TubularCorporation

Here's a completely nonmusical demo, just one 16 bar loop with a trig on the downbeat on track 1, at 300bpm. Randomly tweaking the attack and release on track 1 and the delay parameters on track 5. Just a bit of LFO modulation of the delay time near the end, but not much. https://www.dropbox.com/s/oewhveg31j8miys/OT%20Karplus-Strong%20test%20NORMALIZED%20CDDA.wav?dl=0 I think this DOES have some potential for synthesizing drum sounds completely in the OT for resampling. EDIT: I recommend listening to this through headphones or monitors, because most of the action is in the deep bass. Through laptop speakers it mostly sounds like a metronome click.

Well that was easy, but not as exciting as I thought. EDIT: tl;dr it works and has some real sound design potential but isn't very flexible and can't really play melodies or anything because of the coarseness of the OT's delay time. You definitely can make a simple karplus-strong algorithm with two tracks. The down side is, the delay time isn't nearly short enough or fine enough to make it useful the way I set it up, although you might be able to get something a lot more interesting by making your own delay with two flex machines sharing a single record buffer, I haven't messed with recording and playing back from the same buffer at the same time yet so I don't know enough about it to say. But at the very least, I was able to patch up a really simple KS proof of concept fast. I used tracks 1 and 5 but you could use any of them obviously: Cue cfg set to studio. Cue out left patched to input A Track 1 = flex machine with a short white noise sample generated in the OT (did the whole "record an input with nothing patched to it and then normalize" trick). Attack, hold and release set to minimum. Balance hard left. No effects. Main output level set to 0, cue set to 127. Track 5 = Thru machine, INAB set to A and volume turned all the way up. Balance set hard left. No effect in slot A, delay in slot B with time and feedback set to minimum, send and volume set to max, Tape off, DIR minimum, sync on (even the minimum delay time is too long with sync off), lock off, pass off. That's it. You can fine tune the width parameter in the delay and the volume parameter in the amp page for the track with the delay line to get it sounding how you want, but there's really no way to control the pitch. You just get one note of a kind of basic K-S slap bass sort of sound. If you turn the tempo all the way up to 300 you can get a few notes out of it, the useful range seems to be with delay times between 1-12 or so with the tempo on 300. Definitely not flexible but enough to play with and resample at least. I've been getting some mildly interesting stuff by using the LFO designer to modulate the delay time across the useful range. The attack and release times on the AMP page of the flex track definitely have some potential, too, as does the BASE parameter on the delay. Definitely interesting, if kind of a one-trick pony. And obviously, instead of using the filter built into the delay you could pass that track to a neighbor track and use the actual filter on it for more control. You also need to set up a third track as a thru machine listening to input A with the Cue level set to 0 for monitoring.

Another one of those inexplicable eBay auctions from Japan: Casio VL-1 $9999.99 USD (plus shipping) I'm not sure what their angle is with these. Do they really think someone is going to accidentally buy one of these and then pay? And if that's the plan, why do they offer a 14 day money back guarantee?

After I finish moving I was already planning to spend a lot of time experimenting with the cue ouputs on the OT being fed through the Axoloti and back into the inputs, and this is just giving me more ideas. But yeah, thinking about it now I bet some basic Karplus-strong stuff could be done with the OT alone, I'm going to have to mess with that this afternoon.

Going to be moving to a much bigger place in a bit over a month, so I'll finally be able to properly set up all the junk I've been piling in over the last 6 years.

Physical modelling in hardware really has been dead in the water for a long time, I would love to see something like this. Just a single polyphonic part with some kind of modular (or at least semi-modular), with audio input as an operator (so that you could choose where to inject external audio in the algorithm you built, rather than being limited to a fixed point in it). maybe a couple velocity sensitive pads on it or something. Basically something that was to Tassman what the OT is to Live (i.e. not actually the same at all but similar enough to make superficial comparisons). Yeah this is a cool idea actually. I had an idea for a tracker that the Octatrack ended up being really similar to, minus a few things, one of which was this idea of being able to use arbitrary signals as modulators. Maybe I will revisit this. I actually had meant to say something about a physical modeling engine with audio OUTS that could be inserted at arbitrary points in your patch being potentially amazing, in that you could tap audio at some point in the patch, run it through whatever external effects you wanted, and feed it back in at another point. I'm sure there would be potential for a lot of issues with latency and phase, but the potential for sound design seems so massive that it would more than compensate for that. If Axoloti had more i/o you could probably patch up something like this (and I guess even as is you could if you limited yourself to a mono output and use the other output channel as your send), but that's hardly the same as this fantasy Elektron box we're talking about. EDIT: honestly, just a branch of the OT operating system that replaced the machines, effects and sampling engine with some high level physical modelling building blocks like membranes and tubes and things like that, so say every track could have an excitation source at the point in the OT where the machines go now, would already be incredible. But it's not like Elektron would ever have any incentive to fork the OS on an existing piece of hardware in house, or open the source up or anything. But just imagine.

