I got my tracker on Monday and so far I’ve put 6 hours into it, so firmly still in the honeymoon period…but, this thing is brilliant.
I’ve used plenty of grooveboxes in the past, but never a tracker and I gotta say, learning this has been a breeze, and most importantly, fun! I’ve only had to consult the manual/videos a couple of times.
The navigation buttons are brilliant, as is the sequencer. Going from sample to pattern is lightning fast and granular/wavetable modes mean you are never short of ideas.
It’s like Elektron and a spreadsheet had a baby!
So…if you are on the fence about getting one, I’d say dive right in.
Not really. I don’t feel this big of a difference in writing code for a game, a website or a musical instrument.
Not get me wrong, it’s their time, their product and their choice, I just don’t understand that decision. From a business point of view investing resources in something like that doesn’t really make sense, and nearly EVERY person has a way better device for games in their hand all the time, so no need on that part either.
It is just a nice christmasy bonus they’ve added to firmware. I don’t think they’ve spent much time on that really. And of course it is not them who created those games, you can check game credits at the beginning of each one. Speaking of games “quality”, I think it is all about 90’s era vibe, same as tracker itself. PE just keep their best in making uncommon stuff which is actually cool to me
We’re treating bug reports very seriously. Between 1.2 (released Oct 23rd) and 1.3 (Dec 24th) we’ve squashed 33 reported issues. To put it differently: every 3 business days since 1.2 we’ve squashed 2 bugs.
This is on top of the 25 new music production features introduced in 1.3.
Do we still have open bugs? Sure, there’s around 60 at the moment. We’re keeping our issue tracker open for everybody to see. This helps us but also helps you, because most issues and quirks can be looked up, confirmed, and discussed by our community. You can also look up that 300 of those reports are feature requests
Believe it or not, having some form of game was an oft requested feature Tracker’s support for classic games is a homage to the demoscene of the late 1980s and early 1990s where tracker music played an important role, often used in minimalistic game cracking intros. Plus, a few classic trackers also included some silly game, probably most notoriously with Fasttracker II’s Nibbles.
We believe in balance. Balance between fixes and features, balance between being serious and playful. There’s a time and place for everything. And with that, I wanted to wish you a warm, fuzzy, and harmonious holiday season, and a wonderful New Year (hopefully very much unlike this rollercoaster of a 2020!).
my initial reaction to tracker was ‘why not just buy a laptop’ but the recent developments are making me more interested … i keep looking online to see who has stock.
great to see the support it’s still getting from polyend… very encouraging.
@bambrose I saw your post on Github about Android File Transfer no longer mounts the Tracker SD card via android file transfer on firmware 1.3.0. I have the same problem on my Mac Mini M1. I already added a comment at your post. It was still working on 1.3.0b5.
Merry Christmas from Polyend – wow. This is another huge update. I hope they enjoy a nice break for a little while. Before I even updated myself on this thread I said to myself “today is going to be a Tracker day” and now I have this new firmware to use. The support and continued development is astounding.
It’s like every bit of kit - you can pretty much make any(every)thing on a laptop, but the tracker feels like an instrument and, most importantly, it’s great fun plus the form factor is inspiring in a way that a laptop isnt (for me)
Ok y’all… the game addition… I was expecting pong or block breaker or something Atari-esque… they gave us a Nintendo emulator. 9/10 of the .nes files I’ve tossed into the new games folder just frickin work. All the hits from my childhood at my disposal again! Excite bike was my jam, and now it’s on my tracker. Wtf this is dope, merry Xmas y’all.
Tracker’s support for classic games is a homage to the demoscene of the late 1980s and early 1990s where tracker music played an important role, often used in minimalistic game cracking intros. Plus, a few classic trackers also included some silly game, probably most notoriously with Fasttracker II’s Nibbles.
