Polyend Tracker update 1.4 takes it to new levels
5,0 / 5,0 | 
The latest Tracker firmware update introduces a more classic sequencing experience, new step effects, better performance modes, a new price and much more.
Tracker 1.4
It’s always heartening to see manufacturers continue to develop and improve their existing products. Polyend has been great at providing solid updates to their products and the Tracker seems to go from strength to strength.
The craziest new idea is to ditch the traditional vertical scrolling tracker interface and give you a more classic sideways scrolling sequencing experience. It somehow feels like sacrilege. Surely one of the key features of a “tracker” is the weird vertically scrolling machine-code interface? But maybe that’s the problem, maybe too many people are put off the Polyend Tracker because the interface is too alien when almost every other device operates differently. Of course, they haven’t ditched the tracker interface but you now have a choice and I imagine that might encourage a lot of people to give it a go who would have previously considered it a bit too nerdy.
Polyend has added a bunch of new step effects such as Arpeggiation, Swing, Gate Length, and Slide. The display has had some tweaking to allow you to focus just on the sequence or to give you more information on the patterns. Switching between performance and editing modes is now seamless and performance mode can run for an entire song which makes me wonder what it did before? The transport bar is now visible in the Pattern screen. Tune FX now also works for MIDI notes and tap tempo now requires 4 taps. And it now supports Japanese radio frequencies.
There’s also been a lot of fixes and improvements to things like the latency, panning, tempo and so on. And MTP file transfer has been disabled because of problems with 3rd party library.
Watching the update video reminds me that Tracker really is a beautiful machine and now that it has a less “trackery” mode maybe it’s time to give it another look. However, they’ve also taken this opportunity to raise the retail price to €599 from €499 citing different factors like increased manufacturing and component costs. They hope we’ll understand and have also added a gently brushed feel to the aluminium faceplate to make it feel that little bit more special.
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More information from Polyend
- polyend-tracker-01-_new-770x425: Polyend
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