Xiphonics picoTracker Advance

The Lounge Other Gear
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i’ve stumbled across picotracker stuff from time to time but this ready made hardware option looks pretty slick for a decent price

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Hardware specs

  • HiDPI 720x720 4" display
  • Powerful ARM processor
  • 48MB of sample memory
  • MicroSD for project and sample storage
  • In/Out TRS and USB MIDI
  • Headphone/Line output and speaker
  • Line input and microphone
  • Battery lasts up to 6 hours
  • Weight: 233g (8.2oz)
  • Dimensions: 143x78x15mm (5.6x3x0.6in)
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I saw this on perfect circuit, didn’t find any results searching here but didn’t have the gusto to make a thread myself.

I’m also curious, I wondered how to compares to the M8, some of the synth engines seem cool! and there seem to be many parallels to the M8, but about half the price.

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yup i also was illuminated by perfect circuit, it looks pretty slick. i need to learn more about picoTracker, i havent really looked into it at all. but it is cool to see a more direct competitor to the M8 out there.

heres some of the picoTracker limitations pulled from their github

Limitations

  • The pico will probably struggle with 8 song channels playing at the same time in most cases (the Advance can do 8). There is still room for improvement by either using core0 for partial audio rendering and/or improving the performance of the audio/dsp code (eg. using the hardware interpolator units on the RP2040)
  • Cannot load LGPT projects though there is a basic script to convert projects.
  • Samples are copied to flash upon load and played from there. Since flash has to be shared with program code, only 8MB is available for it when using the Raspberry Pi Pico, or up to 8MB when using other boards or custom hardware (i.e: the picoTracker official hardware kit).
  • Instrument count is also pretty low due to memory constraints. 16 Sample, 16 MIDI instruments, 3 SID, 3 OPAL instruments.
  • Sample instrument feedback feature has been removed due to memory constraints.
  • Soundfont support has been removed to save some memory.
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An important distinction this holds against the M8 Tracker - this is open source, which may be important to some people. Sure, the M8 is maintained largely by the community and a small company, but some people may want to be able to create a spin-off project from the ground up.

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The picoTracker firmware and now the picoTracker Advances firmware started as ports of LGPT (little piggy tracker) to the RP2040. LGPT predates the M8 by about half a decade, so the intention is not to be like the M8, but rather its a parallel line of development in the same LSDJ inspired niche.

Feel to ask if you have any questions about the picoTracker, either the original pico or our new Advance model.

(disclosure: I’m one of the developers of the picoTracker)

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I liked the m8 but didnt get along with the workflow i see this has a different table system more in line with lgpt but do those give ya fxs old school tracker style just not global reverb delay classics like the m8 ?

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Thanks! The picoTracker firmware started as a fork of lgpt so indeed the table functionality is pretty much exactly the same is in lgpt.

On the topic effects, we do have on our roadmap to add master effects like reverb as well as potentially others.

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Nice highly debating this device having fx on the roadmap nice. So the advance version has some wiggle room for updates for future im not going to get this and the pro model comes out a month later :laughing:

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The pt Advanceis the “pro” model.
It has alot more high end hardware then the original pico model so we have alot of plans of what we can add to the firmware running in the Advance.

When I mention that things like reverb are on the roadmap, Im referring to the roadmap for the Advances firmware.

Hope that clears things up.

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This project looks interesting. I’m curious about how much CPU overhead the Advance has for future improvements; it sounds like there’s enough for a reverb send but do you think here will be enough for a user to combine any number of instruments across all eight channels, or use all the channels for audio simultaneously?

Additionally, since it looks like it would make a very capable MIDI sequencer, would it be possible to pass through the audio inputs into to Advance’s mixer rather than just using them for sampling? (I am assuming that the audio input will be used for sampling but I couldn’t find it in the manual).

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Good to hear i keep thinking about the blue one and giving the tracker another go device looks fantastic advanced model :ok_hand: is the lable symbols wrinting for the buttons harder to see on blue or just seems thay way different color yellow it looks over white?

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I think they are just as readable but this may come down to personal preference really.

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