The Octatrack is very cool and awesome and all, being able to modulate 3 lfo's on every track and midi channel...but it's learning curve is very steep so it's not for everyone, which is why I don't necessarily recommended it. That being said, you seem like a pretty smart guy, I'm sure you could learn it if you wanted to.
You can actually sample cv audio into it and use that to trigger synths-but the mpc one and maybe the new mpc live have actual cv outputs, which you might find useful w\ yr setup.
I kind of recommend the mpc over the octa for it's ease and immediacy-you can really just crank out some beats and layer melodies very easily on it-it's also a newer piece of hardware, with what the octa being almost 15 years old?...although they are very good at updating the firmware but it would be difficult to recommend one over the other, it's really one thing you'd want to compare workflow videos of the two.
I still haven't hooked them up together, which I would imagine would be a lot of fun!
Yeah that reflects the things I've heard too. Does seem crazy to get a 15 year old piece of gear (of that nature anyway) and I'm not super keen to learn another (hard to learn) bit of hardware.
At the moment I'm working on my modular live set and trying to make it a little bit more consistent and recallable - so I can deliver more consistently good stuff and more variety in a single set without having to repatch.
I do have a sequencer with memory and a sampler with memory banks which gives me a little bit of recallability. However obviously this is not the strong point of modular! Another option could be using Ableton alongside the modular live. I already have/know Ableton and use it extensively for producing so that might make more sense for me.
Anyway will persevere within modular for now and see how it goes.
Thanks loads for your thoughts!