You are entirely correct. Goes to show how often I use that feature. I also found the preview process took a bit too long. 
Not a dealbreaker for me as the Tracker is THE device for me. I am intending to sell the rest of my āsetupā (such as it is) as a consequence. Long live Polyend!
If I use my OP-1ās fm radio then put the OP-1 out put through my fm transmitter, then record that using the Trackerās fm radio, will I mess up the space/time continuum, or even time travel?
let us know!
He already told usā¦
So, this may be sacrilege to say on this forum, but Iām considering swapping my Digitakt for a PT, and I wanted some advice/opinions.
Just for some background, I have no formal music experience other than messing around with loops in GarageBand and wanting to get into Korg Gadget on my iPad. In the past year, Iāve wanted to take music seriously and ālearnā how to make stuff, but Iāve found working in DAWs to be a little frustrating in making sure everything lines up correctly and āworksā together.
At first, the Tracker/tracker interface scared me because it looked so different from DAWs Iāve used, but as I dug into it more, the idea of step-sequencing every element of a track seemed incredibly appealing to me, as it mitigates the need to feel the rhythm of a song, because it can be visualized. Additionally, I work in IT and have some background in programming, so seeing everything as steps and bits of data makes more sense to me than the more traditional DAW method.
Alright, thatās a long-winded way to say that I think the Trackerās workflow is super appealing to me. I plan on making generative/ambient music with some glitchy elements and trip-hop/collage influence, and the Tracker seems to also be really excellent at that.
But now Iāve looked into it, the Tracker has some utterly baffling limitations to it that I canāt get my head around. Can I really only use a little over 2 minutes of sampled material in a song? Even using the built-in wavetable and granular stuff, I feel like Iād fill up the memory without even trying. Why have the capacity for a 256GB SD card when you can only load 8MB of samples into the RAM?
Or, am I just thinking about the memory limitation in the wrong way, and 2 minutes is plenty?
Additionally, Iāve seen some complaints about the Tracker taking forever to render audio and apply FX to it. Is this still a problem, or has it been fixed with updates?
Iām really just looking for an all-in-one box that can make completed songs, something the Digitakt canāt really do, and while the MPC One has cool sample slicing, it also looks slow as hell.
āIām really just looking for an all-in-one box that can make completed songs, something the Digitakt canāt really do, and while the MPC One has cool sample slicing, it also looks slow as hell.ā
Just turn the tempo up
Everything youāve heard about it is true. So if those things are dealbreakers, maybe itās not the right choice. Iām not going to get into the technical stuff or comparisons (plenty of people here are better at that than I am) but I can tell you my experience. Iāve owned Elektron boxes since 2014 and I love and still use them, I have used all the major and minor DAWs too but Tracker has had a profound effect on my productivity. Because itās a new way of working for me, it sort of takes me back to those beginning stages of making music; wonder, innocence, possibilities. Youāre either going to click with it and think itās the greatest thing ever, hate it, or fall somewhere in the middle. Try it out. If you donāt like it, sell it. Hell, I might even buy it. Iāve turned into somewhat of a collector here recently.
As a musician this worries me.
I get where you coming from - if youāre into programming (particularly if youāre in the GUI-less/terminal using/vim kind of camp) then it will probably appealā¦ but youāre talking about two different things.
Do I like trackers? To answer this question, get renoise. itās Ā£70 or so, has none of the limitations you describe, and is just generally awesome. You will find out if you like a tracker that has basically zero limitations.
do I like hardware? The PT sure is limited, but thatās hardware. Are you ready to give up unlimited power for the feeling of not working on a computer? People talk about the benefit of limitations, but some of the limitations of the tracker arenāt beneficial, in the sense that it doesnāt offer creative benefits to have to wait for effects to render. Not that that is bad - it is what it isā¦ thatās hardware for you.
If getting away from a computer is your aim, be aware that working on the tracker does feel like working on a computer to some extent.
Historically trackers have been developed as computer software at a time, where computers had very little RAM, and a dramatic poor overall performance compared to smart phones of today. The basic idea was to use as short as possible audio snippets as it was done on other samplers of that time. The PT follows this quite limited and minimalistic idea.
IMO we can do ambient music on the PT, I found some examples on YT, but IMO, itās not the domain of trackers at all. As an example, using long evolving pad samples as sound sources requires much memory and the capacity of the PT isnāt designed to do this efficiently. We can cut a pad sample into smaller portions, loop them, run them through deep reverb, etc. thatās okay, but I guess that generating ever evolving pad sounds with the PT using its own facitlies seems to take a lot of creative thinking.
