So some users pushed back against the Tracker+ and the Play+ thinking their purchase and support for the Play or Tracker had now been left behind. I know it an elephant in the room, but we can only move on if talk it out.
Here is my suggestion to move things forward:
In a firmware update offer a standalone version of some of the synth engines with a sample export that the sequencer can then use.
This would be particularly pertinent to the OG Play as it cannot generate any noises internally. Its great the OG Tracker can sample or sample radio which why it is still relevant.
Existing non-plus user would have a way to try the synth engines and then ponder āOMG this would be great if I could control this synth dynamically, maybe I should upgrade to the plus version.ā Thatās the part that generates new business.
Everyone wins? OG model users get another great update, Plus users get an enlarged user base which mean better longer support, and not forgetting you guys, Polyend sells some more plus models, and great PR for looking after long time users.
Sure, but my suggestion was for a standalone synth than can export a sample that can be loaded into the sample pool. Not for a synth engine, that is controlled dynamically by the sequencer, as that requires the extra computing power of a plus model.
I think the best way forward is to move on. We have this belief companies owe us something. If we donāt get it, we feel betrayed. While each of us is entitled to our feelings, time isnāt and it moves on too. Thereās a very strong chance we each have a thing that can do what we want. Noodle, live perform, make songs and everything else in between. I used to get upset at what I felt Polyend should be doing. I let that distract me from whatās important. Playing with what I have. We live in a great time of music gear that thereās something out there for everyone.
This might not sit well at first. In due time, itāll click. Just hopefully not a lot of time passes before it does. Life is short. Jam more.
I think itās a cool idea and it makes sense. Personally I would prefer they concentrate on new features for the hardware, but I can see how this could be useful for some.
Iāll also say honestly that this could have been (could still be) a good wish, but I donāt think this āgood willā or āuser push backā is unnecessary to mention. Itās not the impression I get spending every day here and it feels a bit more like projection rather than the current reality.
i dont expect offline synths especially since theyre not getting votes. i was just wondering, i think tracker is fine how it is except maybe the song sequencer limits but then again its not unusable. limits are an expected thing with first gen anything. limits im not so fond of are useless to get upset over since it doesnt seem they will be extended. i was really just wondering if it had been dropped because i didnt see any notifications.
While I get the novelty of having some random sound modules available offline to generate samples to import, I think this is a very different question relating to giving OG owners some kind of āLegacyā access to the synths.
No way this is going to happen. The OG tracker are subsets of the new devices; you are asking for them to have distinct functionality (as that functionality doesnāt make much sense for the new devices). It makes no little sense for Polyend to do that. I expect/hope they will back port bug fixes and some new features from the later devices (like maybe MIDI perform mode when that comes), but canāt see them adding features just for the older devices at this point. Thatās just not a thing in the hardware business.
The easiest way to give people a taste of the new synths without doing anything weird like this would be to give away a sample pack of the new synths that you can load on the SD card.
There are plenty of iOS/Android apps on which you can generate sounds and record them through the Line in. For instance, the wonderful Flowtones synth which has the Randomize button and tonal/atonal slider.
For the Play itās way more complicated for sure. I have to use a Zoom portable recorder, take out the SD card from the Play, insert it into the recorder and record there, insert the card back. A very long and convoluted process, but I can do it anywhere, as my smartphone and the recorder are always with me.
While phones can capture pretty good audio nowadays. They are no match to a field recorder.
My Zoom H4N Pro will capture far more detail than my Samsung S23 ever could.
And itās also very clear why. Itās lack of dedicated hardware for that specific task.
For example, the H4N comes equipped with high-quality built-in stereo condenser microphones. They capture stereo sound with a very accurate spatial representation. And then there is the integrated mic preamps, which means it can capture quiet sounds with clarity and low self noise. They usually also operate at much higher bitrates than phones do.
Phone microphones and their preamps are optimized for calls and general purpose recording. Also for close proximity. Youāll loose detail and clarity the further away your source is.
Now - you could optimize these things by attaching a decent microphone to your phone of course, but even then you are limited by whatever your phones input and processing capabilities are.
Buy hardware for what it can do now, not for what it could do in the future. People are so used to app updates on their phone they expect it to happen on hardware too. Be thankful for fixes and features. Greetings to the Polyend team.
While thats true, Polyend have generously created a wishlist for users to request what they would like to see on their products, so there will be an expectation that their products are updated with some new features, obviously customers cant expect everything be implemented though.
Also true but a wishlist on a user forum is just a novel way for doing desk research and polling your target audience to get feedback on your business strategy. Polyend still is free to do with that info what they feel feasible, balancing costs and effort.
Well once again my enthusiasm has outweighed my empathy.
Apologies if there was some projection; I will try harder to keep future posts more focused.
I had not seen the post Offline synths for sample creation
which presents offline synth idea, so I will go read up over there.
I totally get the idea that gram (Profile - gram - Polyend Backstage) mentions that the OG tracker is a subset of the Tracker family and I hope that can be maintained going forward.
I do worry that having to support as many flavours of the tracker as Polyend do, that something is going to give in the future, but I still have great working devices in front of me so looks like I need to make more music and less forum noise.
i would like to clarify a couple things here, since i havenāt seen them brought up, yet yāall talked about all 3 trackers as if they were equal in hardware
They are not!
OG Tracker runs a much older chip at 155 Mhz
Tracker Mini and Tracker+ now run on a much newer (and different) chip that more than triples the processing power
As far as i understand it, some parts of the codebase for the OG as well as the two new ones are shared. But who knows if this is going to remain this way.
I would even guess that in order to take advantage of the new chipset, eventually we might see a bigger divergenceā¦ and thatās ok.
So yes, the OG was never going to get synths.
Do i believe itās still going to see updates? I think so and hope so.
But letās be honest, it has had a good run already. These are victory laps by now!
Be advised, this is just a best guess by me and my personal opinion.
Be advised, this is just a best guess by me and my personal opinion. 