Seems like a great way to get a ton of YouTube hits…gotta strike while the iron’s hot!!!
If it was based on 3.6 that has recently been discontinued… I think the tracker mini is based on 4 so likely they need to move anything that was 3.6 over to 4 which also gives some more power.
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For what it’s worth, it’s not the first time Benn has run offers from them.
He had an exclusive 20% discount for the Play on his Patreon back in July - which is when I bought mine.
He’s been pretty open about being friends with people at the company and wanting to be an advocate for the ‘underdog’ because they make products he likes (and it’s clear that he does actually like and use it, from his videos/streams).
I don’t think there’s any impropriety going on, just that he is unable to take a step back and look at things impartially when it comes to them.
You have a different perspective when you’re paying for the hardware out of pocket as a customer, rather than having companies gift/loan it to you for review as well.
As for “why not $200 upgrades for all?” I guess the reason is that they want to sell the Play+ for $800.
If the Play is now $500 and used models for less - and you can upgrade it for $200, that’s a $100+ discount and a whole lot of time/effort wasted. Goes against the “green” credentials too.
The Play cannot resample audio, and I doubt this changes with the Play+.
It’s a sample player, not a sampler or sample mangler.
Reception would definitely be mixed.
Frankly, I’d be happy to see prices across the range drop to pre-pandemic ones even if it will make a few people upset.
And I know some people that would love to have another four analog tracks in the box and more LFOs (myself included).
But I think Elektron have built up a reputation of long-term support and upgrades for their products, and pushing their hardware platforms to the limits rather than abandoning them (though some people with flagships/Models may disagree).
If there was a Syntakt+ I would expect both models to be supported for as long as either is around.
I would probably be a lot more reluctant to buy any “first revisions” of future Elektron instruments if they received significant hardware updates in such a short amount of time though.
Longevity is one of the things I expect from a hardware purchase.
Not that the instrument stops working when a new model is released, but I don’t really want to see hardware go the way of smartphones with yearly upgrade cycles.
In this case, I feel that Polyend has a bit of a reputation for developing interesting hardware that ships with buggy software, and abandoning it in an unfinished state in favor of something more exciting to them.
I think they have improved on the software side of things with the Play (though I did hate its UI/UX) and I think the original Tracker is in a good place now; but this announcement also feels like the original is being ‘abandoned’ even if it’s still being sold for now.
It could have been framed differently by, for example, announcing “Update 2.0” for the Play with new features (perhaps stereo audio over USB rather than 26 channels) and a commitment to long-term support alongside an upgraded model that adds synth engines.
You can never make everyone happy, no matter what you do, but I think it’s understandable why people are upset.
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Moving to 4.1 does not explain the 399 upgrade cost. 4.1 released in 2020 so they could have easily migrated the code to that mcu, I think.
It’s strange for a company to release a product and not stock up on the most important parts to at least cover 2 years of production.
And most importantly, they are still selling the OG play and tracker thus that indicates they do still have access to the parts and this release was not urgent.
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I’m disappointed that it still doesn’t have a waveform view or any sampling. I didn’t buy the OG for either, but with an upgrade I hoped it would include both. Especially if it can stream tracks over USB-C. Why can’t we then sample into it over USB-C? It’s annoying when you hear something and are inspired, but have to stop the moment of inspiration to clip externally and copy it over to the gear you want to use it on. I don’t want a sample first device, but maybe bring over the basic sampling bits from the Tracker? If they’d add sampling and fix the quirks with performance mode for MIDI and synths this device would be gold.
I will say 12 internal tracks (with the synths) plus 4 midi tracks is actually pretty nice. Despite the weirdness with the addition and upgrade stuff I can appreciate what it offers.
I don’t see Benn Jordan’s video as anything but someone that really enjoys the gear. He is just as restrictive on negative comments for any of his videos. It’s a community thing and not just for Polyend.
Loopop again was amazing. I love how he can be enthusiastically neutral, but still call out issues.
I have tried to love my OG Play.
As a drum sequencer it’s pretty great. As a Sample player it is meh. The fact that you can’t slice up Samples just makes no sense to me.
Yeah we can mangle things via the cool algorithms, but sometimes i just want to import a long sample, slice it via Transients and play the parts i want to play.
That’s a basic Sampler in the 21st Century in my book.
Play+ doesn’t do this simple thing still boggles my mind. Obviously PE isn’t designing instruments for me and i get it. They are making tools they like use and impart with their programming prowess. 
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They basically tanked the value of the play. SMH
For what it’s worth, I’ve always enjoyed your Play (and Deluge, etc.) clips in here. But I also agree with your sense of what a sampler should do, or at least I agree that those are the features I look for. (Bless you, Ableton Simpler.)
