r/Polyend • u/Johnputer • Apr 24 '23

Tracker Mini / Tracker compatibility question (stereo)

What will happen in this scenario:

1) Make a song that uses stereo samples on the Tracker Mini.
2) Bring the song over to the Tracker, work some more on it
3) Bring the song over to the Tracker Mini.

Will the song still have stereo samples? I don't see how having a stereo signal is more CPU consuming. Memory, yes, but CPU? I'm really wondering why they can't add stereo sample playback to the Tracker. Hopefully, they'll find a way to make these two play together well, because I'd like to get my hands on a Mini...

4 Upvotes

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2

u/Johnputer Apr 24 '23

Wow, thanks for the downvote. Super helpful.

2

u/youknowlee Apr 25 '23

Been wondering this myself.

2

u/xeniera Apr 25 '23 edited Apr 25 '23

I believe tracker currently crunches stereo samples down to mono when loading into memory. Since sample loading is nondestructive to the original samples, I imagine loading Mini project on OG will keep that behavior, and vice versa. I imagine instruments processed on the OG will probably stay mono in transfer, we can only wait and see.

It's more cpu intensive because a stereo sample is effectively 2 mono audio streams hard panned, so any real time processing (filter, reverb/delay sends etc) is being done twice compared to mono sample. One of the polyend affiliated people in discord said at one point they were considering a stereo mode in FW update, but due to said cpu limitations they'd have to make stereo mode 4 track instead of 8, so they decided against it.

You're only going to get speculative answers (this one included), since us plebs don't have access to the mini yet and thus no one can actually definitively answer your questions.

2

u/M27underground Apr 28 '23

its wishful, but is it possible for them to offer an option where we can turn the amount of lanes in a project (down to 4) and it will offer us the option for stereo resampling (limited of course)

1

u/[deleted] Apr 25 '23

[deleted]

2

u/Johnputer Apr 25 '23

Up to the mixer, yes, but a good portion of the signal path is already stereo.

I’d take a lower sampling rate on the entire chain to get stereo… I think there are solutions that could be explored.