#343

Thanks for the replies. My use case would be to generate some small clips or some 1shot sounds to be used in another places, the tracker be similar to a sketch pad or noise box and then use the results in other places where i have more flexibility.
Like using it on lazy weekend mornings in bed keeping myself warm or when summer comes, outside the bedroom, by the balcony. Then export results and further process them or sequence them.

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#344

Sounds like a great use for it. I think you’d be happy with Tracker as such!

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#345

I can only go by my experience of seeing posts deleted from fb that were critical - one was a reasonable comment about midi sync there was then a pretty terse to the point of rudeness reply from a mod, then an hour or so later they deleted their comments and then the post - it just seemed very odd and raised some red flags for me. Then I noticed that there are pretty much no critical comments on the fb group but there are some critical discussions in other forums… to be fair I dont look at the fb group much at all since seeing those posts deleted - that may have been over 60 days ago and just assumed the fb group was only for praising the tracker rather than any criticism (after seeing critical posts disappear after sharp words from a moderator)

I regularly check the github but my thoughts were, from a few posts that I saw deleted on fb, that I would get a better sense of actual user frustrations and discussions on muffwiggler, elektronauts, lines, etc. than a repository directly under the control of the developers. I was also just highlighting the open issues of stemexport that have persisted throughout a number of releases.

#346

FYI, there’s an unofficial “Polyend Tracker Users” facebook group as well. It’s pretty active and people do post about issues and criticisms there.

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#347

Thanks! I’ll take a look at that fb group! Cheers… (just sent a request to join)

Dont get me wrong - I think the Tracker could be great - it has real potential. But it is pretty buggy and crashy. Stem export is unusable. I’ve actually put mine away in a box until there is a stable fw that has been properly tested and can export stems. The fw is just too unstable - if you look at 1.3.0 then the two betas (alphas?) over the next few days you can see how notes were changed in projects etc. It’s too risky to invest much time in it at the moment and too unstable. Just my opinion…

#348

Just wanted to chime in as I’ve been thinking a lot about whether or not to purchase the PT. There is a thread on the other forum about it, of course, and it seems to be divided between people whose units give out ungodly amounts of noise, and people who don’t notice it at all, which is rather odd to me.
For what it’s worth, I’ve scoured the promotional videos and Polyend’s own videos and I largely can only find noise occasionally and when doing things like working through samples; I haven’t yet found a video where the noise is noticable when actually tracking or in live mode. I would love Lines users with their own units to chime in on this!

More important for DAW users however (which I am not one) seems to be that stem export is extremely broken. However the devs are clearly working to address this: [1.3.0] Song Export issues · Issue #697 · polyend/TrackerIssues · GitHub

TL;DR they say that they have fixed the tempo desync issue and are working on some other bugs! So we can hope that with 1.4.0 we’ll get a workable stem export function.

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#349

I do have the tracker and really enjoy it. I have no noticeable noise that people talk about. I actually love it so much that I ended up trading a couple odds and ends for the medusa as well. I haven’t exported stems but as you said is important for daw users which I also am not.

Basically I find it to be a super fun sampler and sequencer that is inspiring. Is the workflow for everyone probably not. It is the best option for me because i can hang out with all of my other gear or i can take it with me and sample something from my phone. I hope this helps

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#350

Thank you for chiming in! I hugely appreciate you sharing your experience. I’m a Renoise user so I am already in love with the tracker workflow :slight_smile:

If I may ask one more thing - how well does the monitoring/passthrough work? Can you apply effects live to the input as it’s being passed through? I am thinking of using tracker as a middlebox between my modular and my audio interface, which only has a single stereo pair.

#351

I love trackers as well!

But if I was you, I’d look at the clock sync issues if using external gear (either modular or tracker as master) - make sure you are happy with the lag… again take a look at the discussions in the other forums about clock sync… (I havent used the audio pass through)

#352

I have yet to use audio passthrough. sending all external hardware to separate effects.

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#353

I would be using the Tracker as my only MIDI source - but it is definitely worth looking at, so I will! My understanding at the moment is that there is a delay compensation setting available in the global settings for the Tracker.

#354

I’m sure someone will correct me but the delay compensation (I thought) was for incoming clock. If the tracker is the master sending midi as well as generating sounds and processing the incoming audio you should research the lag imo…

Dont get me wrong - the tracker is a great concept - it just needs more work and there are areas of concern where you hope there isnt a fundamental reason they havent fixed those areas as they are pretty critical. I bought mine knowing the external sync was very poor but didnt realise stem export was totally unusable.

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#355

Yeah. There’s this issue, which is closed, making me think that the issue is solved in the latest firmware - but maybe not!

#356

Disclaimer: I work with Polyend on this product since September.

As any product with analog audio output, there’s noise. If you keep your master mixer volumes or track volumes low enough, you will notice noise when recording. But as you said yourself, properly amplified projects won’t have a noticeable noise floor.

