Just a quick word of appreciation for the Polyend team.
I just received my Play upgrade to the Play+, and I’m happy to report the samples seem to load about twice as fast.
Back in January of 2023 I had created the Load sample packs faster on the Play post to explore if the original Play could be made to load faster than about 0.4 MB/s. That wish was closed a month later, arguing about “hardware limitations”.
Now I don’t have the Play anymore, but I can load the same sample pack I had performed my test with back then, the “Tech House Pack” (27.5 MB):
loads in 65 seconds on the Play, at a rate of about 0.4 MB/s.
loads in about 30 seconds on the Play+.
Thanks Polyend, and thanks for the full-color 46 pages “Polyend Play+ Essentials” manual, that’s a nice addition too.
Thanks, I’d be curious to know. You mean the larger, the faster, or the opposite?
As for the speed boost, this was not exactly news, (most) people who upgraded received an email saying: “Include the microSD card. SD Card - Play+ has a new card optimized for faster loading, do not use the old SD cards.”. I just wanted to find out how much faster…
Sorry I was not so clear. I mean: larger (bigger in size SD CARDS, I use a 128 gb one) ensure a better overall experience. Source: daily machine usage. Measured? No, just empiric observation. Hope this helps.
Just bought the following after hearing someone got faster load times with this card on the OG Play: SanDisk 64GB Extreme microSDXC UHS-I Memory Card with Adapter - Up to 170MB/s, C10, U3, V30, 4K, 5K, A2, Micro SD Card - SDSQXAH-064G-GN6MA
The Play + stock SD card loaded 28 seconds with Moms80s pack
The Play + SanDisk card loaded 40-48 seconds on several runs with same pack. Formatted to FAT32.
In my unscientific testing, stock Polyend SD is the more extreme.
Following up on my own thread here, it’s now February 2025 and I bought a SAMSUNG PRO Plus microSD Memory Card + Adapter, 128GB microSDXC, Up to 180 MB/s, Full HD & 4K UHD, UHS I, C10, U3, V30, A2.
This is one of the highest rated card in terms of performance: U3, V30, A2.
The same “Tech House Pack” (27.5 MB) loads in about 30 seconds on the Play+, same as when I tried with the Polyend provided SD card back in 2023 (see post above). No improvements to report.
So there is probably no point wasting money on fast cards. The Play+ loads faster than the Play for sure, but 27.5 MB in 30 seconds is very very slow, that’s barely 1MB/s for a microSD card that can supposedly do 180 MB/s. I can’t imagine how much more pleasant it would be if the Play+ could load even 5 times faster.
However, if this hypothesis is true, could a case be made that this conversion needs to happen only once? The device (or the users) could pre-process the WAV files into this internal format and write the new files to the SD card (or larger card), which would then act as a cache.
In other words, if all that time is spent creating a new intermediate form that is easier for the Play to work with internally, let’s work on a way for us users to leave that intermediate form on the card, so it’s not done again. Space is “cheap”, that 128 MB microSD card was less than $19. Right now the time it takes me to load sample packs is pretty much why I don’t use the device as much as other devices that load my patches nearly instantaneously. @Mitch, what do you think?
Then again, it could also just be the internal card reader, but 1 MB/s is really slow.
I hear what you’re saying yet I get the hunch that this would remove the time from loading projects and add it to the time saving projects.
I would legit never leave anything to work on an SD card, as that puts performance in the hands of a 3rd party product that ranges in performance. Opens up a whole can of worms.
The samples (WAV) you are using in a project are saved in the project directory, sure, but they only need to be saved once – it’s not like the Play+ can edit samples, right? The patterns are what is being edited by the user essentially, and that’s a much, much smaller file. Since the samples stored in the project folder are samples that are likely already on the card (say, you loaded them from a sample pack folder), if their intermediate form has been computed already then you don’t need to recompute that intermediate form just for the project folder – copy the intermediate forms from where they currently are (the sample pack folder) to the project folder, alongside the sample, which should be fast.
Ideally, I would even prefer a setting where I can say: “don’t even bother saving the samples in my project folder, just save the patterns and the reference/path to the sample pack folder it was originally loaded from”. And sure, it’s up to me to not break these references and be careful when moving files around, but the benefit is that the first time a sample is loaded it is converted to that intermediate form and then it’s done! Any future project that makes use of that sample can be up and running instantly, since all projects will point to the same intermediate forms.
It would not be that hard to find a file on the card even after it has been moved, as long as it’s still on the card – just save a checksum of the sample files in the project, and search for the files with the same checksum if they are no longer at the same path; you don’t even need to re-read each candidate WAV file on the card, store the checksum in a separate, tiny text file alongside the sample file, at the same time the intermediate form is created (i.e. kalimba.wav, kalimba.raw, kalimba.checksum), and inspect the checksum files instead to find the new location. But I digress, that would not be a “beginner friendly” setting, I would just be happy if that intermediate form was stored alongside any sample, be it in a sample pack folder or my project folder, if this leads to faster load times.
As far as performance is concerned, look at the Synthstrom Deluge, it is a powerhouse that does everything off its SD card and can handle more tracks than the Play; they have stated that you don’t even need very fast cards to achieve this.
Maybe it’s a little bit off topic but I’ve been messing around with the project folders in my PC, erasing, copying, creating new folders for projects, even renaming projects and everything works perfect.
