User feedback
Below is some prototypical user feedback on Octopus, split by appropriate categories.
In case you were wondering.. these are excerpts from the forum at http://forum.genoqs.net.
"Spontaneous is a good word to use with the device in terms of usage , turn it on and within a short space of time and little imagination you have imaginative ideas and sequences.."
"Those steel ball bearings that work for all the track steps and pages are magic to run your fingers over while the synths and drum boxes are singing."
USER FRIENDLINESS"You can fly around the thing and twist and tweak the ideas easily! despite being multi layered it all made sense quickly to me."
"That's one big plus for the Octopus - I can easily see the status of up to 10 tracks at once. Plus, I can do things like check/set the MIDI channel for each one with only 1 button press and 1 knob turn -- very quick. I like it."
"Short of having a knob per function per channel, it's difficult to improve on the rest of it..... without making it the size of an SSL...."
FLEXIBILITY AND INTUITION"I was in love with the octopus from the minute i opened the box, but i have an even greater appreciation for it now... playing live pa's with it is soooooooo much fun, it gives you so much more flexibility and the scope to really play "live" as an instrumentalist would making it a better, more unique experience for both me and audience."
"The Octopus feels to me highly intuitive , you suss a function or most and thats it , you can go back to it and remember how it works ! hooray , not something all gear i have owned lends itself to. Its very well laid out for intuitive use."
"To mimik the ideas and sequences this thing creates with [a software sequencer] would require the mind of einstein seriously and unspotaneous mouse edits as well as too much logic and work but that's why people buy hardware sequencers i guess as they enter creative territory software shys away from and you can do stuff easily and 'now' with hands - what a relief!"
MUSICAL COMPOSITION"The Octopus is incredible! I've only had about 8 hours with it but it's definitely opening up new ways to make music."
"The Octopus is really the first hardware sequencer where you can create and see a whole song structure easily. Sure, on other boxes you can chain parts together, but setting that up, remembering where they all are, and jumping around to them was never easy to do."
"The Octopus organization and sheer number of buttons gives you the ability to logically organize the parts of a song and manipulate them as you see fit without the need to dump it all to a computer."
TIMING AND RELIABILITY"The timing has a solid-but-organic feel to it.... difficult to describe, or even to sensibly attribute to something (especially as an engineer, I ought to know better.... probably the cpu speed or something....) but overall, the effect is closer to an old-school step sequencer than midi has any right to be capable of. well done!"
"The thing is big! After spending 2 hours with it, I can say it's fun, easy to use, solid in timing, and generally cool. "
"It is so bomb-proof and reliable... i was really pushing things with it but problems just simply don't occur - i have a lot of great gear, but i've never trusted anything the way that i trust the Octopus. ...Still smiling after 10 months or however long it's been."
LOOK AND FEEL"The Octopus itself is quite a beautiful piece. It looks nice in the pictures on the site, but lifting it out in person and laying your hands on it immediately "ups" all previous impressions. Heavy and very solid feeling."
"100 times nicer than I even thought it would be. I can't imagine anything breaking down on this even if it were to tumble off the desk (not that I'll let that happen!)"
"After unboxing it my jaw dropped as the online photos dont quite highlight the high build quality of the Octopus and the machine's presence and size :) ... 'wow' sums up i think the devices initial impression . . .musical results have also been 'wow ' a lot!
FEATURES AND FUNCTIONS"I bought one on the basis of the workflow chart and after reading the manual a lot and kind of building a virtual demo in my head.It does more right now than i could ever imagine!"
"So does the $$$ translate to creative musical lines and sequences? Imaginative ideas and music that i cant do with [a software sequencer]? Totally and quickly!"
"I didnt think of the ability to chain tracks at different clock rates ! nice:) Still hats off guys, its stunning piece of open minded music technology. Thanks genoqs :) 10 out of 10."