I haven’t used this exact card before, but based on my experience, every card I’ve tried has had practically instantaneous load times. The only issue I’ve had with some cards is getting pops when using too many samples and having incomplete/slower stem renders. The 32gb card that comes with the M8 has worked perfectly though.
I personally don’t like having too big of an sd card. 32gb is plenty of space for holding a very large amount of samples and project files. If you have more than 32gbs, it’s much more convenient to organize it on a computer.
Now, whenever I buy a new piece of gear, I make the “Sophie metallic sound monomachine kinda” quality test.
The M8 is just a crazy sound design tool, and that’s just me messin around for 5-10 minutes with the macrosynth and the effects (careful, it’s a little louder at the end) :
Now imagine what will be achievable with time and effort. The synths themselves are truly worth it. In fact since I have it, I’ve only used the synths, I resample a lot, yes, but no external samples, I feel like I don’t need it.
That sounds like a meaningful screen size upgrade from 2.8" that will surely make a difference to my eyes! That, a built-in mic, lower latency touch screen and usb-c and you’d have a really nice mk2 spec if you ask me. I’d definitely pre-order one of those.
I mean… of course these are future thoughts/research. The issue with current 3.5” ones is the aspect ratio is different. Requiring major interface graphics changes. Whatever MKII would be I want to still have updates work with MKI. So we’ll see. It might be 3.2”.
Also please note what I said about the touchscreen, the current one is actually quite fine for a x/y controller as it is only the initial touch that makes it impractical for say, a trigger grid or something other than what it currently does.
Your implementation of the touch screen is honestly perfect in my opinion. I use it entirely to adjust parameters and it’s so nice to be able to slide through the filter to test how a sweep might sound on a sound before committing an envelope to it. So glad it doesn’t heavily rely on the touchscreen like other devices.
I like this tune - sounds like it’s going to loop for a while, then transitions nicely to another direction - makes you feel like you’re riding on a trip to somewhere.
Got my teensy a little over a week ago and run M8 on an Anbernic RG351M (which I owned anyway) and thought I’d give a summary / review of my experience of running a headless setup:
Installation was straightforward, and I wouldn’t consider myself a techie
Hasn’t crashed on me yet, and no audio glitching
Screen size is 3.5 inch so a wee bit bigger than the actual M8, I’ve no complaints although do use reading glasses these days and do so for this too
The RG351M has a dodgy headphone socket (many issues reported on various reddit threads) - audio from one ear kept cutting out. A quick solder fixed this and again was relatively straightforward
Speaker on the RG351M is a bit crap, but OK for very occasional use
Took a while to settle on a button configuration but I map all the non direction buttons to the A, B, X and Y buttons rather than the standard LSDj style Start / Select combo which wouldn’t work for the GBA style layout of the RG351M
The RG351M is a USB host which is a GODSEND for MIDI in / out. For example the handheld can power and send MIDI to my Korg NTS1 with just the one USBC to micro USB cable without having to use MIDI, see pic below. I do have a MIDI interface which also works fine.
I haven’t been able to get an audio interface to work with the RG351M, although I might not be using the right settings
As a consequence there is a lack of audio in which is annoying. I therefore sample using my phone or a field recorder then into my tablet and move samples onto the teensy SD card using a card reader which is clearly a total faff in comparison
I hate having the teensy tethered messily to the handheld so I got a short cable and a 3D printed cover for the teensy which I’ve velcro’d to the back of a grip holder for the RG351M. I’m quite OCD generally and even I am not put off by how this looks, although the squint cable is a bit irksome (see pic)
I’ve not touched upon the M8 software itself but can’t praise it highly enough. Sounds great, UI is great, very inspiring, echoing the experience of most M8 owners on here I think.
I am very grateful to @trash80 for making the headless version available for all and will be buying the sample pack from the Dirty Wave website so at least it feels like I’ve contributed a small something towards the development of this fabulous piece of kit.
nice work.
I’m stuck half way thru my steamdeck setup. trynna get the Microsoft edge browser set up to accept the m8 n currently having issues modifying a line of code.
I’ll figure it out eventually
edit: ditched the browser method n went with Konsumer’s method. took a while to figure out but got it working. omg.
does anyone know if theres a way to get the “option + up/down” command working between CHAINS? as in like , if im in the first phrase of a chain and i [OPT+UP], can i jump to the last phrase of the chain above it ?
Might be a stupid question, but: I was thinking about the best sidekick to input notes easily into the m8 while on the go… then, it hit me: why not install a midi keyboard app on my android phone and use it to play melodies on the m8? That would work with just a usb cable, yeah?
I just really want something just like the M8 to hold in my hand and be able to tap some buttons in realtime with, even if it was only the few that the M8 has instead of 16/12/or 8 that would still be fine, to connect in realtime with some drums and sample chops etc…
you know, somethin besides a phone… maybe by the time I get the M8 in my hands it will be capable of something like that… I don’t want to use an external controller that would defeat the purpose of what I’m after.
I don’t mean to be negative but I don’t really see how it’d work, as it’d need a button or button combination to exit a live key mode, and I can’t think of a button/combo that wouldn’t be easy to hit by mistake.
It’s not impossible, but it’s also not the strength of the device. It’s primarily designed as a composition environment when used on its own. If you connect an external controller you can play the instruments live, but I believe recording is still monophonic as it all goes into a single track (I may be wrong about this though as it’s been a few firmware revisions since I tried recording).
i get your sentiments, it’s not gonna keep me from getting my M8, it’s just something that I hope is possible, if not now, maybe the mk2 version… it’s not like anybody else is gonna do it from the looks of it
(see pic)
