Seeing these videos, i had to start a thread for this.
It’s a two-channel CV performance looper, with CV and MIDI clock synchronization, and also has pitch quantization capabilities, with preset and user-defined scales.
There are a variety of ways to operate it, through the buttons, there is a guide, but i feel a little intimidated at the moment, though i think it would be easier to understand when using it.
Currently pre-order ( crowdfund ? ) for sometime late this year, early next year ( unless delayed further ).
Looks pretty cool. Looks to be maybe $40-50 of hardware right there. Add in a little for labour and some profit… I’d say I’d be willing to spend maybe $70-80 bucks on this thing.
The only surprising things about that price are they don’t offer them in pink/blue/purple plastic and how hard it must be for people across the pond to buy things when every dollar you carry in your wallet weighs a pound.
How many do you think they are going to make? How long I wonder did it take to develop? Let’s say it’s $50 in hardware, they sold it for $80. That’s $50 for materials, $30 for assembly and all profit. Lets live in a magical land where you could assemble one of these for $15 without having to make tens of thousands of units. So now you are making $15 in profit off of one of these. The absolute bare minimum development time for any electronic product is 4-6 months, and usually much longer than that. So lets say they make 300 of these, and it took them 6 months to develop, and they make $15 on each one. That is a profit of $4500. That is a really really bad income for half a year of electrical engineering work, and that is even with fantasy economics.
Now lets talk about reality. It probably took the person developing this over a year (I’ve been working on a simple analog filter for over a year). I would be very very surprised if they made more than 1000 of these, and probably more like 100-200 if it is anything like eurorack module production numbers. Our brains are so used to every electronic product being from a large company with economies of scale. If Korg were making this device then yes your economic assumptions would be correct. But this is just a person in their bedroom trying to make something for people. The price might certainly make it not useful for you, but believe me that the person making this isn’t getting rich off of it.
Yeah just the logistics of working with manufacturing in china and sourcing components can be a lot of work for a one man show. Maybe we could have expected 150-200 if he had decided to do it up as a diy kit and open source code but yeah the price is what’s to be expected I think…
it does kind of put it in a range where someone might just spend a bit more and go for a metropolix instead, not that there is exact parody between them but quite a bit of functionality crossover, having 8 faders vs the real time record on two faders, metropolix is incredible for jamming also. I will say more euro companies should be making little boats for there sequencers, I do have a small control rack now but I probably would have considered some sequencers sooner if they were standalone like the playfader.
This thing looks pretty fun. I’m a little surprised that it hasn’t gotten that much attention around here, but maybe there are a few early adopters? I would love to get some first impressions.
Discovering that only now.
This type of toy is right up my alley.
Pity it’s only 2 channels, though (for the price).
Had it been able to layer more CC loops together, I would have got it.
Also, the maker shared he planned to add more “Fun” features and I’m looking forward to what they could be.
I really like the look and the function of the device. I’d absolutely love something in that form factor with two sliders (or even wheels) as a MIDI controller to add-on to Novation Launchpad Mk3. Maybe someone’s got a solution already? I want to be able to do modulation, pitch band with one hand and the LaunchPad stuff with the other. The PlayFader needs a MIDI counterpart!
I ended up purchasing a Playfader when it was first released and I used it pretty regularly for about month, but then I found myself getting pulled into other workflows and haven’t picked it up since.
It’s a cool piece of gear, which I think works best as a secondary sequencer for noodling on top of and/or augmenting signals from other sequencers. All of its functions and button combos are thoughtfully designed and once you learn them, you can easily get into a flow state where you’re creating evolving loops and modulations.
I do sometimes wish that it had more outputs and controls, but its simplicity allows you to focus on performing a few gestures at a time, which makes it feel like an instrument that you have to practice. My favorite thing I did with it was build up a loop of meticulously arranged notes, and then use a combination of the loop toggle and transpose function to perform endless melodic variations of that loop. Here’s a few examples, if you have ig:
Yeah, I see myself following the same path with this machine if I get it.
For CC’s, I already have a MIDI looper. It has 3 tracks and can layer as many CC lanes as I wish (well, I never reached the limit, at least)
However, it doesn’t handle notes and scales the way the Playfader does. And it doesn’t have the “Fun” features, which could be a lot of fun for a live performance. I would have gladly recorded all the MIDI loops of a live set in this, and just used the Fun features to mangle them live. But the 8 pattern memory is a bit short for that.
I thought I might also use it to just create fun melodic loops, that I would then print into another sequencer.
Anyway, I’m still keeping an eye on this, in the hope that it could one day store more than 8 patterns, and maybe offer more Fun features.
Hi @rephazed, I’m Hadj from PlayFader, sorry I don’t come on here often, I probably should : ]
Just wanted ot let you know that PlayFader has full MIDI output functions like notes, chords, CC and even a mode where CV and gate send two different CCs. And all of this mirrors the CV/Gate outs too. So MIDI and CV stuff can be sequenced together.
I hoep this is helpful, I love the idea of this sitting next to a pad based controller. I use my PlayFader a lot with Monomer Grid for example. I don’t have a Push or LaunchPad but I’d imagine they’d rock together
Hi @Omar It’s Hadj from PlayFader and wanted to get you some answers : ]
We’re definitely working on expanding the Fun FX, and there’s an accelerometer inside which we’ll be using to address the Fun FX and other stuff too.
Sadly we can’t have more than 8 patch slots without halving the buffer lengths and some other stuff. But what we do have in the work list is a web-based patch export/import/editor tool. Aiming for 2nd half of '25 for that
We’re also thinking through how to have more CC out’s but all derived from one channel and varied/messed up by the Fader in interesting ways, a bit like the recent Make Noise Multimod, but for CC.
We’ve got plenty planned for firmware so feel free to make any other requests here.
Hello @PatchPoints
Nice to see this project is ongoing
We actually exchanged mails some time ago (real name is Gaël), where I offered my point of view and (probably) showered you with feature requests - because I’m enthusiastic about the PlayFader!
I will be following up on the new features!
