Q4 2024 - On communication, firmware updates and fixes

[ra.nunley]

To Jeff’s point about new products being released without current products being appropriately fixed:

Mitch, you stated previously that your team is “busy” and that your company is “small” and “employee-owned.” Why wouldn’t your team be busy? Lots of people are busy at work.

Describing your team as being busy was unnecessary but deliberate. You might have been implying that your team has a higher work volume than your audience, but I believe you instead added “busy” to appeal for the community to cut your team some slack.

No. Absolutely not.

You also appeal by saying that you are a small, employee-owned company and “not a corporation trying to maximize profits…”

Issues have been recurring and reported for some time. Is there one person dealing with the issues reported–which appear to be present for a not insignificant portion of your customer base–and that is the same person developing the software for new products (or revised products, e.g. play+, tracker+)? If the lack of support stems from too much workload you do have the option to not release new products (at least until existing products are functional, otherwise risk losing brand trust and loyalty), you do have the option to hire additional personnel, you do have the option of moving to an open source software model and incorporating solutions recommended by the community, and you have other options.

I purchased the Play very shortly before the Play+. It was not long before I learned that support for the Play was already being discontinued. Your company’s disregard for its customers aside, that you resort to making excuses about how busy your team is and how small the team is telling–especially since the framing is that your team struggles against all odds rather than admitting the company is being mismanaged and is greedily attempting to saturate the market with a variety of products–products with great potential and a lot of excellent ideas–rather than hold off on new products or iterations of existing products until the products your company has already sold can live up to their expectations.

I had a lot of hope in Polyend and the Play. Knowing right away that there would be no new features and no adjustments for existing features made me feel a bit slighted, but the instability and related occasional data loss is very frustrating.

The tracker/tracker mini/tracker+ seems like a really cool idea, but there are already 3 versions and I would not be surprised if none of them are receiving any support come January 1, 2026 due to your busy, small team working on the four newer tracker models released by then.

I do not trust a company when their representative blames nebulous conditions instead of identifying and owning whatever true issues are present. You aren’t making changes which might increase the size of the team in a meaningful way and you aren’t getting less busy, so the same excuses will be present later.

I truly hope someone can distill some of the above and find value in it with which to move forward. Such incredible potential and some obviously awesome folks. Best of luck steering the ship before hitting the rocks: it is possible, but only if someone acknowledges the rocks and takes the steering wheel rather than blame the wind for the changes to the expected course.

Formatted for legibility by moderators. - @Sandroid

[cjclip]

@david.p.benton

I am new to Polyend and indeed, devices like this as well. I too, welcome and appreciate this statement about communication. While I found the manuals confusing and I struggled at first with the Play+ I am now getting to grips with it.
I too am surprised by the reports of crashes - I have had what seem to be odd things happening sometimes, that may be just my own fault, no crashes at all. Although I don’t always use the provided cables I am careful to use good ones. I have experienced the same type of issues being reported with devices from another company while I have had experienced none of them.
Yes, there are features I’d like to see come, and some things that I feel could have been done better but I have been impressed by the Play+. Thanks for this update.

I support the idea that musical products should be monumental, rather than just live for a couple of years and then end up in the “discontinued and unsupported” section. This concerns me a lot, especially considering the company’s history, where many good products have inexplicably disappeared. I would not want this to happen to my Tracker and Play, because I invest a lot of time and get used to a certain workflow. It’s also important to provide product support; for instance, if someone accidentally breaks something, getting it repaired can be quite a challenge. However, I don’t have a complete picture or understanding of how this is currently organized at Polyend.

[mokujin_music]

I’m just an OG Junglist saying thanx for such a great OG Tracker, that’s been frequently supported for nearly 5 years.

WTF I ain’t gonna diss Team Polyend. My needs are absolutely catered for, no seriously you fucking nailed it. Blessings from a Brit in Berlin.

[prehmuss83]

till i entered this forums i never had seen such a fever about firmware updates . ok somehow polyend is also pushed this a bit with the wishes category . and i think its so cool that the users can be a part of the devices history .but i would prefer smaller but more often updates that fix the bugs ,that have been found over the time ,instead of trying to fix all bugs and add some new functions in a big update which takes much more time. i think its more important that the functions of a machine that i buy work how they should work cuz i bought it cuz of these functions. new abilitys are awesome but not really essential . people buy things not because of maybe future abilitys but because of the abilitys that already are in the machine and expected to work properly
but at all im happy with my play plus and even if we waited longer than first been told i dont really wait for it …
i think that the people who go crazy cuz of , waiting, and post bad words dont help at all … bugs are not cool but you can work with the machine . its not that its not possible to work with

[ligriv13]

My 2 cent…. It’s not the fact we think Polyend is sum huge coproduction up to no good for money. But when we spend our hard earned cash on a product every on YouTube is raving about. It upsetting. I got a tracker…. No issues thought I fell in love with your company. Got the play used it on one project that turned out awesome but the sample folders disappearing every time you power off the unit it’s impossible to get any work done on multiple days of consistent work. So I stopped using it. Been waiting patiently for six months on a fixed. Meantime, in between time, I figured I’ll get a Polyend tracker mini because it has new synths and new features and portable should be amazing because my og tracker is amazing. Nope bugged out. Can’t record useless…. Feel like I’ve wasted over $1000 on y’all products for broken nothing…. Now I get to wait to see if Iam a Chosen one to get in beta tester program to see if I can get some fixes for my _______ machines kind of ridiculous. O but you guys just came out with a dope compresser I need to buy too…… wonder if it’s a glitchy mess that will sit on the shelf next to your other amazing music gear that looks great but don’t do what you paid for…… thx for letting us know your behind us slowly giving us …. updates

