M8 Tracker

The Lounge Other Gear
#5425

I use it as a standalone unit and as a brain/midi sequencer with a DAW and with external gear.

Standalone: Works wonders for coming up with ideas. I like jamming in the bed, fully relaxed and just doodling around.

Brain: It works wonderfully well with a DAW and external gear. If I find a nice melody when lying in bed I often times either record the MIDI straight into Ableton through playback, and then use it for external gear, or I simply send to external gear from the M8 itself (especially for generative sequences using the CHA and HOP commands) and record into Ableton.

I quiet honestly think this is the best versatile device I’ve ever owned, and I will never part with it.

Also, I sold my OG Polyend Tracker. It’s a great device, but if you compare it to the M8 it is not worth mentioning, honestly. The lack of synth engines made it - for my use - a lackluster when using it to sketch ideas that I could further develop with external gear. In fact, I felt I had to have a small external synth chained to its side to make best use of it. Yes, it has granular and wavetables, but they aren’t really worth mentioning; they are very 2D whereas the M8 has a plethora of engines to choose from.

9 Likes
#5426

i´ve had the polyend and was very excited about a hardware tracker…but it didn´t clicked for me…the ui felt like working with dos, no dedicted synthengine, and the worst for me (and because of this feature i bought it): the .mod import doesn´t work at all, it´s a feature that makes absolutely no sense for me…i liked the hardware, the formfactor, the jogwheel and the keypads…but it was no fun to use it.

the m8 offers different features: synthengines en masse, different way of songstructure, different formfactor. the hardware is top, and the ux/ui and coding is absolutely insane…everything makes sense on this little device. it´s like a monomachine v2.0! just for me, as always…

6 Likes
#5427

interesting, I hear this sentiment quite a lot, that its miles better than the tracker…

#5428

What are your favorite companions for the m8? I’ve previously used a Digitone and felt it lacked an analog mono synth and a drum machine, so I usually fed those into the inputs. The m8 has a similar function, allowing for 2 mono signals. What do you miss the most when playing around with the m8?

#5429

had a PE tracker for a number of months before finding an m8 on the used market. sold the PE tracker right after i found the m8.

the tracker was fun and I enjoyed using it. i got frustrated with the jog wheel quirks on my unit and ended up only using the arrow keys (funny enough, more like the m8). i found the limited FX lanes and ultra basic synths to be lame and primarily used it to trigger one shot samples. also got tired of endlessly gainstaging to avoid clicks and crackles. i enjoyed the tunes i made on it, but it felt kinda pointless to be using it when most of the features i originally found interesting were served lukewarm.

the m8 kicks ass all around and i am never missing anything while using it. maaaybe sometimes i wish i had the smallest external midi controller but now that im experimenting with using the S1 for that i cant think of anything else

4 Likes
#5430

or

ffmpeg

#5431

The obvious part is polyphony. There is the chord engine, that I can’t remember the name of, and then there are obvious work arounds where you simply clone the sound and use on different tracks, but that’s about it for me. When I don’t feel like those workarounds, I plug in the Nymphes, Hydrasynth or a VST. Done.

#5433

I paid € 147,17 to Germany.

1 Like
#5434

Are the M8’s chord functions also available for external MIDI synths? I understood that this feature is only available for the Hypersynth and that external synths can only be controlled monophonically.

I can’t try it myself since my M8 isn’t here yet and I only have access to the headless version.

#5435

yes, you can control external synths polyphonically from one track using the CHD and ADD fx

3 Likes
#5436

I spent two years in normal font and switched to big font and after a week I can’t go back ! It’s just so much more in my vision lol :joy:

6 Likes
#5437

Actually you can make chords with macro synth wav paraphonic / and the FM engine as well as hyper synth / and you can make a 4 track chord and re render it to a sample with any m8 synth engine…… just to clarify the possibilities of chord.

3 Likes
#5438

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#5439

IMG_0302 I always make chord after pancakes :pancakes:

#5440

Example of FM engine pulse/sine chords then I took the root notes of the chords converted in the m8 chord software or (by counting from the root notes then you count up your notes based on your chord numbers.) and took them and made my melody and bassline notes and kept goin.

17 Likes
#5441

Thanks, that’s exactly what I wanted to know :wink:

3 Likes
#5442

This is an interesting M8 video from Avrilcadabra showing what you can achieve by assigning settings to the touch screen

6 Likes
#5443

I was very happy when I read here that we can replace the missing volume control via the touchscreen. The missing volume control would have been very annoying for me in practice.

When I first started getting interested in the M8, I didn’t understand why the M8’s small display was a touchscreen display. In the meantime, I realize that it is a really valuable feature.

4 Likes
#5444

No problem ! It’s fairly easy to make chords in the other engines if you use your ears also use chord mate by @impbox helps a lot ! And a great hyper synth tutorial probably already posted.

https://www.impbox.net/chordmate/

3 Likes
#5445

Impbox’s other chord tutorial is also instructive - you’ll need it to use chords with the FM synth, Macrosyn, etc.

2 Likes