It doesn’t have a microphone, so it’d be much more convenient to use something like a Zoom H1 for field recordings. An advantage of plugging an external (powered) mic into the M8 would be that you’d have the recordings on your SD card instantly for use in songs… but then again, you could just put the SD card into the Zoom and record directly to it.
Can’t we just plug a mic into audio in instead?
Yes, but it’d need to be a powered mic (e.g. a battery powered lav mic). M8 doesn’t really support passive mic level signals.
Zoom H1 would be much more convenient.
That microphone uses “plug-in power”, which I believe is a power output that is sent from the device to the mic through the ring of the connector, kinda similar to phantom power. M8 doesn’t provide this.
Oooh thank you! I’m kinda sad about this… but not a big deal. Can’t wait my unit in Septembre btw 
maybe i’m doing something wrong, but at least my zoom h4n pro headphone output sounds quite lo-fi and noisy and i wouldn’t use it for live recording. can’t imagine it would be different for the lower end version.
edit: internal recording is fine of course.
Yeah I mean internal recording. I don’t really see the point of recording directly to M8 in that context unless you’re really wanting to capture something and instantly slice it up. Even so you can pretty easily use the same SD card in the M8 and recorder.
Thanks for the replies.
I’ve just been sent an M8, but unfortunately, my use case has changed in the time I’ve been waiting for it. I no longer need a portable solution because I don’t travel from Westchester to NYC anymore, as I did constantly until last year. At this point, my rigs at my home and my partner’s are fine.
I was hoping the M8 could be used for other things, too. Field recording might have been an extra that made the M8 logical to keep. On this very thread, people have compared the M8 to a mini-Octatrack, so you can see why I’d ask about a battery-powered sequencer that was also a sampler / sample player.
I sit corrected and appreciate the feedback.
One question: How do you check the M8’s firmware to know if you need to update it? The manual seems not to indicate there’s a way.
Firmware version shows on the screen at boot
I only received my M8 today. I really thought I was going to send it back, so I didn’t expect to be returning to this thread, but now I have no choice!
I’d probably have noticed that when I started it up for the second time. The first time, I connected it to the USB cable and only saw it switch on with my peripheral vision.
This thing sounds moo-hanking great, BTW. I don’t think I can return or sell it. (I wouldn’t have gouged anyone – I’d have just sold it for what I paid.) But in a world of synth and sequencer miniaturization, it really does sound better than anything else this small. Hardly anyone here is writing about it anymore, but I’m sold. I’m definitely traveling with this whenever I actually travel.
If Roland had made the M8, it would have sounded like third-generation wealth – like almost convincing, nigh-imperceptibly watered-down innovations from long ago. Roland still makes some decent instruments, and I still like their SE-02 collaboration, but they can’t stop modeling the classics. I own a real Super Jupiter rack module and the all-digital version smells like a doll museum. I wish they would reintroduce modern, stable analog for some synths and work on really new concepts with their modeling. (Some of their last analog synths were satisfyingly fat because they were almost digital. I didn’t own one myself, but I often used the JX-8P to fill out pads on other people’s tracks. It sounded like a puree under glass.)
As digitally wet as the M8 can sound, it has a brashness that really complements the polish. It isn’t just legerdemain or hairspray. The designer/creator was experimenting and that visceral obsessiveness is built into the hardware and software. It’s the best version of a pocket-sized music computer I’ve heard so far.
Yes, its insanely good. It also degrades and filters audio incredibly well. As a result, its capable of making incredibly good music on it’s own, all in the palm of your hand.
But wait - if you must have more, you can export the stems out into your DAW and it does better than Overbridge multitracking - it actually prints the effects you dialed in to each instrument on each track.
There is an M8 topic here that is quite active. Plus their discord is very busy. A LOT of people are talking about this thing and more will be as their product shows up in their hands.
I’ve been turning it on for months and I just noticed the other day!
But wait - if you must have more, you can export the stems out into your DAW and it does better than Overbridge multitracking - it actually prints the effects you dialed in to each instrument on each track.
I definitely intend to use the M8 with my DAW (texture-adjacent collages and heterogeneous textures FTW).
My fiancee is an incredible painter and the contrasts in texture in her abstracts are inspiring musically. We often work together in the same room, so I watch her paintings develop while I’m working on tracks. She will take a beautifully textured, chiseled painting with all kinds of nascent detail and place a seemingly mechanical shape with no depth whatsoever on some part of it. It’s amazing how effective that can be.
Being able to print the effects is a definite advantage over my Elektron kit, as much as I love it. So thanks for mentioning that.
But wait - if you must have more, you can export the stems out into your DAW and it does better than Overbridge multitracking - it actually prints the effects you dialed in to each instrument on each track.
When I said that hardly anyone was writing about the M8 here, I meant literally on Elektronauts. I’m aware of the Discord activity, but I’ve searched for conversations here about the M8 and found only this thread, so if there’s a more active one, please link to it! I’d love to read more.
I did notice a lull in conversations on lines and elsewhere. It does make sense we’d hear less about the M8 right now in the wake of NAMM, when so much new kit was just released.
I have to say that Timothy is incredibly responsive. I used to record tracks with vintage and legacy instruments for a Japanese project every week and things were always going wrong with the ancient Memorymoog, Matrix 12, Farfisa or Vox, etc. None of the companies that rented those instruments to the project were as immediately responsive as Timothy is with inquiries about the M8. That guy will get back to you 15 minutes after your email on a Sunday night at 11:00 p.m. I’ve never seen that before with any other musical instrument company.
Sounds interesting – is any of her work online?
Thanks for being interested, alspacka. She’s always uploading new work to this account:
https://www.instagram.com/lesliehardieart/
She also does video editing, and she and I have collaborated on a few things here:
[Edit: removed video links because I didn’t want them to distract from the artist’s paintings.]
To Estragon:
I couldn’t get this to work, but I appreciate the attempt.
edit: I tried to post a link but it just looked the same as estragon’s link.
The thread never goes too far down in the “Latest” list, so just scroll for a bit and you should see it.
Thanks, pselodux. I’ll have a leer.
topo_explo:
Yes, when I search for “dirtywave M8” and sort for relevance, my results are completely different from yours and those two topics don’t come up. But now I’ll search for “M8 Tracker” in Other Gear.
alspacka:
Here’s a photo a friend just took of one of Leslie’s paintings, which is being shown with two others by our friends in a gallery in Stamford:
Leslie Hardie, w Almu and Fern - LAA_Show|409x500
