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Comment by pantulis | Hacker News Reader

In terms of MIDI grooveboxes, I see Polyend Tracker and Square Hapax are interesting, but they are not cheap either.

Yeah that's the problem with all these boutique sequencer stuff - out of the DAW live performance is tricky unless you buy into the Elektron ecosystem which I don't as a mostly analog purist.

As a result I've cheaped out and when not using my beatstep to control the stuff via my DAW I have a Korg SQ64 but its a bit unintuitive flow-wise in terms of live jamming. I end up just using my TR-8S with the 2600 or 303 side-chained through it.

The Arturia Beatstep Pro has been the only sequencer I’ve connected with for my modest gate, cv, and midi sync needs. I moved to it after scoring what I thought was a deal on a SQ64. I really wish the SQ64 felt like a playable instrument and didn’t come out of the box with noise issues.

SQ64 is such a mess. My worst gear purchase.

> unless you buy into the Elektron ecosystem which I don't as a mostly analog purist.

Analog 4, Analog Heat, Analog Rytm...

No you're right, they've some competitive analog offerings nowadays which I keep forgetting about. Headspace wise I'm still stuck at the last time I was properly 'shopping' for gear when the Elektron holy trinity was Syntakt, Digitakt and Digitone.

The Syntakt also has multiple analog oscillators, analog noise, and analog drive in it.

I've had the Tracker for a while and it's really fun and easy to get a hang of. I haven't tried it as a MIDI sequencer and kind of forgot that that's even an option. It's a fun toy when I'm laying on the couch after work

Sorry, I meant to say the Polyend Play! Not sure if Tracker has MIDI out capabilities.

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