I have an Octatrack since a few weeks but have not had time to REALLY learn it. As it stands now it is not a looper as we usuallly define loopers... however you can sample loop and mangle up to 16 seconds of input audio... You can sort of overdup bu sampling main output including a "though" machine which can be youre live signal with or without effects, trigless trigs and other nice stuff..
With this version of OS (99e) sampling is a bit akward and you can't do it via midi foot switch so as the only looper it's sort of lacking right now. The effects are GREAT, and it also sort of works as a mixer. Live guitar and trough machine on one input, you EDP or other looper on one input and 6 tracks to sample the inputs and mangle them..
When you have sampled soemthing almost ANY input can be turned in to rhythmic patterns and its very easy to manipulte sounds live and still sound good. Trigless trigs are a lote of fun, you can pitch shift at diffrent sequencer steps and take a long tone and turn it into a melody, or a shot loop and pitch it reversem stutter, apply effects.. once you undetstand that it is NOT a EDP there are a lot of stuff you cant do on loopers that the Octa can do. It's man power is as alive remix toll and rhytmcreator.. it is no problem staring with zero samplas and built intresting peice live. It's more a live recordign device with unique sound sculpturing capabilities than a looper right now... BUT with midi and a loop machine toghter with what it already does with the Beta OS it can be a really, really intresting new kind of tool.... i have two short clips on soundcloud.. just experiments one guitar looping sort of thing and one where i live sampled Splattercell and mangler it lika one could mangle a live band sample...
http://soundcloud.com/search?q%5Bfulltext%5D=anders+bergdahl
> Subject: Elektron Octatrack: is someone considering it?
> From:
bruno.bk@gmail.com> Date: Wed, 2 Mar 2011 12:37:48 +0100
> To:
Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com>
> Hi folks
>
> I didn't see any recent discussion about the Elektron Octatrack here, a part the long polemic about the commercial, tough it is a month now that it is on the market.
>
> The hype about it is pretty high. On the other hand for what I see on the Elektron users forum the first software release seems very buggy, but I guess that this is pretty normal for something so deep/complicated
> I wrote to the Elektron guys and they told me that the Midi control implementation will be available in april, while the looper machine is "a little beyond that date". (Doing that in april means probably that they will not miss the Frankfurt MusikMesse without showing it debugged and midi-controled)
>
> I am really thoughtful: the learning curve seems very steep. On the other hand the promises (we don't have much more then promises actually) are big: " The Octatrack can function like a looper. The only difference is that it will be much more powerful than your average looping device. Dedicated looper machines will be implemented in coming OS updates."
>
> On The Gear Page there is a long detailed discussion and even David Torn has showed proactive interest...
>
> Did anybody here already try it?
>
> Are you digging/waiting it?
