I agree on most of your Pros/Cons and I quite enjoy using it…One thing that is a bit of a letdown is that when scrolling through the Specs on Sonicwares you get no mention on sampletime, right now you only get 5.46 of playable time on the instruments track if it’s stereo and 10.9 seconds if its mono (hard to play long pads), of course you have the loops points you can use to “stretch” it out but it kinda wrecks the easiness and pace of it…hopefully they’ll increase this somehow in future firmware.
And there’s no included SD-card or built in storage which means you have to get your own SD-card and download the samples from a 3rd party = you’ll have to register a username.
every piece of kit is right for somebody, but it does kinda of seem like they undercut themselves a bit with the Lofi-12, on the other hand I guess you could have yourself a very portable setup if you had both.
Mine arrived this evening. When I say arrived… no delivery notification I found it hidden outside by chance - thanks FedEx! Didn’t have to pay any import duties though.
First impression is the size, it is tiny! But seems well built. Hopefully will get a chance to play with it this weekend
damn the sample trek and the Liven lofi-12 just came out and both already being resold on reverb and craigslist… Definitely want to hear how you get on with yours… I was feeling a little regret from having held off but not so sure now
here is something awesome - it will sync with Elektron boxes!! yes, when you change patterns on the SmplTrek - the Elektron follows! it uses Program Changes, and it queues the next pattern and syncs the playback perfectly!
however it seems the only issue is that the program changes are absolute, so you only have 16 patterns to work with when syncing from the SmplTrek… (A1 thru A16)
quick update… it is still missing extremely basic and key features which would be required for integrating into a larger setup… my main gripe is that you cannot have MIDI OUT+THRU… its just one or the other, which makes it impossible to use it with external synths and an external MIDI keyboard controller…
its a simple thing that can easily be updated by firmware
honestly i think the device has tons of potential - but unfortunately i cant be waiting around for that and also the only way to get a good return on this is to sell it now while its still in limited supply…
so yeh - id expect quite a few more to be showing up on Ebay very soon
I’m tempted a lot by craigslist these days literally sonic wares whole line is up in LA but I’m not a collector, and I keep thinking as soon as I grab another beat machine Elektron is gonna drop that digitakt mk2 and I’ll be too broke to get it… spent too much on Black Friday software already to boot…
first I didn’t like the smpltrek form factor, then I did, but now I’m not crazy about the knobs or the feedback so far, but then on the other hand they could still improve it and it’s just the beginning just like the liven loft-12… I think at least with the lofi-12 I might of got one if they weren’t jonesin for those old school limitations so much… I can handle creative inspiring workflow limitations but having to back up everything in sysex etc… just makes me wonder why… they could have done a quick app like transfer… maybe they will … as far as the smpletrek goes I think they marketed to the wrong crowd cause everybody that I’ve seen interested wants it to be a gameboy/ sp4o4 and if they had sculpted the features more like that as opposed to a tiny Roland VS-880 I think there wouldn’t be any on craigslist right now.
Some good.observations. I wouldn’t take the fact that there’s a few ‘used’ ones up for sale as a direct negative reaction to the machine.- this is a common Kickstarter phenomenon. People loose interest and switch to something else while waiting or just selling opportunistically.
You’ve been thinking the Digitakt MKII is just around the corner for years now, but it already arrived multiple times in the form of firmware updates. The thing is packed, and and absolute beat-making beast. You could be waiting a while on a MKII. The syntakt, digitakt, and digitone are essentially a shared platform and the syntakt is brand new.
this is true and as much as I love my digitakt I still don’t think elektron is gonna close the curtain without an mk2 at least I haven’t seen the benefit of doing so yet, and what I mean by that is that if and when they do release a digitakt mk2 it will sell more than anything else they’ve put out, including the current number one seller… the digitakt mk1
Yeah, I’m glad I ended up cancelling my Kickstarter fund for this. Just doesn’t look like my thing. At this point the SP-404 MK2 is also freely available and that’s probably the move most people will go to. I feel like this thing was being hyped up in the wake of the MK2 being difficult to grab but Sonicware may have missed the opportune window.
Not to completely derail the topic but curious to which video synth? I’m a video synth noob and have been waiting on a Chromagnon from LZX for ages lol.
Well - at the moment of writing this you can order all Sonicware devices incl. SmplTrek already. They are currently listed as ‘in stock’. So supply seems not to be very limited any more.
I watched most of the videos on the sampler. It’s kind of a poor man’s octatrack with a smaller screen. Shortcuts and submenus make results long and difficult to define. I may not be optimistic but a bigger screen and less possibilities would have been more interesting for Track design with long samples. Online resales continue to increase, which leads me to believe that it takes a calm and disciplined temperament to achieve results.
For me it would have been an ideal Machine to remix my Samples, and make listening tracks. I saw myself with this one and an item in my pocket to light my way. I’m going to have to leave myself with my usual three machines and forget about this one.I listen to reviews, and the reverse will help me understand why I need to buy one. So thank you for sharing your joys whatever with this tool… And share your disappointments. Purchases are sometimes mistakes and vice versa.
Cheers!
Just about to post the same. It’s a nice update actually - the Looper is back! Must see if I can get it working with my MIDI Baby pedal. Plus a much needed update to the manual. I like they moved the Metronome setting to the Tempo page but it really, really needs to be accessible via a push-button on the home page IMHO.
I’ll tell you what I do not appreciate: Black-fucking-Octopus. You have to download the free sample content from them but you have to sign up for an account to get it. Despite me unchecking all of the ‘send me emails and generally bother me’ boxes on the form, I’m getting spam from them at least every other day trying to sell me sample packs. You can unsubsribe in the emails of course but it’s tiresomely predictable behaviour. Also, I have to say, the free samples you do get for the Smpltrek from them are mostly shit and I ended up deleting them all.
spent too much on Black Friday software already to boot…
I listen to reviews, and the reverse will help me understand why I need to buy one. So thank you for sharing your joys whatever with this tool… And share your disappointments. Purchases are sometimes mistakes and vice versa.