it is the same. But with a computer you can mouse around.
I sometimes sample some synth presets from i e missive and monark, but on m+ they suck for sounddesign, I think.
The bass synth and drum synths are cool though,
I prefer my a4 and moog matriarch, but I think it is an unfair comparison.
And a4 drums with maschine drums is very nice together.
At the end, maschine is a sampler.
I think we can expect ios user interface for synths and song mode.
One thing I really don’t like maschine for, is for full live sets. When loading in new groups there are inevitable cracks in the sound.
Playing live sets and using ot for transition looping and mixing is very nice.
I wouldn’t want to do patches from scratch with fm8 or massive from that interface anyway. They were designed for the computer screen.
But with simple subtractive synths, you can map most parameters on 2 or 3 pages and that’s ok for me
Just wanted to say here that if you already have the A4, you are familiar with kits.
Parts on the OT are exactly the same as kits on A4. The only difference is that on A4 you have 128 kits assignable to any of the 128 patterns in a project, while on the OT each bank has a fixed set of 4 parts, which are assignable only to any of the 16 patterns in that bank.
Ah, OK. I tried a demo of massive on my girlfriend’s laptop when I was staying with her during lockdown. I like complex synths for programming , so I got M+ thinking it’d all be in there, but it’s a bit of tease as it stands at the mo! I hope they stick a fully programmable synth in there at some point. Fm8 is lovely
I’m a weirdo, I don’t have a computer o_0
I used reason5 yrs back and found using a mouse wasn’t for me. I’d probably go back to just playing my classical if that was the only option. Surf presets is just like only playing sheet music lol
The best trigger pads I’ve play on tho, and I liked the drum synth.
See what NI do with it.
I picked up an OT out of FOMO. Sold it because it didn’t fit with my personal needs.
Now, when I think of a larger studio setup in the future, the OT is often part of that. If I do buy it again, it’s because I know what it can do and want that.
Pretty good resale value on this droid so not much harm in picking one up and seeing if it gels with you.
…no matter how great the fun factor and experiment factor of all otb approaches are,
and also how tempting the idea of banning all this to final “tape” and therefore finish a project…
end of the day, u’ll always end up realizing again and again and one more time…
to really finish a track that can compete with the outside world and not “just” fulfilling ur personal and private ambitions of whatsoever, or some special niche stuff tickling other people sharing same mindset, it will take some last itb steps to get it done for real…
so the ot can push u anywhere u wanna go and also many places u never even thought of…
ur protools remains another best sonic friend of urs…
and no…ot can’t replace ur machine…only if u think there’s no big difference between drum synthesis and drum samples of any kind…
also be warned of the fact, that there are countless ot users that grew to the point to be sure it became useless for them by now, only to find them later on to buy one again…
and the same goes for all complex gear…also ur machine…
but as far as i can count and gues from what u say, ur machine got the sample option…
this version in special gets higher prices second hand these days than once brand new…
u got a truu classic there…if u wanna sell it, it will open up to a pretty high budget for new gear…
but the chances u gonna regret this step at some point are pretty high, too…
