Personally I’d be hesitant to buy it if I am being honest.
The way the resolution of existing bugs / faults in the OG tracker increasingly look “unresolvable” and seem to have carried over to some other products in the range makes me v trepidatious about more polyend products.
It dismays me that I can’t get midi sync to work at all for example… this reduces usability of the tracker considerably. I recently transferred 3 years of projects over to the M8 for a live set because there was no way to use the OG tracker (live) due to bugs and issues. The M8 worked and was reliable.
I genuinely think the OG tracker is a masterpiece of UI - product design . But the seeming inability to properly resolve the software problems has significantly soured my opinion
managing SD content as a archive on the computer
Not interested in synth engines, but in a more powerful granulator.
Touchscreen would open up some nice possibilities.
Would be nice to have it as a not-THAT-expensive DIY upgrade install kit.
Hope to see Tracker supported for many years to come.
Cheers,
I’m probably in a minority because I wouldn’t want most of the wishlist items I’m seeing in the other comments. The only things I pine for are:
Internal Battery - I think I would use my tracker more if it were easier to move around
Enhanced Wavetable - synth engines would be nice, but simply allowing for a 2 osc wavetable would be plenty to work with. Also, taking inspiration from the hydrasynth and implementing a generalized “PWM” that works with any wave would really help with sound design.
Enhanced Granular - simply adding more grains would be amazing
Those things alone would be enough for me to buy a whole new tracker.
I’d rather an additional accessory that has the beloved knob and pads and has the upgrades we need in it, like its own processor for effects ( preferable a collab, maybe sinevibes?) that we can hook up to the mini or play+ to expand them or the play/tracker og … a dock with Polyend goodies so to speak that can be used by itself with other gear as well. (A Polyend performance dock kaoss pad thingy)
I like the idea of unifying the hardware. The same MCU, etc. in all the units would likely expedite development. Don’t lose features like FM, Sampling, etc. I’d personally be fine with discountinuing legacy models.
Absolutely. I bought the original Tracker, and gave it away to a friend because as wonderful as it was, I just can’t tolerate having all my stereo samples converted to mono. Then I bought a Tracker Mini, LOVED the sound quality and beefed up stereo sampling and improved speed, but ended up returning it because of having absolutely no way to live record notes (combined with spotty/problematic support for controlling via USB MIDI).
I would be first in line for a Tracker + with pretty much the exact same form factor as the original, only:
Beefier CPU
Stereo samples
Can plug straight into computer as an audio device
More robust encoder (less likely to need replacement)
Radio AND built-in microphone would be great. Maybe I’m weird this way but I really loved sampling from the radio on the original Tracker.
It matters a lot where you are. FM radio is being phased out in many countries in favor or DAB. I believe some of the reports about FM radio not working in the Tracker were caused by lack of FM stations in the place the person lives, all switched to DAB. Meanwhile, AM radio continues to live and could be a (mono) source of plenty of audio material coming from far far away.
If the Tracker comes with radio, it could take this into consideration. On the other hand, plenty of mobile phones come with a radio transistor inside, and you could get that signal via line in and a cable.
I think that one of the characteristic strengths of the Trackers, that sets it apart from the classic XoX-style sequencers, is the ability to quickly generate complexity and variation detail.
A natural extension of this in the rhythmic domain is polymeter & polyrythm, the ability to have tracks of different lengths and/or run-rates going against each other.
I can’t recall where - but there was a comment from someone inside Polyend that the underlying software architecture wasn’t currently compatible with this type of feature. If in fact a deep overhaul was in the works, this would be a powerful addition in a new rev.
One suggestion has been to include a “Hop” FX param, that would jump the step to another point in the loop, that might be the simplest in terms of not disrupting the overall logic. Track independent clock dividers might be another approach, but to be really interesting it would need to be granular to at least the step level. Euclidean type divisions also come to mind here.
audio over usb
analog clock i/o
8 midi tracks
program change in for pattern control
more ram
independent pattern numbers per track per song step
battery
dedicated velocity lane
recording audio while playing
legato mode for one shot instruments with a polyphony setting
USB A access for file load / save
more grains
interpolation in wavetable playback, more than one osc
maybe an fm? instead of the fm radio, or maybe an offline fm. (many ‘offline’ synths from back in the tracker era that would render a sample for you to use in your sampler.
how about an offline speech synth
i would love more fx lanes and fx. maybe some way to give exponential or algorithmic response to envelopes or lfos. it tends to have a dramatic effect on a filter or amp for instance
lovely device! i think v1 is a great size and layout. its got feng shui. clicky buttons are so retro futuristic but give you feedback. its not too crowded with features and the samples sound good coming from it.
Regarding the built-in battery, because there are such ideas here. I’d rather buy it without the battery and be able to buy it later. I mean, the idea of how it was in old laptops with a removable battery or something like that.
FM radio is being phased out in many countries in favor or DAB. I believe some of the reports about FM radio not working in the Tracker were caused by lack of FM stations in the place the person lives, all switched to DAB. Meanwhile, AM radio continues to live and could be a (mono) source of plenty of audio material coming from far far away.