As for generative music I would say that the PT lacks a couple of features like probability or options of feeding back signals and events to the generation of signals and events.
Go computer and if Tracker is your thing, try Renoise, which is an interesting combination of the Tracker concept and a DAW.
Slow? Explain please. From my experience with the new MPC series I wouldnāt say that.
I think that the memory limitation is ok, for longer evolving sounds the wavetable or granular sample playback can be used, you can actually get a fair bit of movement going between this and the filter and LFOs.
I think the sampling is best suited to short loops, drum and synth hits and single cycle stuff mainly, you can sample longer synth sounds, but even with the anti aliasing turned on, you are going to notice the consequences of repitched sample - shorter length for higher notes, longer for lower, any modulation present will change speed with each key etc. So for these longer type sounds use wavetable or granular instead of long pad samples etc.
A thing to remember is that the PT is really a single project (song) at a time device, so ask yourself how many sounds you typically use per song. You can have 48 samples in memory at a time, and each of the 8 tracks can only play one sound at a time. If you definitely need more than this then look elsewhere, maybe a MPC One, Deluge or Renoise.
Personally I donāt mind these limitations, I use other gear which has more limitations, I also have gear with less limitations, I just adapt to the particular platform, and truth be told it can be quite inspiring.
The sample editing time I think has been a bit overstated, weāre talking some seconds not minutes here, and things like crop and normalise really donāt take long at all, just the rendered fx take a little longer, but not a deal breaker IMHO.
Probably best to watch some video performances to get an idea of the capabilities, I think there are a few ambient ones out there, it might give you a better picture of what is possible.
Got a little feature on the polyend websiteās blog 
Little write up and you can download the project files from one of my tracks posted above, if you are interested 
I repost here because the original post was in the wrong topic. Sorry.
Hi,
I would like to control the change of Digitakt patterns with my Polyend Tracker but it doesnāt work.
When I push play on the Polyend Tracker, the Digitakt doesnāt start to play and the program change informations I send doesnāt change the DT patterns during the reading.
Here is my MIDI config on both machines. I donāt know what Iām doing wrong. Iāve test the midi cable and the midi to 3.5mm TRS jack adapter with other instruments and they work. Iāve also test the digitakt with my keystep and it work. When I play the keystep sequence the DT start to play.
So please if someone could help me it would be great.
Thanks
Clock in: Internal
Clock out: MIDI Out jack
Transport in: Internal
Transport out: MIDI Out jack
Notes in: Off
Notes in channel: ALL
MIDI out: MIDI out jack
CC in: Off
CC in channel: ALL
Clock sync delay: 0.0
Out Port Func: MIDI
Thru Port Func: DIN48
Input From: MIDI+USB
Output To: MIDI
Output Ch: AUTO CH
Encoder Dest: INT
Trig Key Dst: INT
Receive Notes: YES
Receive CC/NRPN: YES
Clock Receive: YES
Clock Send: YES
Transport Receive: YES
Transport Send: YES
Prg Ch Receive: YES
Track 1 to 8 channel: Channel 1 to 8
Track A to H channel: Off
FX control Ch: 1
Auto Channel: 1
Prog Chg In Ch: 1
Prog Chg Out Ch: Auto
So you donāt use any form of sequencer?
One of the very first things i was taught at music school was to feel the āgrooveā aka rhythm. āIf you donāt feel it you aināt living itā. as the saying goes.
Honestly I walked right into that one 
The Tracker has Chance as step fx, so that covers probability to a degreeā¦
Videos Iāve watched have shown it taking like a minute plus to load a project or do editing things. Maybe I was watching videos on old firmware or something, though. If the MPC One is fairly fast at things, it may be a lot more interesting for me
Cāmon, get off your high horse and stop gatekeeping.
First, generative and ambient music, well-established genres, generally donāt have a focus on a strong rhythm, or honestly any rhythm at all, since their focus is letting sounds come and go at random or with a loose structure and seeing how they intermingle.
Second, I never said I wasnāt able to sense rhythm, itās just that putting the notes in as steps makes more sense to me than trying to keep time while recording MIDI notes into a DAW. Would you say that musicians who had massive acclaimed careers who primarily used the step sequencers on drum machines and samplers to not be ārealā musicians?
To me, since everything I do eventually comes down to triggering MIDI notes, it makes sense for me to program the notes first instead of playing an instrument to program the notes.
Ah niceone @Unifono! Enjoyed that And youāve reminded me you can view all 8 tracks on screen at once!! Off t RTFM to work out how lol.