Hello,
My Polyend Synth arrived yesterday and today I had a blast with it! What a nice dynamic creative device is this!! Looking forward to many happy hours of music making.
I already have a few things which maybe are good tips for future firmware updates:
Regarding pad velocity:
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An option in System Settings below ‘Grid Sensitivy’ named ‘Minimal Velocity’ to set a minimal velocity. And above the minimal velocity treshold the set grid sensitivity takes over. So when minimal is set to 0 the pads have full range. When minimal is set to 50 for instance a sound always gets velocity 50 unless played harder. It would allow the user to play with some velocity sensitivity nuances without the sound falling away with too soft touches.
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Please save the velocity settings in a scene. And put an option in system settings “Velocity source” with the parameters “Global / Preset” to let the user choose if the Velocity settings are derived from the system settings or from the loaded scene.
Regarding the Sequencer:
- The ability to add a rest and a tie to sequencer notes and delete notes. Knob 6 isn’t in use. Maybe we could use that to indicate what the input action in the next timeslot will be. Let this show ‘note’ as the standard input indicator and be able to turn it to ‘rest’ or ‘tie’ or ‘del’ and press note buttons to ad rests and ties or delete a note. When adding a tie the dot wil merge with the next dot and become a line.
Regarding grid options:
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Add a grid with a single synth and left (6x5) and right (6x5) block. The left block one octave lower than the right block. Than you can play one preset in full range with two hands with some overlap.
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An option with the grid split in half playing synths one and two? Or several two synth grids. Synth 3 is switched off in this case. More real estate when playing two synths and as a side benefit saving CPU and voices i geuss? Or an option (like double clicking a synth engine) to switch off a synth engine and grid real estate is given to the other two synths. And full grid when two engines are switched off this way.
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Like 5, when a synth engine is set to 0 voices please give the pads of that engine to the other synths.
Regarding MIDI options:
8. My Modal Cobalt8 has a Midi Clock ‘auto’ setting which picks up incoming midi clock and gives preference to that but when I stop my sequencer it switches back to the internal clock. Works fantastic on the Cobalt. So please add ‘Auto’ to the Midi Clock In list of Internal, MIDI in Jack, MIDI In USB if possible.
Regarding voices:
9. ‘Dynamic’ option when turning voice allocation past 8. Then it automatically takes the voices not asked for by other synth engines. Rename Voices 0 to Off.
Regarding presets and Scenes
10. An option to rename names.
11. An option to mark Scenes (and presets) favorites. For convenient list filtering. Maybe Shift-pressing the Scene selection rotary will flag a Scene as favourite and mark it with a star on the far right of the selection bar. Shift-Turning will let the cursor jump between favorites.
These are some findings of my first day playing and tweaking. I know the difficulties of product and software design so don’t feel sorry if this is not possible! I will still enjoy this synth! And I will be happy to beta-test.
Greetings,
Wilmar