Sure I am one of them a lot of the time. My point was that this seemed like it was just a computer basically
Oh I definitely “get it”
For me having the internet directly available on my computer workstation has been good and bad.
But having to constantly buy computers has become very noticeable in a bad way only
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Yeah my thinking was to send my MPC 8 outs into my old grimey boss mixer and then send that stereo out into a box like this. I would personally just want to record the kick separatley as track 2 so I can use it as my sidechain. The rest of the stuff I’d record would be synths and percussion sounds so 1 mono or stereo in would be fine.
It would just be an easy way to get a complete hardware recording down. Definitley a luxury but very practical if it works as expected and is not super expensive. Only alternative out there is the bluebox but this seems a lot easier to navigate.
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One thing I’d love to see on a device like this is multiple outs. If you’re going this route it’d be nice to mix on a mixer.
@BassesAndPads context for your questions: Colin is presenting a prototype, he is happy he had it ready to present it at Superbooth, there are still months expected before sales start with polishing, certifications, etc. And he will start sales with a small batch that he will sell directly, and only then he will start looking for a bigger scale and distributors, if that makes sense.
Said that…
Yes it sends clock.
MIDI jitter, there is always some (in all products), he won’t say it’s not noticeable but it isn’t problematic on the prototypes, and he is still working on optimization.
Latency, currently he is measuring 7ms and he is still working on reducing it as part of the optimization.
Everything is recorded in stereo, even the mono input are in fact two channels.
Price, this first batch that he will assemble himself won’t be cheap. If he can scale up then the cost will go down, but then distributors will get a cut, so… He can’t lose money and this nice device is not cheap to build. He is getting this question a lot, for now it is clear that it won’t be cheap, can’t be cheap.
Re-reading some comments, I think the Track8 implementation details like e.g. having one stereo input and one mono make sense when you remember that this is a song writing tool, not a performance tool.
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good to know the intention (I personally would probably be more interested if it was a performance tool) but . . . then it seems like you’re competing in the space against things like Bluebox and TX-6 so it probably needs to be more like a multichannel mixer in addition to its recording capabilities. just my first reaction without seeing it actually in use
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Thanks for asking and getting details on this.
I think if its going to be expensive it simply has to be super tight clock, like cirklon level tightness if possible. 7 ms is more latency than my DAW unfortunatley, which I have at under 3ms with an RME. Also he is right about hardware having some jitter so my question is more about if his device can add little to none, like a sync clock would do.
A good example of a tight clock would be the always on clock sync in the Octatrack or older MPC 4000. If he can get it like those I think he would have something here.
Maybe I’m missing something…is this a multitrack recorder but with a single stereo input?
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Yup. Really weird design choice in my opinion, unless it can somehow work with an interface… at which point it may be more practical to just use a laptop.
Yeah the thing I was hoping was it sent a much more stable clock than a DAW and would be something I could accuratley record hardware into. But it actually has more latency than my macbook plugged into an RME interface so unfortunatley for me it is probably not a purchase.
I found it awkward to operate, because you don’t have dedicated navigation keys or touchscreen support (apart from the left right keys in that block on the right).
Also, I managed to crash it and it looked like it was running some flavor of Linux.
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The idea as I was told is that as a songwriter you play one instrument at a time.
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I sat down and just tried exploring it without introduction and found it pretty intuitive and satisfying.
I feel it does exactly what he set out to do, to make a songwriter’s recording device that is as immediate as a tape recorder.
The instant bouncing by copying multiple tracks and pasting them to one empty track (or even to an usb drive to export) is really cool.
Also interesting bit about the memory, it is a fast SSD to handle the streaming of 8 stereo tracks at all times, and there‘s always only a small slice auf the audio loaded, no limits on track length.
For the waveform display that confused some, it‘s to make it more readable even though it’s all stereo, the upper half is the right channel and the lower the left.
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How is this an improvement over what the 1010 Bluebox is already providing?
It has a mic pre and in addition to audio recording it’s also a MIDI recorder/editor.
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it would benefit from audio interface support via usb 3.0 like a (cringe for saying it) mpc…
you don’t need your glasses to navigate it? not positive on that one though…
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Quite a common setup (though generally at the cheaper end of the market) but, as I think I mentioned above, the tendency in recent years has been to ignore any kind of sync. That means a device probably isn’t useful for many electronic purposes. A two-input device with sync can be a lot more flexible than an eight-input device with no sync.
But as people have already noted, the main problem for this piece of kit is that the Bluebox already has it beat on features and, by the sound of it, price. But I expect there’ll still be enough interest to sell out his first run, and I hope he does well, because I think decent recording devices are due a renaissance.
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I just learned this about the Akai boxes about a week ago. If the octatrack had this, it would be game over
I think this device solves my issue of constantly running out of octatrack flex tracks to loop synced “live audio” clips in. Id think of it like a direct extension of the Octa probably, without the fx. Kind of perfect in that way if it is what i think it is
I have a genuine question (not directed at you, Nick): what does this seem to do that the bluebox does not? I don’t think I really ever considered the bluebox for this type of job, having already bought a blackbox
Before comparisons with the OP-1 are made, I think it’s worth pointing out that the OP-1’s implementation of tape isn’t just a four track recorder in a funky interface. It’s the resampling workflow, record to album and back to tape, the real time fx as part of resampling, chopping and slicing stuff into a synth and then back to tape … all those things … that’s what makes the OP-1’s tape so cool. The digital equivalent of all that copying and pasting and cutting and slicing done in old studios. That it takes a classic linear recording paradigm and throws in sampler ethos, is what’s so funky about it.
I was kind of hoping the TP-7 would be that. But just another take on the hardware porta, that’s not what the OP-1 ever was and that’s not a particularly interesting product. To me, that is.
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So I am very intrigued by this thing (just realized what I did there 
) not sure if it’s been already asked but MPC’s have 8 tracks of audio recording in standalone mode, midi sync , and full midi capabilities … so does this make something like the Thingstone redundant in this particular instance ?
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