Polyend Tracker review: A powerful but confounding groovebox

I’ve been sitting on this evaluation for a very long time.

That’s partially as a result of the Polyend Tracker wasn’t prepared for the plenty till not too long ago. But additionally, frankly, I wasn’t solely certain what to make of it. 

Truthfully, I struggled with the Tracker: On paper it’s an nearly intimidatingly highly effective and versatile piece of music making gear. Its mixture of sampling, slicing, sequencing and synthesis has few direct opponents. Possibly Akai’s MPC line or a few of Elektron’s higher-end gear is shut. In your arms it feels completely seductive. The big click on wheel is satisfying and the clacking mechanical keys set my nerd coronary heart aflutter. From a pure design perspective it is without doubt one of the most interesting musical devices I’ve ever had the pleasure of utilizing. And it’s solely $599.

But, I had bother constructing a reference to the Tracker.

At first after I sat down with it I used to be misplaced. I consistently discovered myself caught in four-bar loop land. Making music on it felt like work.

It didn’t assist that the sequencer right here is totally alien to me. See Polyend’s Tracker is, nicely, a tracker (lowercase “t”). Trackers are type of the precursor to trendy DAWs (digital audio workstations) like Logic and Ableton. There’s some disagreement about who precisely can lay declare to the primary tracker, however they emerged within the mid- to late-eighties with apps like Ultimate Soundtracker on the Amiga. They’ve remained fashionable amongst chiptune makers, and iconic artists like Aphex Twin have made intensive use of them, however they’ve by no means actually loved mainstream success. And, extra importantly, I’ve by no means really used a tracker earlier than. 

The obvious distinction between a tracker and a typical step sequencer is that all the things is oriented vertically. Your creation scrolls from prime to backside and every step can have any mixture of samples, devices and results on it. Meaning you don’t need to waste a whole lane in Polyend’s eight-track sequencer simply to your four-on-the-floor bass drum. You’ll be able to squeeze in your snare or perhaps a synth stab or vocal pattern too. 

Have in mind, although, that every monitor is monophonic, so in case you set off a brand new observe in a monitor it cuts off the earlier one. And if you wish to play a serious chord, that can eat up at the very least three tracks. There are additionally solely two slots for results, similar to rolls, panning, glide, observe likelihood and filters. And since microtiming is taken into account an impact, in case you don’t need your stuff to be robotically on the grid, then a type of automation lanes goes to be claimed from second one. 

The most typical criticism of trackers is that it may well typically really feel such as you’re making music in a spreadsheet. And that’s not inaccurate. The sample display the place you’ll do most of your composing right here bears greater than a passing resemblance to Excel. And all of your notes, devices, results, etcetera are represented by a quantity and/or letter mixture in a cell. That mentioned, the controls that Polyend constructed are much more satisfying than a mouse or keyboard may ever be. 

If you will get over the type of archaic presentation and discover a groove with the workflow, the Tracker has a ton of energy to supply. It’s, at its coronary heart, a sample-based groovebox — you may set off samples of drums, synths or no matter. However along with taking part in one-shots, you need to use the Tracker to cut samples. So you may herald a soul loop, break it up and recombine it utilizing the 48-pad grid. You’ll be able to slice a pattern manually, or through the use of one of many two computerized modes, certainly one of which is specifically created for chopping up beats and drum breaks. It’s fairly correct too; I solely often have to pop in and do guide changes on busier breaks.

A sequencer, a pattern participant and a pattern slicer alone would make the Tracker able to creating completely compelling compositions. Contemplating the cheap value and the facility that lurks contained in the sequencer, when you’ve mastered its intricacies (which I admittedly nonetheless haven’t) you’ve already bought a reasonably stable instrument. However there’s extra. So. A lot. Extra.

For one, the onboard pattern recording and enhancing capabilities are fairly wealthy. There are mic and line inputs, you may resample tracks from inside your sequence, and there’s a built-in FM radio you may file from. Then you may manipulate your recording by cropping or reversing them or including results like delay, refrain, flanger or a bit crusher. Briefly, if there’s a supply of sound on the market, you may seize it and manipulate it to your coronary heart’s content material. To check this out I spent a day within the park with the Tracker and my subject recorder, capturing chook chirps and making sounds with a beer can. Then I turned them right into a drum equipment and tossed collectively somewhat sequence. 

(By the best way, did I point out the Tracker is transportable? It doesn’t have a built-in battery, however because it’s powered through USB-C you may take it anyplace and simply join a typical energy financial institution. So yeah, it’s bought that going for it too. Although, I’ll say that the big display is usually glorious and makes navigating the machine a breeze, it may be a bit exhausting to see in daylight. )

Along with all these extra easy methods of dealing with samples, the Tracker has wavetable and granular synth engines in-built. Now, these are sample-based synthesis strategies, so it’s not that huge a leap from sampler, to granular synth. Nonetheless, only a few samplers or grooveboxes do that with out some coaxing. The granular engine is fairly restricted and sounds somewhat skinny, however the addition of some delay or reverb might help beef issues up a bit. And you may at all times resample your synth line and run it by way of further results. Simply know that the Polyend has an unmistakable gritty digital high quality about it. It’s good for percussion, but it surely may not be everybody’s cup of tea for melodic content material.

