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A live synthesizer jam performed entirely on hardware.

I recently bought the Polyend Tracker Mini; even though I have (and love) the original Tracker, the allure of stereo samples and a battery made me curious. I wasn't sold on its design at first glance, but travelling around with it over the last couple of weeks, I've really come to love the overall philosophy of it. While I still miss the FM radio sampling of the original Tracker, and the performance page is a little less fun, the Tracker Mini has really hooked me. It's been the perfect companion while I'm switching studio spaces and travelling around a lot.

That's why when Mitch from Polyend reached out and asked if I wanted to try the Play+, I immediately said yes. (They sent me the device to try but that's the entirety of our arrangement.) I had, and sold, the original Play, which I thought was fun for drums but always felt like it was missing stereo samples and internal synths. With the addition of these in the Play+, it definitely feels more like a fully-featured groovebox, with eight stereo sample tracks and eight synth voices across three timbres. I still think it needs some work to be a perfect standalone, namely more integration between the synths and the perform page, but it's a much more well-rounded device now. That said, I got the device for free, so take anything I say about it with a grain of salt.

After playing with the Play+, the thing that stuck out to me the most was the quality of the synths. I expected them to be serviceable, but I was actually surprised with how much personality they had. Specifically, there are multiple filters on each synth, and they have some really interesting sweet spots (especially in the ACD synth). As such, I decided to focus on synths alone since they were what I was most curious about.

As ever, thanks for listening.

Polyend Tracker Mini - sequencing, drums, five melodic samples, drum performance
Polyend Play+ - seven voices across two synths

Performed and recorded live, with eq, compression, and limiting on the master.

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