Ableton Forum

Looking at the Octatrack sampler and wondering what makes it special?

People who have em say they are great but not sure what is so good about them ?
I guess its the workflow as usual.

Any experiences from users out there would be appreciated.

Thanks
B

If you have the money, I would go for the Octatrack. For one, it seems like it would force a different type of workflow that would yield results that otherwise never come to realization. Another reason is if you don't like it you can probably sell it for just as much as you paid. Yeah, it's not as precise as a laptop setup perhaps, but the output from it could be great I think. Pair it up with Dave Smith Instruments Tempest, another synth, mixer, and a kaoss pad and you have a dope ass live setup! I think i just pooped my pants a little.

p.s. sorry I didn't really answer your question, don't mind trying to tip the boat though..

willdahbe wrote:If you have the money, I would go for the Octatrack. For one, it seems like it would force a different type of workflow that would yield results that otherwise never come to realization

This exactly. Machines that have become classics, very often share this "feature".

It's like slice to MIDI on steroids.

You can do, of course, beats and stuff in traditional way, but it excels when you take a loop and "rearrange" it, which is done very much in the slice to MIDI fashion (except it's really easy and intuitive to apply envelopes, fxs and what ever on any step you like or change the order of the slices because of the Elektrons classic feature pattern locks).

The audio stretch engine sounds great too and is capable of doing really interesting and radical sound design.

Boundaries are there, sure, but as willdahbe pointed out, they force you to discover things that you would not discover otherwise.

Also it has the best hardware MIDI seq I've played with so far.

And Elektron's not done yet, I'm sure they will implement a number of features in coming OS updates.