The passthrough works for Line In, there are no send effects for it and it’s unlikely we’ll have them in a future update. Song export is offline so it doesn’t include line input passthrough. We’ll be adding a live song export mode to address this.

We do have delay compensation for external MIDI clock. There is currently no delay compensation for Tracker’s own MIDI output. I’m going to be personally dealing with that one: #570.

We know of the following issues with stem export right now:

  • in some cases it’s unreasonably time consuming
  • track stems are exported as mono
  • the initial silence at the start of the tracks isn’t recorded which makes stem alignment tricky
  • tempo calculation isn’t perfect, e.g. instead of 130 BPM you’re getting 129.96 BPM

The first two issues are being addressed as part of #697, and the third issue is already fixed but awaits a release. It’s unclear at the moment what we can do about the last issue, if you care about your tempo syncing 100% to external gear or software, you can clock Tracker with that external gear or software.

By the way, song export works fine, save for tempo calculation which works the same as in stems export.

As a general comment, we try to balance work on bug fixes with addressing missing features. Ideally there would be no bugs, or we could fix them all at the same time. In reality, we address them as we go and some are easier to tackle than others. It’s natural that for some people certain issues are more urgent than others, so you’ll sometimes hear people being disappointed by their top problem not getting fixed first. We’re not ignoring it, we’re just addressing other ones in the mean time, which probably were top issues for other users.

In any case, as I like to remind everybody, please base your purchasing decisions on the current state of the product. On our side, we’re not going anywhere, this is an actively supported project.

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#357

Thank you very much for addressing these issues!

To be clear - none of these issues save the MIDI clock latency are game-changers for me. Audio passthrough without effects is completely fine, I was just curious as to whether it had that. Indeed, in the case of using the Tracker as a middlebox, I imagine that the MIDI clock latency wouldn’t be an issue as the Line In audio would, presumably, be buffered as well.

#358

This is sort of my point - when I bought it, it was advertised that stems worked and were mentioned as a feature. If it was advertised that you can export stems but the tempo will be out, the start points will be different, sometimes they will unpredictably in mono and it’s “tricky” to align them plus you need to leave it to export over night then I wouldnt have bought it. So it’s a bit disingenuous to say only buy it based on the current state of the product when it was an advertised feature! Also these issues have persisted over many releases… you cant caveat that one away - you can say that if someone complains about a feature they want but hasnt been advertised or planned but not for a showstopping feature on a major selling point for many! To say that to customers is a bit insulting - it’s a bit like “well we know we advertised it and know it’s broken but it’s the customer’s fault for not fully testing and regression testing every single feature befire buying” - is it not?

If you are relying on the tracker clocking the modular and both the tracker and modular generating sounds then they will likely not be in sync. You would need to multitrack record them and manually change the offset (and may need to warp the tempo) in your daw, I believe…

From what the polyend programmer is saying I think that you need to scour the bug reports and forums yourself to check all your use cases (dont rely on the advertised features) ie it’s your responsibility to ascertain the state of the product and not rely on advertised features working. I think the implication is that if a feature isn’t working then it’s your fault for not checking everything and anywhere before buying and not Polyend’s for advertising the feature.

Ps again I like the tracker and I really appreciate that they are a small team and have said they are committed to adding new features but the testing of the releases seems pretty much non-existent. From the reported bugs there seems to be no or minimal regression testing. The fact that some huge show stopper bugs have persisted through so many releases raises serious questions over their design :frowning: I’d love to be proved wrong and hope 1.4 is stable, usable and fixes the showstoppers. Even the nes emulator was buggy - my first try with it showed a bug in under 5 seconds ! It’s a fun idea but pointless if it just adds more bugs.

#359

I get it, you’re unhappy because stem export is something you counted on working. It sucks it doesn’t and we’ll be addressing it as I thoroughly explained in the post above. I also explained that we are constantly working on improvements and what is a “showstopper” for you, won’t be one for others. Repeating that your issue “persists over many releases” doesn’t help getting it fixed faster.

This is a wrong implication and you’re unnecessarily escalating the situation using this sort of loaded language. I was replying to Nora and since she is considering the purchase, I added that purchases should be made on what she knows about the product today.

As for the comments on “non-existent regression testing”, “huge show stopper bugs”, “serious questions over design”, and so on… it’s the sort of hyperbolic language that accomplishes nothing. As anybody following Polyend Tracker can tell you, we have a thorough open beta firmware process. If you’re sticking to official final releases, most problems never reach you but you’ll see new firmware releases every few months. If you’re living on the bleeding edge, you’re getting features (and fixes) faster but things might be wonky. If you can’t tell the difference between the two, I don’t know what to tell you.

We are currently working on 1.3.1, having released 2 betas of it already, with the 3rd arriving soon. Once that’s final, most of issues reported for the 1.3 series will be addressed.

