Big kick-ass harddisk recorder.. but hmm thats almost the same as using a computer in my case. Cant exactly give you a golden tip.. I would say.. the less tools you have to sculpt sound. the more sparingly you should be with it..
in my daw i could cut and cut and cut, to give room for more.. but on my hardware. i just dont have that control or the tools... so i make less filled music.. more to the point.
You need to rethink about the way you use sounds on the OT.
Here's a quick rundown:
-Get into the habit of thinking as the tracks as more like "busses" in your DAW, make one or two tracks your compression bus and anything you need compressed put in there, so kicks, snares, etc.
-For loops you are going to want to bounce them EQd and then work with them, one of the easiest ways to do this is to have a track assigned with two EQs , mess with the samples in there and then resample out to another track.
-Do NOT work at full level on any of the tracks. Lower that to half and then tweak.
-Don't get too caught up on mixing like a pro, the OT has a very good sound straight from the box. Besides, perfectly mixed music can be kind of lame if you know what I mean
-Get synthesizers, only 8 audio tracks is going to run out quickly. A digital poly like the Blofeld is going to help tremendously because it has its own internal mixer. Im sure most digital polys are like that.
-HAVE FUN STOP WORRYING ABOUT THINGS THAT MOST NORMAL LISTENERS DONT HAVE A DAMN ABOUT