Everything is half-assed except the grift.
3 minutes of stereo samples
Can’t sample into
Same shell without updated control labelling
Stingy restricted synth polyphony
If this comes right down in price it will become interesting. But it is what the OG should have been in the first place and disrespectful of customers.
This would have been a great firmware update for the original device.
But maybe that was not possible, since the Play+ processor is “five times faster” according to Benn Jordan’s video.
As it is, I’m left with conflicted feelings.
A synth engine is nice to have, as is the USB audio.
But the synth implementation seems quite inelegant - the sort of thing you’d get via an update for a device that was never really made to handle it.
Adding stereo samples but not upgrading the sample memory is certainly a choice.
The way Play is designed to load folders of categorized samples meant I found it very easy to fill the memory already.
It doesn’t appear to fix any of my complaints about the original, like poor UI/UX or the sample engine having issues with limited headroom and bit-crushing samples when reducing the volume. Loopop mentions that you now also have to be careful of headroom when using the synths.
Offering an upgrade program for original owners is a nice gesture.
But I can’t see what about this update would be worth $400, or why many would choose to give Polyend even more money after this. $1200 total is a lot for what it does.
Though I do understand why owners are upset at the price of the Play dropping to $500 after a year, that’s more in line with what it should have originally been in my opinion.
It felt like the original release had been inflated by “pandemic pricing.” It also feels like that price is where this updated model should be.
Can’t blame people swearing off the brand after this - and the state in which other products have been left at in the past.
26 channels of USB audio (16 sample + 8 synth + 2 fx) probably requires the new processor.
But I have to wonder if a stereo mix over USB would’ve been possible as an update.
I wonder what’s going on at the HQ, all of their social media channels are in absolute flames. Last time I saw this much backlash at an announcement was the Bitwig debacle. Makes you wonder if and what kind of damage control will be happening…
“Ship your original Play to us locally* (US, UK, EU, AUS) once your unit is received, we will simply ship you a new Play+. After you complete the checkout process for an upgrade details on returning your Play will be provided. Customers are responsible for shipping costs.”
So it’s $399 to upgrade, plus shipping two ways. Thankfully they have a US location and it’s not shipping WW for every return. Still, how does sending in an old used Play and getting shipped a brand new Play+ not create a bunch of e-waste? Does Benn Jordan lay out how that works in his video?
They replace the pcb and sell them as refurbs
Yeah. Knowing their questionable history, they probably ship 50% of used ones as new. With a “+” painted on with a brush or something weird
Edit: he apparently does explain it, I must have tuned out that part of the video. Leaving the rest for posterity.
Edit 2: he says he isn’t paid by them. I believe him. He may just be good friends with Polyend, but it feels weird how enthusiastic he is about their products in particular in his videos.
he’s a promoter for Polyend. He’s not going to focus on anything that is a true negative (such as paying for shipping both ways). I generally like his content but I do not trust his opinion on any product Polyend makes or anything that directly competes with them.
I get the lameness of this move, but it is what it is.
Go look at the MPC timeline of boxes. Seems year after year there’s a new box. Softwares the same. I get that.
Push 1 and 2 were 2.5 years apart with vastly improved software.
I mean how many years does a product need to be out, before a company can update it?
And who was really (like really) using their Play all the time? I wasn’t.
Also important to note here that Push 1 was made by Akai so there we probably also other factors at play as to why they released relatively soon after 1.
There was also an upgrade path for the push 1 to push 2 and it seemed more reasonable.
Yeah, that last paragraph is the big takeaway. I felt burned by Polyend with the Medusa. Dreadbox came through with a great synth and Polyend mucked it up with their poor coding and backwards workflow and terrible hardware for the pads (seriously, worst pads on an instrument I’ve felt). That thing dropped from $1200 to $899 and soon went down to $700. Disregarding the selling a gear and holding its value notion, it just shows that it’s better not to buy their products as they will plummet in price.
I never saw the Medusa get to a point where the Polyend side of that instrument made sense so I sold it, I wish there was just a simple version of thst synth without that sequencer in it and save the size of it.
but that was when I vowed not to buy from them again. With all the other hardware issues and slow update schedules (again, just talking about fixing bugs not even adding features) people really need to open their eyes to the way they practice business. Hopefully people put their money with their mouth in and Polyend starts changing things around but bugs, hardware defects time and time again shouldn’t be accepted.
It makes practically no sense to mail one of these off for an upgrade vs resell and buy new. I’m glad I didn’t sleep on reselling mine a few months back.
I find the quantity of anger to be surprising. But I didn’t follow the OG Play’s hype cycle.
I could still see myself possibly buying an OG Play and using it as a midi sequencer for iOS, if the performance mode ever comes to midi. Especially now that the OG price is going to tank.
The Tracker released full of bugs, some features advertised straight up didn’t work. Off the top of my head : computer connection, equaliser, stem export, distorting filters, bad headroom, crashes, clicking sample playback … some of them are still not fixed to this day, and they even removed computer connection from the advertised features.
I get what you’re saying but in the case of polyend it’s even worse because even informed buyers have been burned. I’m one of them.
my fellow PE disbelievers and i are feeling rather vindicated today.
Oh wow I was about to buy Polyend play a couple of days ago. Now it’s 300 gbp.
Glad I’ve just waited
Are they going to be sold for £300?
Yeah I see lots of retailers are reducing their price also
I think it would be great if elektron would adopt a similar upgrade path to their devices, as the metal construction and switches in e devices are excellent. But 399 is outrageous. And PE does not do industrial design like elektron. If they don’t (at least) cut that fee in half I think they have damaged their reputation beyond repair for a lot of folks, myself included.
Heheh, i’ve never bought anything out of the hope that there’ll be updates.
The closest i’ve come to that was when i grabbed an MC-101, knowing full well it had less synth param access than the bigger sibling. I was fully aware that they probably wouldn’t change that, and intended on using it for drums and as a sound module for the built in sounds. And then they made a bunch of great updates