So you use Play to sequence another drum machine? Do you send CCs and all that as well? I bet the price drop on OG Plays will bring some people in who want to use it as a sequencer only, and I know it’s pretty great for that.
The deluge hardware upgrade made sense as it was optional and it’d been out for years and the CPU was still fine.
Finding out you underspecced the CPU for future updates after a year is not fine.
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No RAM, disk space and bluetooth were put in there and it comes with one of the premium plugins.
It’s more like one of the cosmetic limited editions but it makes it a little more easy to interact with the plugin ecosystem.
The extra space puts it on parity with the Live II and if the OS gets big enough in the future it’ll be able to upgrade but not the OG.
Thanks for your viewership and encouragement.
I just use the Midi parts to do wild and wacky stuff on connected gear and soft synths.
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Yeah it seems like some future proofing was part of the Deluge thinking…not just pushing nice looking hardware out there with subpar innards.
Wonder if they’ll eventually have a blow-out sale of the originals.
I nearly got the original Play but just couldn’t justify the cost of it given my primary use-case (at the time) of using it to sequence instead of the XP-60 or Logic Pro. Oof that’s a lot of money for that (didn’t care about sampling, and still mostly don’t).
Got the Tracker for 369 or whatever a few months back.
But Play does look like more fun, and since I’ve moved to a Pyramid for the original use-case (which is exactly what I needed in the end), I just don’t use the Tracker much anymore.
499 is still too much, given that I have the Tracker. But if it would come down another 100, I’d sell the Tracker and be all over it. Might happen.
The new features that I’ve actually seen don’t interest me. If it can sequence and is fun to use, it’s worth 400 I suppose (unless is all buggy in midi-sequence-land).
Hopefully audio hardware doesn’t go all-Apple on me and start doing yearly hardware releases. I hate yearly hardware releases and the associated drops in support that go to all the older stuff in particular.
Yeah that’s fair. What I said wasn’t meant as a realistic situation but wondering if people would be as upset.
I do get it though and indeed polyend has a bit of a rep regarding this.
Still, if one is happy with the OG play, it doesn’t become a lesser instrument with the release of a new one.
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What a mess. If you have no customers, it will be hard to run a business. But what really is funny is the fact they still don’t bring to the table everything people would want…so all of this for what? To offend customers? Poorly implemented. Upgrade should be user friendly at worst.
MPC users generally avoid using internal storage. Additional content is stored on external storage like an SD card. Therefore, even if the OS size increases, updating on the OG model should proceed without any issues.
I absolutely agree. I enjoy using my Play and that’s why i’m not angry at Polyend. I’m just surprised about their business moves and wonder if and how they will come out of this situation with a good standing.
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A lot of weird decisions on polyend‘s end. They made the perfect hardware for a tracker just to release a follow up with all hardware goodies removed that made the tracker great in the first place. Then they release play+ but the synths can only be edited by three out of the 15 or so knobs. However, I will cherish the OG Tracker forever, despite its flaws.
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Man, not sure how to feel about this, in one hand the updates are great, but as others have said the business model for OG customers who purchased the original in under 1.5 years sure stings, $400 to update is abit much, $200 would have been an easier pill to swallow.
As for the updates, the inclusion of synth engines and usb audio are great additions, but if they were updating the Play, why haven’t they made some quality of life updates to the sample engine, like adding a full adsr envelope for samples, adding polyphony and additional sample playback engines?
and why on the Play+ do we still have to use use 3 or more tracks to record a chord? (if not using the pre-programmed chord list) Surely they can implement the ability to only use only a single midi/audio track for this, say you create 2 synth parts with 7th chords, thats all your midi tracks used up?
8 voices of polyphony for virtual analogue synths in 2023 is a tad stingy, the Novation Supernova/Nova had like 16 and 6 part multitimbral or the Nord Lead 2 had 20 and 4 part multitimbral back in the lates 90’s.
I’m not just having a go at Polyend for this, because Elektron are guilty for exactly the same, forced unnecessary restrictions on their gear.
The deluge’s polyphony is like 64 voices and was developed with whatever CPU they used back in 2016, I hope these areas can be improved upon giving the Play+ 5x CPU power of the OG.
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I was thinking if they decided to beef up the sampling side of things with ADSR, loop points, polyphony and filter envelopes - and some option to quick load & loop a single cycle waveform, they wouldn’t have needed these “synth” engines at all.
And would have managed to kill two bird with one stone.
Heck, even the Model:Samples makes a pretty good stab at this IMO
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