And on that note, clamshell designs would potentially work well for a lot of portable synths that have screens. There’s your dust cover, there’s your adjustable viewing angle.
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Interesting! It’s funny we are both bringing our own perspectives to the discussion 
As a software person, my impression was that software is not completely Polyend’s strength. Not that it’s bad, but it is one of the things people take issue with with their products.
So, I doubt they will release a mini Tracker which requires a complete software rewrite, or diverges the Tracker software “platform” into multiple versions; they don’t seem to have the SW dev bandwidth for that.
Instead I think it will be mostly the same software. And if so, that limits the amount of hardware revisions that can occur.
I also think, based on what I’ve seen from some of the leaks and reverse engineering stuff a while ago related to the Tracker, a lot of the limitations people don’t like about the device are fairly inherent to the software platform itself (the kind of data structures that are used to store certain info, for example).
Just my opinion, it’s fun to speculate 
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And it doesn’t have a “select” button in the middle. Looks like the Tracker Mini does… though to be clear I’m not sold on that being an improvement.
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That hinge is an engineering marvel, though. It’s pretty beyond the scope of companies used to vending bent metal slabs with pots or indies wiring together teensys with custom PCBs. I’d love to see it, but most of the budget in synths seems to get eaten up by circuit design and DSP.
Makes me wear my reading glasses. To be honest, the small screen was my greatest concern. But I must admit that after months of use I can be on the couch for hours with the M8. It’s one of those devices with which I get in flow.
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Yeah, good points for sure.
There will definitely have to be software support for buttons (as opposed to the jog wheel), and there probably will have to be software support for the mic (although perhaps not if the hardware switches inputs automatically).
And, there probably will be other new headline features in the OS to help with the marketing push, but I suspect both Trackers will get anything else that is new.
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It wouldn’t be for me, especially in the context of mass selection. SELECT/YES button should generally be an element on the right side (sorry lefties ) or near center. If you are selecting that with your right hand, the reaching motion is going to potentially block the screen. These are small things to complain about maybe but they add up, and are based on years of existing design that is done a certain way for a certain reason.
My point is, weird hand movements should be avoided where possible.
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I think that would probably require moving to a different hardware platform.
The sampling menu on the PT is a completely different mode from the pattern / song mode and it takes some time to switch modes like it’s loading a new application so I’m assuming the platform they are using either doesn’t have enough grunt or has some fundamental limitation why it can’t do both things at the same time.
My assumption is they might do some basic changes, but they won’t move to a totally new processor / SoC because it will spread dev too thinly. I read somewhere that they misjudged and chose a platform that’s somewhat lacking in power in the first place and are paying the cost for it now as it’s hard to implement new features.
I think most just want to use the tracker and its capacities for what is possible and not waste all FX Slots for stuff that should be doable with one or two envelopes.
All power to you, that you have fun with the PE Tracker. I dont want to talk that down, but for me, all the other instruments that can do sounds with samples, do it (for me) better, than the PE Tracker (Digitakt, Octatrack, Akai Force and for mobile music making, the Dirtywave M8).
Just grab Koala sampler on your mobile phone and you’ve got it covered:
After the last BJ video the product appears dead in the water upon release for me. It’s just a sampler with nothing interesting going on over anything i already have.
Is this better than the OP-Z? The Zed has synths and a drum machine and a great sequencer and a Sampler.
But of course we’ll know more tomorrow.
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Whoa whoa whoa. Calm down there. Let’s not be extreme 
Let’s not toss the baby out with the tepid bath water.
We have to get back to building up our disappointment level for a new hardware release which doesn’t match our Homer Simpson vision of a great product just for me.
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The whole point of a tracker is having an UI that is made to be keyboard driven. The M8 is a nice little hack and it is nice in a pocketable context where you wouldn’t want to carry a laptop [1] but looking for the ultimate tracker that would work without a keyboard is like looking for an invisible pink unicorn. I’d rather use a dedicated laptop with renoise on it than waste my time buying and selling boxes. How many hours can you use renoise on a macbook air before the battery is depleted?
People sometimes believe in much more crazier things so I guess this is a quest of a lifetime for you.
[1] although you can get some really small ones
Yeah, essentially I’m differentiating the overall hardware platform from the core processor package which I’m assuming isn’t just a processor it’s actually some kind of little integrated development board they buy in with various busses and peripherals pre integrated which they use to make development less expensive.
I’m assuming that there might be some upgraded board with a higher clocked processor in existence they could switch to, but that won’t change fundamental limitations of the platform. The suggestion I’ve seen is that the PT is only a 180Mhz processor vs 600 in the M8 which accounts for why you don’t get a ton of fancy features.
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I totally disagree here. Just because trackers were made in a time when most devices where keyboard driven does not mean, that is didn’t change over the decades. For me personally, the workflow of modern hardware trackers (PE, Nerdseq, M8) feels way more natural to me, than renoise on any computer.
And if we follow you argument, Tracker were made with low-bit-rate mono samples and not more than 4 tracks in mind, so what is all that additional tracks and plug-in-stuff in renoise?
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Just posting this again to illustrate that we already have something like this on iOS:
Sampler and Tracker in one
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The OP-Z is zero fun to me, and is a cardboard remote that breaks if the sun shines too bright on it. If it had a screen and was more durable it would be a nice deice.
I’ve tried to use Koala so many times. I want hardware buttons and hardware tailored to the software. Working on a touchscreen just makes me sad.
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Well at least you tried 
I am not familliar with Koala, but what I do know is that Zed is dead, Zed´s dead, baby.
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Hah, this is too real! I just sold my PE Tracker. Such an awesome concept that just has (in my opinion) some incredibly bizarre limitations that kept me from keeping it around.
start collecting tomorrow…
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