What was the problem you encountered? Did it apply to the included games?

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#360

I totally understand the frustration of users when important features don’t work correctly, but I’ve been following the strong efforts of the manufacturer for months and I’m convinced that e.g. the audio export will also be fixed. Interestingly, I have never had major problems, let alone complete freezes. I’m also one of those people who found access to electronic music in the 90s with tracker programs (Scream Tracker in my case). That’s why I’m a bit in love with Polyend Tracker and don’t mind small bugs. The stem export problem I do not count in this category, of course. Fortunately, if I have problems with a stem BPM, it can be fixed pretty quickly with Ableton.

And to answer the original question of @NoraCodes . I haven’t noticed any noise from the tracker so far, even in combination with other devices.

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#361

I understand you dont want people saying that bugs are not being fixed doesnt help you but what is factually incorrect about it ?

Also, I am concerned about notes in a pattern changing depending on the release and all the crashes as well as the sync.

That’s exactly my point - from the Polyend advertising she wouldnt have known stem export was completely broken and that external sync had an offset
Your comment said that people should only buy it based on the current state of the machine. If you advertise a feature, it’s not unreasonable to expect it to work. Your wording implies that it’s the purchaser’s responsibility to check all the bugs.

Accusing your customers of hyperbole when they are discussing testing issues and major bugs is a bit rich. For example - did you do regression testing on existing projects for 1.3.0. If so, how come it didnt pick up that notes in the project were changed by the firmware. That is something that is ridiculously simple to check is well-written software. If it isnt easy to check that implies you dramatically changed the format and architecture which, to me, implies it should be checked even more carefully! I dont think that’s hyperbole, I think that is pretty much a show-stopper and demonstrates very inadequate regression testing. I’m happy if you want to justify that that level of regression testing is ok…

I consider the main releases to be pretty much alpha or beta as they are so unstable - witness the rapidity of the “beta” releases following the 1.3.0 release. Do you think 1.3.0 is stable? Genuine question ! I definitely think the “betas” are not even alpha quality…

With regards to the Games “bug" - if you think being able to enter a feature by clicking a button but be unable to exit it (except by power cycling) is not a bug but a feature, then I am lost for words. I considered that to be a bug that I spotted in 5 seconds. ( "Added a way to exit games selection without rebooting the device” - and only added this wonderful feature, ie not having to power cycle to enter a feature, in a bleeding edge beta…)

I thought the two betas were predominantly for fixing show-stopper bugs in the “stable" release ???
Are you saying almost no-one saw any crashes (eg the pretty much universal song mode crash) in the “stable” 1.3.0 release?

eg:

1.3.1b2:

Fixes

  • 1.3.1b1 regression: CUT/FAD/OFF on beat-sliced instruments could become incorrectly translated to C-0 (#652),
  • 1.3.1b1 regression: Rolls R1-12 Rv1-16 broken (#654).

1.3.1.b1

Features

  • Dedicated pad display for beat slice instruments,
  • Added a way to exit games selection without rebooting the device (#596),

Fixes

  • Crashes in Song Mode when using external MIDI clock (#613, #630),
  • Sustained notes were not looping properly (#646),
  • Tempo was resetting to 130 BPM after restart (#459),
  • Slices which were already written on pattern shift after changing root note (#594),
  • Sample rendering was having an invalid length on pattern change (#423),
  • Selection rendering was containing garbled Line In audio (#603),
  • Micromove + roll was glitching in certain combinations (#304),
  • Samples were getting replaced by white noise after cropping in certain scenarios (#417),
  • Pattern selection behavior after releasing and pressing Shift again is now fixed (#608),
  • There were errors in scales: melodic minor, blues major, Todi, Gypsy minor, not anymore (#589),
  • Auto naming function was not adjusting text selection (#564),
  • Panning in Line In stereo was reversed (#637),
  • There were duplicated notes in Fill range (#638),
  • Some button labels were stuck when switching back and forth between Instrument Effects and Parameters screens (#595),
#362

You seem to not understand what beta releases are for. They are for our community to have early access to features and fixes, and to help us test the next upcoming official release.

The current official release is 1.3.0, with a number of known issues. They are being fixed in 1.3.1 which is not released yet.

What is released are two betas of 1.3.1, and the “notes in the project being changed” problem was a regression in a beta release. If you’re not installing the betas, you wouldn’t ever see this.

In other words: the next stable release, that we are working towards right now, is 1.3.1, the first bugfix release of the 1.3 firmware series. If you’re not interested in being a beta tester, just ignore the beta releases and wait for the next official release.

The game emulator takes over the device because there is no multitasking in the hardware. Just like games on an Amiga. What we’re adding in 1.3.1 is the ability to exit the game selection menu before you decided you want to play a game at all.

This is getting somewhat ridiculous so I’m bowing out for now. Cheers!

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