The creator of the M8 has advised about how to replace the battery. It sounds like a non-issue. Which is good!
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Thanks for that. Somehow, I missed his response amid the other two.
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M8 preordered, teensy ordered!
Do you prefer keyboard or gamepad?
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M8 is not a USB host, it is a device, the same as a usb mixer I imagine. Unless the mixer / other device features a host port. Latency has dependencies like all USB devices. As for hardware analog output, from midi input to analog output is around 6ms last I checked.
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map your PS4 gamepad to touch designer with the ds4 windows app is what @glooms told me to do. Says it works great 
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Thanks for the quick answer.
That make sens , the M8 is not a host of course.
The M8 looks seriously impressive! Amazing work @trash80, although you said this is not your first project, it is definitely impressive.
I may have missed this in the thread, but can you export stems? I mean through USB audio, not by muting etc.
Also, Iām curious if you have in mind some sort of roadmap for the firmware, or you consider it finished as is (except fixes, etc).
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Just dialed in my preorder! Wake me up in July!
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So did the later updates make tables easier to use?
From what Iām gathering, tables is the main way to automate parameters and set p-locks, or the equivalent thereof.
I appreciate the meetup videos being uploaded but the thought of searching 2-hour vids for info on how to use tables is a bit daunting. I also tried to view the link to the manual that was posted way back in this thread but I got a blank page.
Also, while it was confirmed that audio stems can be exported, I donāt recall if MIDI export was mentioned? Well, I guess I could just use the MIDI out and capture note data into a DAW or whatever.
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Try waiting a bit, I remember it being very slow to load the first time I opened it
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Thanks! I knew I was probably missing it 
Canāt help but think that with this form factor and button layout, having eventually some sort of retro game emulation for the downtimes can be a thing for the M8?
Havenāt tinkered with Teensy myself, but this project GitHub - Jean-MarcHarvengt/MCUME: Multi CompUter Machine Emulator for several MCUs says itās successfully emulating Atari,
GB/GBA, Megadrive and others (even Doom!) for the Teensy 4.1.
You can export stems for all 8 tracks, similar to the Polyend Tracker. It doesnāt multitrack out over USB like Elektron products though.
Hereās the M8 development trello:
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Cool to see this Trello board in the open. Seeing āNote scale / key sig support?ā makes me wonder, has this been discussed somewhere?
If this gets implemented at some point I really hope itās more advanced than most sequencers that have āquantize to scaleā, where itās usually difficult to change scale, especially within a pattern.
My ideas on it:
- Have a specialized column in the Chain screen to set scale / key signature for the phrase.
- Alternatively, add an effect column to Chain and have a ākey sigā effect that could be applied both in a chain (for the entire phrase, or sequence of phrases) and within a phrase.
That way you could do stuff like
- Lock a chain to a specific key signature, and do phrase transpositions within that key
- Do temporary modulations to new key signatures
ā¦etc.
Anyway, the nice thing with the tracker workflow is that even if scale/key features like this arenāt implemented, itās still fairly easy to create complex music. It would just take more phrases, chains and keypresses.
Loving what Iāve seen of M8, and it sounds great! Keep up the good work @trash80
Not really. The equivalent of parameter locks are commands, most parameters in the synth engine have a corresponding command that can be entered into a phrase. These are slightly different to plocks in that many of them are relative, which has the benefit of being able to increment a parameter with a repeated command (or using the REP command which does this automatically) and also that it stacks with the existing parameters, envelopes, LFO etc.
Tables are like a mini phrase that plays at a speed multiple of the tempo, retriggered every time a note is triggered (or, advancing one line on each trigger if tick speed is set to 0). Thereās one table per instrument, and each table has 3 columns. In each column you can place many (any?) of the parameter commands, effectively meaning that tables are like sweet custom LFOs/envelopes. It gets more complex once you start hopping around table positions, looping certain points etc., but if you think of it as an independent mini sequencer for each instrument, youāre on the right track 
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I watched videos about tables and this is very powerful stuff !
you can build arpegios, complex env, you can do wave scanning etc etc .
So you have 3 fx columns for a phrase + 3 fx columns + pitch and velocity for an instrument using tables if i understand correctly.
You can call other tables via a table too.
The videos on Discord are very nice.
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Thank you! Being able the view the manual, even though it is still a work in progress, is a big help!
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The m8 is very tempting, it seems super powerful and fun, butā¦ when it comes to writing melodies, I generally fumble a bit on a keyboard (or pads, or step buttons) until I hear something niceā¦ I donāt have a melody in my head, and I donāt know shit about theory. Is there some way to āfumble for melodiesā or will I have to keep some keys connected?
Another one: can you use the same sample for multiple instruments with different settings (ex. Start point)?
Laaaaast: when playing, say, a sliced sample with a keyboard, are the slices mapped to the different notes?
I think that @pselodux does a better job than I can of explaining the possibilities but what I meant by being a rookie was Iāve not yet delved into some of the more complex use cases. As for basic parameter modulation, Iāve found to be pretty straight-forward and got my head around pretty quickly.
The number of features added to the firmware since initial release has been really impressive and Iād remain beyond impressed even if nothing else was added. So itās doubly good to see that there are more ideas on the horizon - not that Iām in a rush for any!! That said, if there was one dream come true scenario for me it would be for a second LFO for the instrument page. Tables are great and all but sometimes itās just quicker to get another LFO going and more modulation options are great. I seem to recall some screenshots from the Discord server where some ideas were being played about withā¦ donāt know if it was ever going to be feasible but that would be the icing on the proverbialā¦
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Notes are played when you enter them with the sequencer stopped, and will play as you cycle up/down through them.
Samples arenāt tied to instruments, so you can load the same sample multiple times. But also you can use commands in the sequencer to select a different start point, for example, so you donāt really need to load it multiple times unless youāre going for a wildly different sound each time.
Yes.
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