I'm trying to use the Octatrack in a DJ configuration and put together a small companion rack out of modules that were mostly sitting in boxes on my shelf. The idea is to have 2 "decks" on the Octatrack for conventional mixing, with two extra layers of complexity and sonic expression in the shape of this stereo processing rack (which receives audio from the Octa's Cue outputs and sends it back to the AB inputs) and a pickup machine or two to help with transitions and corrupt captured loops in real time.
Overseer, Morpheus and the Z-DSP could be used in series or parallel, with 2x SAM providing either mixing or multing/attenuating service for the stereo track(s). I have the Time Domain cards, but maybe getting Grain de Folie would be more interesting for mangling audio with the Z-DSP.
The ADDAC filter, OR, and Slew function from the dual S&H are my attempt at finagling an Envelope Follower. I wanted to filter a copy of the stereo input through the bandpass filters, half-wave rectify them and slew them with the S&H to either directly modulate parameters or scale modulation within the rack. The issue is that after bandpass filtering, there is not much energy left in the signal, another half is lost because the OR has the diode-specific voltage drop of 0.7V and is not full-wave-rectifying (I'm currently using two 3dB boosts from the Quad VCA per EF signal), and the slew control on the S&H is finicky, but the general functionality is there.
- What ideas for other processing modules do you have? Clouds or Beads is an obvious candidate, but maybe you know of some other obscure audio buffer with cool modulation possibilities.
- For a better envelope follower I thought about the Doepfer A-135-4C, but it's lacking comparators, and those would be nice to have. There don't seem to be that many EFs on the market in the first place. Got any tips? Maybe some ideas to fix the issues with my bootleg EF described above?
- The XAOC Katowice would be cool because I could split the incoming stereo track into three separate frequency bands, process those individually, and mix them back together at the output. Has anyone tried that with a fully mixed track? Is it worth the 200+ $? In general, I'm trying to just use what I already have and don't get to use in my other setup at the moment, but if a purchase here or there would elevate this concept significantly, I'm not opposed to it.