Fair play to Polyend, this is a smart response to all the modded firmware

As everybody is no doubt aware, there’s a million custom firmwares popping up for things. I’ve been tracking one in particular for my Polyend Tracker devices, not least because they had a long-standing bug where they didn’t export at exactly 44,100 Hz. That caused a load of clock drift issues when attempting to migrate stems into your DAW.

Anyway, whilst custom firmwares have abounded, I’ve not yet seen a company really respond officially to that. Today, though, Polyend have just sent an update out with what they’re calling a community firmware. It basically seems like it’s pinched all the best features from the community mods that they’ve seen and rolled it into one official update.

Crucially, as well as adding a couple more synths and direct SD card streaming, it also fixes the export bug that was principally the reason I’d abandoned using the devices. Also, though, I note that they have now made the firmware open source on GitHub, so that essentially anyone can do anything they want with it from here on.

I think it’s the smart response, and I suspect it will generate a whole new wave of interest in the Tracker devices. Curious to see how other companies respond as I’d imagine at this point it would be madness NOT to post the firmware, especially if the devices are no longer supported (as is the case with the OG Tracker and the Mini).