Polyend Play+

Sample & Synth Sequencer

By Simon Sherbourne

Polyend’s Play gets a major + upgrade.

On the face of it, Play is the more approachable of Polyend’s two grooveboxes, although actually neither Play nor its sibling the Tracker do things in conventional ways. The first version of Play, which we reviewed just a year ago, is a sample‑powered grid sequencer, ideas generator and portable performance unit.

Play+ looks identical to Play, but has a significantly upgraded brain with the capacity for some big new features: chiefly, internal synths, stereo samples and audio over USB. Depending on how you use the Play, upgrading may not be essential, but if you are a current owner you can send back your Play and exchange it for a Play+ at half price. The original continues to be available at a reduced cost.

Re: Play

To recap, Play and Play+ offer a couple of primary ways of creating music. For programming a sequence from scratch, you use the ‘pick and place’ system of pre‑configuring a sound, then placing it anywhere on the grid. Whether you organise yourself in tracks is up to you; each step is fully independent. Steps can be adjusted later on by selecting them, either individually or in groups. On Play, you have a page for assembling samples across eight tracks, and another for MIDI. On Play+ the MIDI page is also the workspace for adding sounds from the internal synth engines.

To really get the most out of Play, though, you need to get on board with the generative Fill way of working. This populates sequences for you, using template styles, Euclidean distribution or randomness. Multitrack drum patterns can be spun out by this process, using sounds from categorised folders. Patterns you create can be mutated by further randomness and chance actions.

It is also possible to live record melodic sequences, using a virtual keyboard to the right of the grid or a connected MIDI source. This is especially relevant now that there are onboard synths. As you can only play one sound at a time, there’s no way to finger‑drum a kit of drum sounds.

A Play/Play+ project has a dedicated grid page for storing patterns, but there’s also a concept of Variations, where any track within a pattern can flip between 16 versions. Multiple patterns can be selected to play sequentially. These various features can be put to use to construct and perform beats and musical ideas, and there’s a Perform mode which transforms the whole grid into a palette of real‑time effects including pitch transposition, step rearrangement and beat repeating, audio effects and stuttering.

Back‑panel socketry remains the same as on the original Play, with 3.5mm audio out and MIDI I/O ports, a MicroSD slot, USB C port and the power button.

Difference Engines

Play+ sports four different synth engines: ACD, FAT, VAP and WTFM. A project has three synth slots, which can be filled by any combination of these (including multiples of the same type if you want duelling 303s, for example). Sequences using the synths are more like MIDI patterns in that each step is linked to a sound source, rather than being a self‑contained sound, as is the case on the sample side. So if you change the patch loaded into Synth slot 1, it will affect all steps that use that slot. ‘Sound Locks’, ie. recalling different patches per step, is not a thing here.

Let’s look at these synth models, then. ACD is aimed at classic monosynth sounds, although it can be played polyphonically as well. It offers a mix of saw and square waves plus a sub. Although there’s no per‑step glide in Play’s sequencer, with a bit of portamento and the RD3 filter option you can get some fairly pleasing acid lines out of it. But it’s more versatile than that and can double as other Roland‑y synths like the Juno 6 or SH‑101.

FAT is a Moogy virtual analogue, with three oscillators. Instead of individual oscillator controls you get three ‘style’ controls: Fatness applies detuning, Timbre is pulse width, and Brightness seems to control the blend of oscillators. As well as the Moog‑style filter, there are two Oberheim modes.

VAP moves into more programmable polysynth territory. It has two oscillators with independently controllable pitch, shape and PWM. There’s an extensive selection of filters, and a lot more in the way of modulation, with three envelopes, two LFOs and a six‑way mod matrix.

WTFM brings a versatile implementation of two‑operator FM synthesis. The two operators are themselves scannable wavetable oscillators offering a range of timbres. They each have self‑feedback routing as well as feedback from 2 to 1. Like VAP, WTFM gets a generous selection of filter and modulation options.

