User Manual

TRACK RECORDERS AND PICKUP MACHINES

There are two ways to sample with the Octatrack. Either by using track recorder sampling ,

which can be performed manually or by using recorder trigs, or by using specialized

machines called Pickup machines, which essentially work like loopers. Read more about

track recorder sampling in the section “TRACK RECORDER SAMPLING METHODS” on

page 52. Pickup machine sampling is covered in section “PICKUP MACHINE SAMPLING”

on page 54.

When performing tra ck recorder sampling or Pickup machin e sampling, track recorders are

always used. Each project features eight track recorders, one for each track, and they can

be set up to record audio from the external inpu ts, from the main and cue output s, from the

individual tracks and from various combinations of these sources. Track recorders do not

have to be assigned to the tracks as they always are available. The RECORDING SETUP

menus, covere d on page 48 , ar e use d to con tr ol from which sou rces an d in wh at wa y the

track recorders should sample.

By default the track recorder memo ry is used when sampling, meaning each track recorder

can sample for about 16 seconds. The reserved track recorder memory can however be

increased or decreased. It is even possib le for the tr ack reco rd ers to sample dir ectly to the

Flex RAM memory. Settings relating to RAM memory distribution is fou nd in the MEMORY

menu, which is covered on page 39. Read more about the general handling of RAM mem-

ory in section “PROJECTS AND RAM MEMORY” on page 25.

Samples captured by the track recorders a re stored in recor der buf f ers. The eig ht recorder

buffer s a re located in the Flex sample slot list. To play back a sample captured via track

recorder sampling, the corresponding recorder buffer needs to be assigned to a Flex

machine of a track. Since track recorder sampling is independent from playback, the sam e

track can be used for both sampling and playback of the sample. It is also possible to

assign the same recorder buffer to several Flex machines of a patte rn. Each Flex machin e

track can of course still contain individual settings and sequen cer trigs. Read more about

recorder buffers in section “PLAYBACK OF CAPTURED RECORDER SAMPLES” on

page 53. Playback of reco rd e d Pickup mac hin e samples works a bit differently. If a Pickup

machine is assigned to a track, it will be hard-linked to both the track recorder and recorder

buffer of that track. No recorder buffers thus need to be assigned for Pickup machines to

play back recorded samples. Samples captured by Pickup machines are still stored in the

recorder buffers though, making it possible to save and edit these recordings.

Recorder buffer content is not automatically saved. If a recorder buf fer contains a sample

and the corresponding track recorder starts to sample, the original buffer sample will be

overwritten by the new sample. Also, samples in the recorder bu ffers are not retained in

memory after switching of f the Oct atrack or changing project s. If you want to keep recorder

buffer samples they need to be saved to the Compact Flash card. This operation can be

performed in the RECORDING SETUP EDIT menu, accessed by pressing [FUNCTION] +

[BANK] while either RECORDING SETUP menu is active. Alternatively, saving can be

done from within th e au dio ed itor. This is covered in the sec tio n “F IL E” on page 10 4.

• For tutorials on how to sample, see “TRACK RECORDER SAMPLING” on

page 130.