Polyend’s is an enchanting piece of substances. It’s not for everybody, however it’s laborious to argue with the worth and energy it delivers. This 12 months the corporate is taking that very same fundamental format, and getting in a barely extra acquainted route. The Polyend Play is a sample-based groovebox, however it does away with confounding tracker (lowercase “t”) workflow.

At its core Play is an eight observe pattern sequencer, with a further eight polyphonic tracks particularly for sending MIDI to exterior gear. That means it may well function the brains of a full studio or stage setup, whereas nonetheless dealing with the duties of a drum machine. Like the Tracker, it additionally has punch-in results for efficiency and reside remixing, in addition to a DJ-style grasp filter.

Even although the sequencer on the Play was constructed from the bottom up particularly for the gadget, it nonetheless retains most of the handy options like autofill, randomization and probability that helped make Tracker so highly effective. Play can maintain 128 patterns, with every of the 16 tracks having 16 variations as much as 64 steps lengthy. And tracks can have impartial lengths, BPMs, playback modes and swing quantities, permitting you to create actually advanced interaction. Plus it has a music mode for arranging all of your patterns right into a completed composition.

While the structure is totally completely different, Play makes use of the identical anodized aluminum construct and seems to make use of the identical delightfully clicky keys. The giant click on wheel is gone and the display is smaller, however the grid of pads has been expanded from 48 to 160 (if my math is right).

It comes loaded with 3,000 samples, although you’ll be able to simply load your individual from a microSD card (a 16GB one is included). There are 35 completely different playback modes, although Polyend hasn’t revealed a full record of what these are but. And there are built-in results like reverb, delay and saturation for coloring your songs. And, identical to the Tracker, Play is powered over USB-C so you’ll be able to plug into a conveyable battery and make music on the go.

There are nonetheless a variety of particulars we don’t know in regards to the Polyend Play but, however one of many largest is the discharge date. But each time it does land (and we count on earlier than later) it is going to set you again $799.