One of the clockworkPi units would be a wonderful box for Renoise or Sunvox too
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saw this in the facebook polyend tracker users group;
" UPD FROM POLYEND TEAM
We’ve been listening closely to your conversations about firmware updates and other issues on the forum. We hear you, and we appreciate the feedback. We feel that our biggest failure here has been communication, we are a busy team but are making a commitment to improve this. I will be posting a quarterly update with what is going on at Polyend, but sharing dates and specific features in the works is unlikely. It was a mistake to preview the features that we were working on, as this created a lot of anticipation, and we have been overly focused on complex feature requests, instead of bug fixes.
Based on your input, we’ve already made some changes and have more planned for the future. Those one-on-one chats with some of you were incredibly helpful – thanks for taking the time to reach out! And I add this just because people may not realize it, since we don’t use it as a marketing thing - but this really is a small employee owned company, not a corporation trying to maximize profits for shareholders or vacant owners. Mistakes will be made, but we will work hard to not repeat them.
Here’s what’s happening now:
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New Beta Firmware for Play & Play+: We released a new beta firmware that focuses on bug fixes for these devices (without the MIDI update for now) to get those fixes out to you faster. More fixes and features are on the way for both Play and Play+.
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Upcoming Beta for Tracker Line: There’s a beta for Tracker, Tracker+, and Mini in the works to address the Live Recording issues. We hope to release it publicly soon.
About the Beta Program:
All these updates are currently in closed beta, but we are continuing to add new testers. We want to be more transparent with you, the community, so here’s the deal:
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We review all beta applications and invite people in batches. Don’t worry if you don’t get in right away – we’ll be adding testers as needed.
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You can apply here. (Heads up, if your posts have been flagged for moderation in the past few months, you may not be eligible at the moment.)
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We are also currently discussing internally how we want to proceed with our approach to updates and firmware testing but we are not ready to share this with you as we are still formalizing how we want to do this in the future with more openness in mind.
I think more transparency is key moving forward as it may not be apparent to you all how passionate about these devices the Polyend team is, this isn’t a corporation with some suit at the top micro-managing and directing the creatives. Everyone is using these devices, with many of us using them as our primary instruments. I’m very proud to be part of this creative, enthusiastic, and inventive team and we want Backstage to be a place where you all can see this too. We want to create a positive space for you to share experiences, learn from each other, and enjoy making music with our instruments. We’re committed to continuous improvement, and we are sorry if we haven’t always met your expectations."
That’s a nifty wee device.
However I agree with the laptop sentiment. My Dad got a Polyend Tracker a couple years ago and while I thought it was OK for just dabbling / sketching, I honestly can’t understand why he wouldn’t just use that money on a small laptop or netbook instead and use Renoise.
I think ios and android version is a blast for the music scene! Thats all we|you need for portable Tracking.
And Buy Renoise - To support!!!
Renoise is already the God of Daws
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Hate when companies write a big instagram emo post to apologise for being rubbish. They always emphasise how human they are and how its a labour of love, small team, etc. Why dont they just release the updates instead of whining.
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True
Yeah its defo a work in progress project that should not be released until it is at least a polished and developed product. Also way over priced for such a low powered device. Cheap lcd not even oled screen. Weak processor and horrendous bugged to hell software.
The people in the polyend forum seemed to think It was unreasonable to make such a request by having a user disable toggle note off and for receiving a device that is technically broken. They got very upset when I stated at present the Tracker plus is no more than a very expensive basic step midi sequencer for outboard gear and a door stop with one user stating I was being too brutal in my analogy when describing Polyend as an immature company that needs to invest in real beta testers instead of just using the general public.
Most people there don’t appear to use the more advanced features and mostly use it as a midi sequencer for outboard gear. I asked the question… What benefit is there having a monophonic kick drum pattern scattered over 11 tracks? That’s the tracker workflow somone said. Well never in my over 30 years of experience of trackers from protracker, octamed, fast tracker and renoise, have I ever ecperienced working like that before. It’s made to design they said. Well it sucks lol.
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I’ve found that in every gear company forum i’ve ever been in (except this one!). Fanboys shoot you down for making reasonable assumptions about the quality of a product and then finding they don’t tally with the reality. Been banned from most just for pointing out some very obvious and simple things wrong with the piece of that company’s equipment i have in my hand. Worse is when their own support team acts in the same way (a certain Swedish luxury toy company is notorious for this).
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I owned a Polyend Tracker (first version) which i liked somehow and a Tracker Mini which i don’t liked. The hardware control interface of the original Tracker makes much more sense with the software, navigation on the Mini feels sluggish somehow. I also owned M8s (the previous version, not the actual), i sold them but still think that the M8 is a great portable Tracker in regard to interaction between hardware and software and workflow. I don’t think there is any good (portable) Tracker out there which is great for live recording.
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I have an Akai MPC live 2 for portable composing, now thats a beast especially with 3.0 beta. Yes its not a tracker but Polyend could learn a thing or two about a company developing and putting a fully featured daw in a box and getting it right. Akai would of never have released it in such a broken state. If there was only a tracker interface in that lol.
The issue with the Polyend Fanboys is their bar is set low, when im paying £700 for something going into Korg and Roland price territory, I set the bar pretty high and you kinda expect a bit of quality. Its not like it was made in some back water factory in China or Taiwan, it says it was assembled in Poland. Actually strike that cuz most Akai, Roland, big player music companies manufacture them there but again their bar and quality control is set a lot higher. The problem is they are imanufacturing it for pennies and sell a hugely underpowered device for much more which doesn’t bode well when you can pick up a raspberry pi for a fraction of the cost that wipes the floor with memory and processing power compared to anything inside a polyend. But the main thing is the software that is a mess.
I bet if they made it open source, all those major problems would probably be gone in 24 hours.
When you have a beast of a tracker like Renoise, its bizzare they would not take any inspiration from it.
They bang on about limitations can make you more creative, yes this is true, but we are in 2024 now, Renoise is living proof of how a modern day tracker has evolved into something that was percieved as limited to game and demo scene music.
I had the poly plus for just under 2 weeks and barely put an 8 bar loop together as the software is so bad and spent most of that time in the polyend forums lol. Anyway its gone now amd returned back to the store.
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When i had og polyend tracker it always felt like it was made by people who don’t know what they are doing, like they don’t have any trackers/demoscene background at all. No regrets i sold it.
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Does anyone use Renoise on a touchscreen device? Does it feel like hardware?
You guys are missing this important thread.
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Oh wow 
I think a great starting platform for physical renoise would be to use the redux plugin, since it doesn’t have many controls that could be combined into a separate controller similar to the m8 tracker
Redux is cool because you can create a full-fledged patch of an entire track within one instrument and save it as an instrument, it can be easily exported fully to Renoise. In fact, there is practically a ready-made environment for a live instrument, which is very flexible and interactive.
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Maybe you’ll want to read these:
Obviously a couple of posts and a big push won’t correct everyone’s thoughts on their reputation, but at the very least it looks like they’re trying.
Wow, a whole week of work!
i haven’t heard of renoise up until a week ago when i was googling for a tracker i can run on a raspberry. This pi 3 is now mounted on a cheap screen, running renoise, with a keychron mechanical keyboard for the full hipster experience. I either use the USB midi of the drum machine, or a yamaha bluetooth midi receiver. at the moment i’m memorising keyboard shortcuts and trying to code some basic helper tools to integrate the drum machine and virus synth a bit better for live jams.
just built it because i already had the parts around and didn’t want to buy another piece of hardware. lots of fun.
