I’m not trying to convince you. i’m just saying there are valid reasons to have this feature . The ones i mentioned above are just my reasons why i’d love this.
I’m sure the other (as of now) 92 voters have their own reasons for this as well.
I mean… if i could have my way, the behaviour as it is now, would not change at all. It remains exactly the same, but with the option to use 8 additional and dedicated tracks for MIDI information if necessary.
But keep the current behaviour - that you can mix MIDI into the 8 sample tracks as well.
Some people may not want to use two devices, but rather focus on one… even if you don’t see things on the screen immediately. I personally don’t mind using multiple device… which is why if this feature doesn’t see the light of day… i’m not gonna loose sleep about it… i’ll just find a workaround as always .
For example - as of right now i’m using a Play together with the Tracker so i can outsource all the drum tracks. This already free’s up a lot of space.
TBH @Sandroid its been nearly a year so I’ve concluded it’s pretty certainly not gonna see the light of day now. Not on the OG Trackers anyway (which is what I have).
As you said, not the end of the world by any stretch, and I certainly appreciate that the limitations of the Tracker are part of its charm, but yeah much like you (and 92 others!) I just felt it would be a good expansion, one that in my own layman’s view might not actually add too much CPU load to the device, making it maybe more achievable.
I think this is where it would be quite good if Polyend could step in to either state why this isn’t possible, or whether they’re going to action these things after people have spent time here logging in, voting and generally contributing. Just leaving suggestions for nearly 12 months with zero feedback is not, IMO, a great way to manage expections. Sorry Polyend… but it’s why I slightly tuned out of using Backstage (this being my first time logging in since about Sept last year).
This would actually be perfect and would be even more powerful than Digitakt, as in the Digitakt, audio and midi are Different Tracks. I thought this was also about separating audio and midi. Thank you for explaining.
We are paying attention to the wishlist and votes. Part of our update priority is to implement top wishes. However, part of the silence on these wishes are due to the fact we honestly don’t know if this will be feasible yet and I don’t want to promise anything. Early tests on 8 more tracks didn’t look promising from a CPU perspective, but they are looking at options and potential solutions. We do have some smaller updates and another major update for the Tracker coming soon but I don’t know what it will look like until there is a Beta.
Hey Mitch, thanks for this response - helpful to know. Do you know if the team were trying this with 8 additional midi tracks only? My thinking is that sending midi only (no audio) might not impact the CPU too much as really old computers were able to send midi data on very very limited CPU, but I am not a developer! Thanks for keeping us in the loop on this - it’s been the most popular item on the wishlist for quite some time and would be a real step forward for the tracker.
To echo Dan - thank you for the feedback Mitch, it is much appreciated.
But I also share Dan’s view that 8 more MIDI tracks surely wouldn’t add that much overhead? Like Dan I’m not a developer so I’m probably missing something here, but it just strikes me that sending MIDI data is pretty low overhead stuff in terms of CPU, which is why I suggested the feature in the first place.
Apologies if there was any misunderstanding on that btw - but it was very much that the Tracker would essentially be like the Play, i.e. 8 tracks of audio, but with 8 tracks of MIDI that could play at the same time, allowing you to combine local samples with external hardware.
i’m not sure i understand what you are asking. But - you can mix/match audio and MIDI steps on the same tracks. So you could have one step be a audio sample and the next step be a MIDI note. Obviously one step can only be one or the other.
I didn’t mean one step to be Audio and next to be MIDI.
I meant the same step to output Audio AND MIDI simultaneously.
Right now, you can use either Audio OR MIDI on a single step.
For example, on Track 1, I have a bass sample and it goes like: C#, A, F#, D (whatever)
I want the same sequence of notes to be output as MIDI to play a hardware synth/VST in my DAW.
Oh i see. No currently that is not possible at all.
But that would be something that could be possible if we get additional 8 MIDI Tracks. because you can essentially just mirror those notes then.
Unless what you are proposing is an entirely new mode, where - as you say - notes info is sent to the active sample instruments AND sent to MIDI. This would however definitely be an entirely new wish.
Since this wish was meant for the OG Tracker and the update containing the 4 extra tracks is not out yet, we should keep this open for now.
But just to curb expectations: 4 MIDI Tracks is all the OG Tracker will get.
From what i understand, Polyend really tried to make it more, but the system performance just doesn’t allow for more without causing overall performance issues.
. The ones i mentioned above are just my reasons why i’d love this.
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