Physical modelling in hardware really has been dead in the water for a long time, I would love to see something like this. Just a single polyphonic part with some kind of modular (or at least semi-modular), with audio input as an operator (so that you could choose where to inject external audio in the algorithm you built, rather than being limited to a fixed point in it). maybe a couple velocity sensitive pads on it or something. Basically something that was to Tassman what the OT is to Live (i.e. not actually the same at all but similar enough to make superficial comparisons).

(or switch to PC and you can spend maybe 1400 to get a laptop upgrade AND a Machinedrum)

What happened? And what did you do with it?

This gave me pause, though.

What the fuck. That's my gear budget for the last two years, and I've been getting way more than usual.

There's actually a strong case that unbalanced is actually preferable in most home studio contexts (balancing really isn't much of an issue for short cable runs at line level, and balancing require a more complex circuit that has more potential to actually reduce sound quality if it's not well designed or uses substandard components - probably not a concern with Elektron but it's common on budget gear), and I'm sure that's part of the reason they only balanced the outputs in the MK I - your outputs might be patched to 50 feet of cable running to a PA at a small club, but your inputs are almost definitely going to be short cable runs from other line level gear. I bet the improved headroom on the MK II is all down to upgraded op amps running at higher voltage, and the balancing won't actually make a difference for 99% of users.

This is mostly a manufacturing supply chain (and branding,making everything look similar just like they did with the last generation) thing I'm sure. Updating all of their older gear to use the same encoders, switches, knobs and buttons = fewer unique parts = larger orders of the parts they do need = lower prices on those parts. Makes perfect sense, and the UI tweaks and i/o upgrade are just a welcome bonus.

Looking forward to hearing your feelings about the Octacapture when you get it set up I had my sights on one a few years ago but had a chance to get a secondhand BLA modded Digi002 for the same price so I ended up with that but I've been curious about the Octacapture ever since.

In all seriousness though, the increased headroom on the inputs does seem like a really good thing, definitely the only one that would make me maybe prefer the new one. Someone on Elektronauts pointed out that the power supply is 12v instead of 6v, and that is definitely a good sign as far as headroom goes (although it could just as easily have to do with the power requirements of the OLED). OTOH I wouldn't have been ale to afford the new price anyhow.

I already blew my "OT MkI has the true, vintage OT tone" jokes in the other thread, unfortunately.

As far as I can tell, the only non-cosmetic differences are: A few new, dedicated buttons for common functions Balanced inputs with "higher headroom" (no specific specs given) High quality encoders and switches (no idea if that means they're actually an improvement over the old ones or just different parts) OLED display All good things but nothing that makes me regret getting mine right before the change. Anyhow, as I already mentioned earlier, I hear the new version sounds cold and digital, but the Mk I has that warmth and character that you can only get from a vintage instrument.

When I was shopping around a few months ago for mine the used ones seemed to only be about $100 less than new, that's why I ended up going for new.

Yeah, I'm hoping. I secretly like the crappy LCD aesthetic, TBH. EDIT: the response in the announcement thread at Eektronauts is pretty funny.

All I really want is for them to fix that bug in the pickup machines, all the other limitations and weird workflow choices I am completely happy to write off as "personality."

It would figure this would happen right after I finally got one, but I guess if it's real that will make mine sound better because it will be vintage.

To put it mildly!

Actually I just checked and the shop is back up. The kit is more expensive now, but comes with the folded aluminum back panel that wasn't designed yet when I got mine.

A Matrix 1000 with the latest hacked firmware and the Alpes Machines controller is my main analog synth these days. Great, distinctive sound, different from other DCO synths I've used. Something cold about it, but in a good way. never heard of the Alpes controller before. very cool. how much do those sell for? on the site, it looks like he is getting ready to do another run of them but he has taken his shop offline. i don't see any mention of a price. Not cheap but not horribly expensive considering, I think it was around 270 euro when I got mine. I'd recommend upgrading the pots to these. I ended up doing it after the fact and it was a big hassle desoldering the stock ones, but a huge improvement. Julien is really helpful, too. I used the Matrix for abut a year with a software editor and it was fine but once I built that think it became my go-to fr a lot of stuff.

Yeah, because of being able to replace a couple switches and do installation myself I got an overall well maintained Juno 6 with the Tubbutec MIDI retrofit including all shipping costs for about $100 less than a Deepmind 12 not including shipping, so it was hard to argue with, if only because the Juno will most likely gain value and the Deepmind will most likely lose it so if I ever decide I don't want it I won't have lost anything in the long run. But between a Juno 60 at their current price and a Deepmind 12 (or 6 even) I'd take the Behringer any day.