I totally agree. At the very least it looks like this is being taken seriously at the Polyend’s official board. There’s a wishlist poll and it has a decent amount of votes.
Submit a request to Polyend’s community wishlist? 
There have been dozens of wishes submitted, but none about a setting to make the Play knobs insensitive to touch. Anyone can submit a request and vote on it.
It’s a bit quiet the last weeks. Is there any news about the promised ‘midi tracks’ firmware update? Any rumors about what we can expect?
Post from 28 february :
‘Piotr from Polyend in his own words last week:
We are working on two very cool melodic-related features. But first, we’ll release a ‘midi update’ fixing some stuff there - coming very soon.’
More than 1 month later now, where is the ‘coming very soon’ midi firmware update?
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Similar experience, sadly, except I knew fairly quickly it wasn’t for me. It was near instant love with the Tracker though.
I resold mine and the guy who bought it from me resold it within 2 weeks.
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I love Polyend and what they’re doing as a company, especially how they promote their users on their website and Tracker, to me, is an iconic, instant classic. I put it right up there with the Octatrack and the OP-1. But the Play could have been much more, especially for the price. If it had sampling and maybe usb audio (or a battery) I might have kept it. And those touch encoders were just too much for me. The idea is genius, it’s like an instant IDM machine, but I just couldn’t make it work for me.
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For what is worth…
Sample slicing mode - Wishlist - Polyend Backstage. Currently this is the Play’s most voted feature request.
This one has been declined due to technical limitations: Multichannel USB audio output to DAW - Archive - Polyend Backstage
Just today there is a new wish about this, up for votes: Avoid accidental parameter switches by touching knobs - Wishlist - Polyend Backstage
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That’s great that there are answers but I’m impatient and can’t wait around. That’s why I’ve never done a pre-order.
MIDI update dropped has landed. Glad to see it was refined. Doesn’t look like we got a perform mode for MIDI though.
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Had to read that twice. On first parse I read “They have dropped the idea of doing a midi update”
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And i dropped my Play in the mid of the update.
What effects would you expect in a MIDI performance mode?
I’d think we’d get the ability to quickly change the values of certain midi CCs. Maybe the standard ones for filter cutoff etc. Or maybe the ability to modulate standard “mod” ccs like mod wheel, breath control, etc.
This is on top of the audio perform mode parts that would work for MIDI: Tune, Rearrange, Repeat
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I love the Polyend Tracker and I understand that play is another type of machine. Play is for make music fast, not to waste time editing samples, etc… I understand that a lot of people want more but I think that the real purpose of the developers when they made Play was to make music fast.
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one day I believe that devs will come to realize that using samples without having the capability of editing them is like having an filter without the capability of adjusting it
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Tracker has receive a lot of improvements since his release. Same with Play in a future. I’m sure it will be great updates. I guess Play it’s for make music without thinking in editing, etc. There are others out there for diving deep. Play offers a way to make fast music and I believe that a lot of people didn’t understand what the developers wanted to do with that machine.
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I agree that a lot of people didn’t understand what the developer was doing because on instagram, YouTube, and other places when question about the features of the instrument the developers thumbed up and responded positively to all of the questions about sampling… how could the people have known otherwise… I’m a supporter who has purchased everything polyend have made, I even purchased two Plays now returned and still think of the company as very talented and one of my favorites… but even I didn’t appreciate that… that was borderline misleading… even the artist that the company chose to market the polyend play thought sampling features were coming, that’s how thick the fog was after release…
anyway, I know these things are subjective but we are already living in the era of 10 minute beats and if the Play was designed to shorten that time further then I’m looking forward to the Polyend AI app when it comes to market, my only request is please allow the AI to edit samples… please… that’s all I’m asking
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I remember the wave of hype pretty well, people even uttered the immortal words “It could be an Octatrack killer”
I think that over zealous marketing has left a bad taste in many people’s mouths
Sampling aside - even the wee Model:Samples has an LFO and (basic) envelope and it’s ~30% of the price
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as much as I wanted additional features I am the type of person that believes that the creators vision is supreme, so it’s perfectly fine that the play turned out to be what it is and will turn out to be whatever it turns out to be in the future… I just realllllllllllllllllly didn’t appreciate all of the positive reactions to everyones sampling feature request if there was no intention behind that… communication is key and I don’t think trolling your customer base in such a hardcore way is beneficial to the company. or the base.
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I recently sold mine on as I unfortunately just didn’t gel with it, as a sample based drum machine, it excels in creating beats and loops very quickly and loved the randomisation algorithms, I managed to get some great crazy loops going on the device, but where I personally struggled, was with creating melodic tracks, basslines were fine as they can be simple monophonic lines, but trying to add any sort of soundscapes or pad sounds was just a fight and personally feel that was because it lacks any sample play modes, sample editing, proper envelopes, lfo’s. I get Polyend have a vision for Play and it’s all about users not being bogged down with these, but for users who are more experienced with music production, it’s features that are required, especially when it comes to certain sample types, one shots work great for drum samples, not so much for melodic or note based samples, they need envelopes to control how they play out.
I will keep an eye on it though, I would like to see how it grows and hopefully come back to it in the future.
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I also have problems with creating melodic stuff on the Play. It’s just not flowing.
For drums i really like it and decided to keep it for now. It feels a bit like creating beats with Fruity Loops but with more hands on control with all the buttons and knobs.
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