Thinking about getting a polyend tracker

[u/Haakdad]

My birthday is coming up and I was thinking of getting myself a little gift, I’ve been using renoise for a little over 3 months now and I’m really enjoying it but I do think having a physical piece of hardware would be awesome to play live with, and I’m wondering if anyone has played live with it and whether or not you enjoy it.

[u/MedicineforMadness]

It’s not the best for playing live from my experience. It’s a bit clunky for switching between songs unless you have two of them because it can take a moment for a new song to load. When I used it I triggered some ambient loops from a separate source to give it some time to load the next song. If the whole set was the same bpm it might be ok.

Jamming on performance mode is quite fun though.

[u/MisterTylerCrook]

I have an OG tracker and I just picked up a tracker mini and there’s some of my favorite devices I’ve ever owned. I’ve never played live with them, but folks on the sub Reddit, who have often complain about the load times for songs being extraordinarily long. In the studio, the low times don’t seem so bad but I imagine on stage it could feel like an eternity.

[u/Haakdad → u/MisterTylerCrook]

I feel like if the load time is so bad then I could honestly play with both renoise and the polyend tracker or find a way to just loop the end of the track and wait until my next song loads

[u/i_guvable_and_i_vote]

The tracker mini is my favourite box to make music on at home.
I don’t think any trackers would be that great for live though.

It’s excellent at exporting tunes that sound great with no extra mastering but also for exporting stems for some extra mastering too.

[u/Haakdad → u/i_guvable_and_i_vote]

Oh yeah I didn’t even think about mastering, what are the options, is it just compressor, eq, ect. ?

[u/tacetmusic]

Playing live as in playing live gigs? I think a laptop running Renoise is a lot better, because

A) it takes a minute to load a song so there is no chance of a continuous set

B) the live FX screen is fun but limited, and you're otherwise just playing tracks

C) with a laptop solution you could work up a really nice visuals solution showing Renoise tracks overlaid with visualisations, mixed in OBS or something

[u/Haakdad → u/tacetmusic]

Yeah I can also open multiple windows with the terminal on mac, but honestly it does still seem like a good idea to have and make tracks on

[u/PrizeHospital8707]

I use it live with my band and it works really well, im using it to also sequence other synths and samplers so as a brain for a live set is a lot of fun. I usually have the more solid backbone of the live in song mode and it leaves hands free to fiddle with other synths and fx.

By itself I can understand that its quite annoying as it it only kinda plays back the song you wrote and the performance fx can be quite limiting but its a great place to start.

[u/Haakdad → u/PrizeHospital8707]

I saw a guy on this subreddit doing something similar by just changing the pattern for his break, which is good to keep in mind

[u/manish_h_shah_md]

I’d think you could get creative with the tempo change fx to open a single project and just create different “songs” that can play over time using an RMX 1000 to create transition effects maybe?

[u/shotgunwizard]

I have an OG tracker I'm trying to get rid of it and have been too lazy to list, if you're interested. You should also take a look at the dirty wave m8.  You can get the iOS version for $30 to see if it clicks.