Polyend has released a firmware update for the Polyend Play. Among new features in the update is the ability to customize all of the user’s Master Effects – Reverb Delay, Equalizer, and Limiter.
Pricing and availability. Polyend Play v1.2 firmware is available as a free download from Polyend’s website. Additional technical specifications, and more Polyend products and accessories, are available online at https://polyend.com
“paint by numbers”.
John, you’re a grump. The tools don’t matter, it’s all about creativity and the final result. I’ve seen kids absolutely blow people’s minds with music from “toy” gear.
Frodo, agreed. i saw a guy play an Alesis ION? once? crazy impressed.
esthetically though: these things kinda reminds me of the computer on the Seaview from Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. or maybe Lost in Space. man i loved that ‘manta-ray’ sub they had. so cool.
these instruments seem more like compose/orchestrate by ‘multiple choice’ than a 5 page ‘essay’.
not toys, just… they don’t conjure images of music in my head. I’m more of a traditional luddite i guess. nothing impresses me more than a good old piano. ;0)
sounds like you’re discounting drum machines wholesale in favore of synth noodling? as fair as it is to prefer full-fledge synthesis engines for your own approach, it’s a pretty silly, closed worldview otherwise.
additionally, being color blind I’m sick of products I can’t use. ‘we*’ all are.
*-color blind folks; roughly 10% of potential sales.
So sad.
Not to be able to experience the absolute joy of gorgeous color?
How frustrating that must be.
As a photographer, wow, what a nightmare.
“Videoshmideos” indeed!
I bet you know all the colors in a 96 count crayola crayon box too. lol. there’s only six real colors. the rest are just made up on the spot.
alacazam indeed! let’s see your disappearing trick fella.
unreal dude.
every single bit of news there you are: the very first commenter, the most inane misinformed vapid hater BS.
keep it up, its hilarious.
also super sad.
Exactly how? By giving people more control over sfx?
I owned one when they first released. It was not fun to use. Had those tracker-esque limitations, if i remember correctly, like you cant search for samples while the track is playing. Not much sample manipulation, more so a sample player. The MIDI was all messed up. As much praise as polyend gets, the medusa, tracker and the play were all not fun to use. But they are fighting the god fight.
Thanks for that info HR.
It’s helpful to know how it works out in the wild. That’s what counts with this kind of hardware.
I guess the best advice is to watch for honest/critical reviews. Hopefully, Polyend can step up their game (no pun intended).
Handsome Randy only expresses the views of Handsome Randy. He does not feel the needs to write “In my opinion” since its implied. But for reals, I enjoyed the tracker for what it was but felt limited in the dumbest of ways. Certin pages stopped the sound playback, the wavetable functionality was like “why is this even on here”. Pitching just sounded bad to me. Medusa, bad layout, parameter locking could have been a lot easier and intuitive, sounded great though. Play, I had it for 2 weeks, just felt like the amount of work and memory you needed to implement to lay out some loops since each row of pads can have any sound, was just weird. It was like oarameter locking one sot samples on the octatrack BUT a lot less cool was of digging through samples and very limited in how you could manipulate those samples- filter, pitch- sample end and one other, i forget. So to each their own, is not the gear its the user and all that but fun is always on top of my list otherwise if feels like work and menu diving. Hope that helps more.
What’s frustrating is that they released the Play while the Tracker is still buggy as hell but they decided it’s good enough for now. And a couple weeks ago, they release a metal grey version of it to try to make money off unsold mk1 units and parts..
FWIW I find the polyend tracker fun to use. For reference, I also enjoy the sequencers on elektron boxes and the OP-Z.
The Medusa was not the most fun to use, powerful and interesting yes but not fun – hard to make a good sound with, and when you did you had no way of labeling patches when you saved them. They kept on adding new functionality with updates but no way to see which pad you saved a patch on, i had to make a text doc in the end to keep track.
Build quality was not the best either, labeling came off in lots of places, and the pads would trigger by themselves – the solution Polyend told me was to open the case slightly to give the pad cables abit more room or something – this did work, sometimes – but had to adjust the screw tightness every few days.
Can’t blame that all on Polyend though, my Typhon, Nyx, as well as the Medusa suffer from various physical problems from skipping encoders to just being broken.
When we consider that most music falls within kind of a narrow range of rhythmic and harmonic structures,– having a device that provides a much wider range of options gives the user a high degree of creative freedom. Yes, ALL devices have their limitations. The question is whether or not most users will ever run into those limitations.
IMHO, I think Polyend is a company that pushes the envelope in terms of flexibility.
About 6 years ago, there was a post here about a Polyend product. I started griping in the comments and someone from Polyend reached out to me to collaborate. It was a very cool and surprisingly deep exchange of ideas. They were eager to include a wide variety of chords and scales, to allow users access to a massive variety of creative options.
Play is the most fun I’ve ever had with any electronic instrument and I’ve owned a lot it does exactly what it says on the tin it’s all about playing. I come from the direction of being a live musician (bass and drums) who likes to improvise and this device great for exactly that but I can see for those that like to produce songs that this may not be ideal for that but if you like to play this thing is amazing.
Good point. It probably favors live productions a lot more than arrangements or detailed and curated compositions.
Would you say it’s €750,- fun? What does it do for you that you wont get with something much cheaper?
Yes zero regrets every time I turn it on I get exciting and interesting results and It’s only missing one feature that I want now which I’m quietly confident we will get, the ability to play all the samples in a folder on the keyboard and via midi like a slice mode.
Once we have that as far as I’m concerned it will be complete
You didn’t really answered my question though. I asked what it does for you that can’t be found on cheaper devices?
Well for starters being able to see all 8 Chanels at once huge game changer for me then a very simple filing system no need for crazy transfer software it’s just file windows done. A lot of the sequencing options are very much like things that I’ve been designing on my modular for years so now I don’t need a big modular to do this. work flow suits me better than any other device I’ve had in recent years (digitakt, model samples, octatrak, behringer rd8, arturia mini brute 2s, novation circuit tracks plus many more) it just works for me I feel like I am in symbiosis with it I understand it without having to think about it I decide I want to do something no thinking required I just do it.
I’m sure there are cheaper devices that can do some of what this does but certainly not all and definitely not as elegantly but at the end of the day cost is irrelevant when you are in love.
I honestly think it should have been the same price as the tracker. I think the tracker is more feature rich. The +200 on the price didnt make a lot of sense to me, maybe they thought you get a sample player and a midi sequencer in one? But a majority of the devices in this price point have midi implementation that could go against most sequencers ie. MPC, Deluge, Maschine, Tracker, OP-z, Digitakt).