Extra spectacular is the wavetable synth. There’s a bunch of wavetables included, however you can too import your personal or create them out of your pattern assortment and even pull from different synths. Since you may change the dimensions of the “window,” it would work with wavetables designed for apps like Serum or Ableton. And past the wavetables, the inventory sounds included are actually glorious and embrace contributions from artists like Jamie Lidell. The one grievance is that there’s no actual strategy to preview what a wavetable will sound like when performed from the pattern loading display. So it may well take a variety of forwards and backwards earlier than you discover what you’re searching for.

There’s full ADSR (assault, decay, maintain, launch) management over the synths in addition to pattern playback, a stable digital delay and a satisfactory reverb, a variable mode filter plus modulation management over the filter, wavetable place and grain place. 

You’ve bought a variety of sound design energy at your fingertips — much more than you have got any proper to anticipate out of a $600 field that can suit your backpack. Particularly contemplating that the {hardware} itself is that this good. That is high-end stuff, little doubt about it. 

So the place did it begin to crumble for me? The sequencer.

It took months for me to even begin to construct a bond with the tracker workflow.

My background is primarily as a guitarist and recording dwell is a giant a part of how I compose music. And that’s simply not the place a tracker shines. It’s at its finest if you’re keen to take a seat and meticulously and manually manipulate your sequence. I’ve struggled to grasp using issues just like the observe off, lower and fade instructions. And I steadily discover that I’ve someway screwed up by altering the instrument after I meant to alter a observe. 

Now, you may file or carry out dwell with the grid, however these pads are usually not notably nice for precisely knocking out chords and melodies. They’re small and in case you’ve bought sausage fingers or clumsy arms taking part in them is troublesome. After all, you may at all times join a MIDI controller, however that takes away from the enchantment of the Tracker as a self-contained music creation machine. 

There are just a few minor bugs and annoyances, too. Typically a display will get caught on a selected parameter, for example, and also you’ll have to change views fully to alter a distinct one. Most frequently this occurs within the impact display beneath instrument parameters.

There’s additionally restricted pattern reminiscence. You’ll be able to retailer as a lot audio in your microSD card as you need, however you solely get 133 seconds of mono samples to work with in a given venture. That mentioned, you may go for a low-quality import to double the quantity of room and actually embrace that gritty digital vibe, which actually isn’t a foul factor. And you may double down on that by decreasing the bit depth of particular person samples from 16 all the best way all the way down to 4 within the results. 

If a pattern is especially lengthy and also you solely need to use a snippet of it, you may crop it earlier than loading it utilizing the import possibility. Or you can too use the in-built recorder which can allow you to crop the audio earlier than including it to a venture.

If you can also make your peace with the considerably anachronistic sequencer, although, there’s lots to love right here. For one, there’s a devoted efficiency mode with a slew of punch-in results like beat repeat, low move filter and transposition that you would be able to apply to all of the tracks or simply particular person ones. And the eight tracks also can ship MIDI out to different units, so the Tracker can act because the brains of a bigger arrange. (Simply know that it makes use of TRS MIDI sort B, which is non-standard.) It may possibly even ship MIDI CC as an impact and alter the parameters on exterior synths.

When you’re comfy with trackers you’ll in all probability recognize the piles of shortcuts and good interface decisions Polyend made, too. Choosing a whole monitor takes simply a few button presses. And you may then insert notes or FX throughout each step or each fourth rapidly with the fill perform. You can too set the sequencer to skip a sure variety of steps forward every time you insert a observe or parameter change. So, in case you wished to rapidly put down a four-on-the-floor bass drum you’d have two alternative ways of rapidly doing that. The fill perform can even allow you to do issues like randomize results parameters or notes. When you mix the random function with the snap-to-scale possibility within the settings, you may rapidly generate musical concepts if you’re quick on inspiration. 

Polyend additionally made certain that you just gained’t need to go looking on-line for steering in case you’re caught. There are many useful ideas and explanations constructed into the UI. If you already know the observe you need to play however don’t really feel like attempting to navigate the pads, you may simply maintain down the observe button and decide from the menu. When you’re confused about what an impact does, a easy button press exposes an in depth rationalization. There’s even a quick-start information within the config menu in case you simply want to search out your footing.

Terrence O’Brien / Engadget

Polyend additionally deserves credit score for going out on a limb right here. {Hardware} trackers simply aren’t actually a factor. There’s the NerdSEQ, which is a distinct segment sequencer for Eurorack modular synths. And… that’s about it. XOR Electronics, the corporate behind NerdSEQ, introduced a portable version of the NerdSEQ proper across the similar time as Polyend’s Tracker, however its late summer time 2020 launch date got here and went with little replace. 

So, in case you’re searching for a self-contained tracker-based groovebox, that is the one sport on the town. When you’re not wed to the concept of a tracker however need one thing with comparable sound sculpting capabilities then AKAI’s MPC line or Elektron’s Digitakt are in all probability your finest bets. However these are nonetheless dramatically completely different devices, with larger value factors ($699 and $749, respectively) and far completely different workflows. It’s unlikely that you just’d have a tough time selecting between the three. 

On paper, the Polyend Tracker is a beast of a tool and a reasonably good discount at $599. It’s a transportable eight-track groovebox with a sequencer that may be any variety of steps from one to 128. Then you may organize sequences to construct full compositions in track mode, grasp them and export them as polished items. It may possibly file samples, edit them, flip them into playable synths. It may possibly management exterior gear. And the {hardware} is actually lust-worthy. The Tracker workflow will not be for everybody, however that doesn’t cease it from being an interesting and spectacular instrument.