[cjclip]

Judging by all the comments that appear in every thread, Polyend has only one way to fix this. They need to focus on fixing all the bugs. Otherwise, this negativity will never end. (((

[tazillionmillion]

Thank you for the update. I really hope that I can get accepted to the beta. I am starting to have more time and I finally have a functional studio I can be productive in. It would be nice to have a reason to get more involved with the community. I always get turned off by all the bickering and avoid posting. Would be nice to communicate with others that are looking to do more than vent.

[gravedraq]

@cjclip

They need to focus on fixing all the bugs. Otherwise, this negativity will never end.

Yeah, it is unfortunately coloring every topic on this Forum.

[ameliagagarin]

I haven’t found in my devices, (two OG trackers, play+ and mini) many bugs. Only Play+ if I remember correctly had some and very random, not replicable. I wonder if people has faulty units, or SD cards less compatible, I don’t know, but I don’t have experience many bugs in my units.

[darioleicach]

Yeah, I was thinking about that yesterday. I went to a jam with "non electronic " musicians, wich are a bit impatient with gear setups. I took the play + and had no issues. Was a fun gathering.

Personally I suffer the piano roll bugs. Hanged notes and patterns that disappear. The second one has a workaround and the first one it’s a bummer but not a tragedy. In some random occasions I had a kind of system malfunctioning, but solved by just pressing the on / off button.

I also agree with some fellows about the lack of bug fixes, but Polyend acknowledged this in the last days and @Mitch , was great to read your posts and I hope you keep this new approach. Congrats for the creativity of the products. Polyend was my gateway to the dawless world.

Also @ameliagagarin , hope to keep hearing your music! Very inspirational!

Cheers from the south.!

[ameliagagarin]

I will post more music soon, thanks!.

Regarding play+, I’ve made a large project with 64 patterns at least and it became so huge that copy a pattern takes 1 minute (more or less, if I remember correctly) and you need to be absolutely patient. It was for a live gig and worked perfect.

Another problem with that huge project was mix between patterns and variations. I didn’t understood how variations changed in polyrhythms, I don’t know if it’s a bug but it didn’t change with the largest pattern… (What I wanted to do was use same column variations at the same time inside a pattern, but it didn’t work). So I opted only for patterns. And it takes a lot for copying so I hope in a future play will be faster.

It is for me the most funniest hardware device that I’ve tried, and faster than maschine too make music. The fastest and funniest.

[darioleicach]

I had the same issue with large projects. I opted to use different projects and make a transition in between with the roland s 1 or the tracker.

The use of variations and patterns… yes I tend to forget of variations… even when I use them.

Maybe I will open a thread to share experiences / workflows, so we don’t go off topic.

Thumbs up to @cjclip with his "9 killer features " post and @gravedraq with his “nes music tools” post.

I don’t know if it’s a wrong impression, but I tend to think that the dawless world is a bit jealous of sharing workflow ideas… in ableton there’s a lot of videos and posts… yeah I know that ableton is an standard, but nevertheless.

[Farold_Haltermayer]

Loved reading this, bang on target. It’s amazing how much we take for granted that an audience knows or understands, so this level of awareness is priceless for a brand and the customers, thank you

[getcarterrightnow]

Same

[DK.Domino]

@cjclip

Isn’t it worth being patient, to simply understand the people who work so hard for us and love what they do, and just offer them our support?

No, its not. You can buy gear that works as advertised. We are supporting them when we buy the gear. This isn’t some ‘Journey’ we are going through together.

[mokujin_music]

Unfortunately for some Polyend Customers their Journey is comparable to Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, by Terry Gilliam .

[atumrex]

I think the same, customers are not paying to be beta testers. Customer pay for a finished and tested products and if something happens (Sometimes there may be bugs), what a customer expect is that to be fixed in the next days, weeks.

Honestly, it’s been almost a year since the launch of play+ (which is full of bugs that make it impossible to use in a live session, for example), and the fact that the company’s statement a week ago was: we’re going to focus on the bugs… is a bit embarrassing.

In the case of the Play+, and many of you have already seen this, it only takes one person and a couple of hours with the device to know that the device has critical errors. I mean, they are not far-fetched bugs… if they didn’t have a short-term solution for that… why did they release it?

[denis.mujakovic]

absolutely unbelievable condescension. made me laugh tbh.

[denis.mujakovic]

I am a big fan and supporter of boutique manufacterers and have (had) a ton of understanding.

from my perspective, the problem isnt “transparency” and “communication”.
its releasing a unfinished and buggy product, then before its even polished releasing a buggy successor, making the first one lose half of its worth. and then having the update tempo slow to a crawl. then announcing summer update. then blowing past that.

fyi I never had a box just get halved in worth within months of buying it with all these nasty profit oriented companies.

I do wish you best of success and hope you achieve all your goals, but quite honestly this has been a sobering experience and definitely made me never trust a youtuber again. its was an excellent marketing strategy that is for sure.