After 2 years of rumors and teasers the Elektron Octatrack is finally among us. Will it be another must, like the company’s previous products? Only time will tell, but let’s have a look at the details.
In Elektron’s words “The Octatrack DPS-1 is an 8 track dynamic performance sampler. The Octatrack is ideal for radical audio processing and performance oriented sampling. Every track features real-time pitch scaling & time stretch”.
The keywords here are performance oriented sampling and real time operations. Well, that’s a must nowadays, since we’re living in a “Live world”. Ableton’s software has, since its launch, changed the approach to the performance for many electronic musicians, making it way more dynamic and elastic. The static concept of sampling is a thing of the past. Welcome to the world of tweaking.
Again, from the official press release, “loops are now completely elastic. They will always stay in sync no matter if they are pitch shifted or if the tempo of the sequencer is changed. Single sounds can be molded into any shape or form”.
Octatrack | A Machine That Makes Music?
httpv://https://youtube.com/watch?v=k8qqPjpOlZI
Here in short the most important Octatrack features:
- Individual track lengths and time signatures: great for poly rhythms.
- Micro Timing: ultra-precise stutters, flams up to 1/384th step note resolution.
- Parameter Locks: well, if you’ve used the Machinedrum or the Monomachine, you’ll know this is one of the company’s signatures. A parameter lock allows individual parameter settings for all note trigs.
- optical crossfader: a 45mm crossfader thought to make live improvisation more dynamic, through the use of scenes.
- 8 stereo tracks
- 4 audio inputs
- USB 2.0 port
- Compact Flash Card Reader
- 2 Effect blocks per track
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Price: 1290 euro/1490 dollars
Fab is a musician and Editor-in-Chief for AudioNewsRoom (ANR), a music technology online magazine.
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