Elektron-Users

Hi, sorry but I somehow haven't found much discussion on this particular subject surprisingly. I know that really if one wants the standard 808/909 sound to go for an actual 808/909, but I was wondering if it is possible to load 808/909 samples onto the MD and what kind of results people have been having with it?

Is it at all close to the real thing? At least for things like 909 hats/rides that are sample based to begin with?

I'm also wondering if it's preferred somehow to use an Octatrack for such a thing? I can see the goldbaby sample pack exists for Octatrack but no such things for MD?

I currently have a DSI tempest, but am looking to supplement it with something that can make use of samples and am wondering if the MD would be a suitable companion, or does the Octatrack make more sense?

Many thanks in advance, I currently could only afford either MD or Octatrack.

No problem with the Goldbaby Tape 808 & 909 on my MD.
I just selected the 100% pur HH, Clap, Snare, Tom ect ect but not bassdrum and kick, I prefer those of the Machinedrum.
But it took me some time to find the HH and snare ect ect for good emulation of 909 and 808 !
Buy The Tape 808 and 909, they are very good!

This is good too and free...

MD is 12-bit and OT 24-bit.

If you can live with short mono 12bit samples, and only a handful of samples per project, and transferring samples over midi is not bugging you, go MD. You have 16 tracks on the MD, and more simultaneous fx.
For longer stereo samples, with fast transfer over usb and a better sequencer, go OT. But bear in mind, 8 tracks is not very much.

I've got the tape 808 & 909 wav samples on my machinedrum. As stated above, I actually prefer the kick from the MD's own machines. I do like the 909 HH, OH, RC, CC and the 808 RC. As well, I like the CP & RS of both. I used to use the tape 808 & 909 toms as well, but I've found away to get some nice tom sounds out of the MD's own machines, it just took a bit of experimentation.

As stated above, when played on the machiendrum, the samples will be 12 bit. It actually sounds pretty good to my ears. It's got a little more crunch, and in a heavy mix, the sounds will have some lofi presence.

Cheers

SBSIX wrote:
If you can live with short mono 12bit samples, ...

Out of curiosity, by 'short' I assume you mean at least long enough for single shot drum samples yes?

What is the maximum length of samples on the MD?

The Rides/Hats on the original 909 were only 6-bit anyhow, so I imagine the MD should be able to pull this off pretty well.

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I suppose one could even take longer samples, downsample to 6-bit and pitch back up... But I'm actually pretty interested in the bit-crushing/grit of a lower-bit sampler.

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Finally, I know this is probably a long shot, but by any chance can the MD (or OT) do any kind of round-robin sample playback? Along the lines of the wave alchemy VST, where you could load a number of different samples for the same instrument and play a different one each time? I feel like there are some hints this is possible but can't find any concrete information on programming the MD that way.

The md can load samples of 2 bars long, limited to 2,5mb per project, and limited to about 40 samples total.
The OT can do round robin really well. You can load a file with up to 64 samples in 1 slot and then slice it to 64 separate parts. You can even use lfo's to playback the different slices, or the crossfader, or p-locks.
You could do something similar on the MD, but it never worked for me with more then 4 samples and it's by modulating the start time of the sample, leaving you with lots of values where it plays only a part of the samples.

SBSIX wrote:

The OT can do round robin really well. You can load a file with up to 64 samples in 1 slot and then slice it to 64 separate parts. You can even use lfo's to playback the different slices, or the crossfader, or p-locks.
.

A related question:

Does a batch converter exist that automatically makes one long sample out of 64 short samples, with a bit of silence between the samples.? Doing it manually takes ages, if you got 64 kicks, 64 snares, 64 hats and so on.

SBSIX wrote:

The OT can do round robin really well. You can load a file with up to 64 samples in 1 slot and then slice it to 64 separate parts. You can even use lfo's to playback the different slices, or the crossfader, or p-locks.

Another related question - more of a check to see if I'm doing it right. The way I'd do round robin on the OT is load up a sample chain, then slice it up, then set up a random LFO with a depth equal to the number of slices in the chain. This would give me a random variation with every sample in the chain occurring as often. Right?

Barfunkel wrote:
SBSIX wrote:

The OT can do round robin really well. You can load a file with up to 64 samples in 1 slot and then slice it to 64 separate parts. You can even use lfo's to playback the different slices, or the crossfader, or p-locks.
.

A related question:

Does a batch converter exist that automatically makes one long sample out of 64 short samples, with a bit of silence between the samples.? Doing it manually takes ages, if you got 64 kicks, 64 snares, 64 hats and so on.

I do this in ableton, just drag the samples on a grid with equal distance from each other, consolidate them and you are done. It's not much more work than selecting samples and running a batch tool. Once you have 64 kicks/hats/etc you can rock on for months or even years