Programming of the synths is all done in a rather joyless scrolling list editor akin to Roland’s Zen‑powered devices. Most of the time you’ll want to choose a starting point from the presets and make changes using the three encoders that become macro controllers when in synth mode. These can be different for each patch, but typically will align with the Filter and Envelope controls that are used for samples, with the Overdrive/Bit Depth encoder mapped to other parameters like envelope amount.

Using The Synths

Synth parts are added much like MIDI, with the three synth slots appended to the list of MIDI ports in the source selector. As well as manual step entry and recording, you can use the Fill workflow, where there are new modes for Chord, Bass or both at once. Results will depend on how many tracks you select: a single track will give you a monophonic melody, two to four tracks will result in chords, and with five tracks you’ll get a bass line as well. As with MIDI, each track represents a voice, so to sequence or record polyphonically you need to select multiple tracks, which feels a bit awkward compared to sequencers with true poly tracks. However, since we reviewed the original Play the sequencer has been updated to include a piano‑roll mode which works with multitrack selections. There’s also a chord mode for programming chords on a single track, and by automating the chord type per step you can quickly create grown‑up‑sounding progressions.

Frustratingly, Fill always defaults to using MIDI channels instead of synths unless you’ve specifically gone in and assigned this in the settings. Fill is also not quite as much of an ideas machine as it is on the sample side, as it will always use whichever patches you have loaded instead of a pool of sounds.

Perhaps the most significant difference between how Play+ and most grooveboxes do synths is that, like sample playback, synth parameter changes are always tied to steps. There’s no easy way to do something like adjust the filter cutoff while a note is playing. If you select a track and adjust parameters, you’ll hear no change until steps are triggered, and then you’ll have actually written that (static) change to those steps. For this reason it probably makes no real difference that you can’t control the synth parameters from external MIDI sources.

Play+ adds support for stereo samples... For me, though, the bigger upgrade is support for audio over USB.

Audio Upgrade

Play+ adds support for stereo samples, and comes with a selection of enhanced sample packs to take advantage of this. For me, though, the bigger upgrade is support for audio over USB. When plugged into my Mac, the Play+ popped up as a class‑compliant audio device showing a whopping 28 inputs and two output streams. My DAW supports multiple I/O devices, but if yours doesn’t you could create an aggregate device, or just connect the Play+ on its own for transfer. In fact, the stereo stream to the Play+ goes straight to the monitor output and does not feed back to the inputs, so you could use it as a portable audio interface while running your Play tracks through your DAW.

Class‑compliant USB audio provides real‑time streaming of sample tracks, synth engines and effects into your DAW (in this case, it's Pro Tools).

The inputs include a stereo mix, all eight stereo sample tracks, three stereo feeds from the synths and separate stereo returns carrying the delay and reverb effects. This gives you complete separation for projects that you want to develop further or mix in your DAW. Really impressive! The only down sides are that it’s 44.1kHz only (my studio is all clocked to 48kHz normally), and that the channels all come in pre the Perform effects, which are a not insignificant part of what Play+ can do. Likewise, audio coming from the computer also bypasses the effects.

An update that original Play owners benefit from is stem export. You can now export the current Pattern or Pattern Chain as individual channels: eight stereo for the samples, three for synths and two for effects. This actually provides a partial workaround for the fact that the Plays don’t feature resampling. You can bounce things as exports and load them back in as a sample. While we’ve raised the subject, although the Play+ now has audio input thanks to the USB streaming, it still cannot sample.

Final Thoughts

So, Play+ has extra hardware‑powered capabilities, and both models have seen a few updates, but the general approach has stayed much the same. As I found with the Play v1, this can be pretty frustrating when coming from other drum machines or grooveboxes, as Polyend have rethought the whole approach. But if you loosen up on trying to impose your normal way of doing things, and go the Play way, fun things start to happen. In particular embracing Fill, Randomness and Chance as ways to generate and regenerate patterns frees up a bunch of time and mental load from reinventing the wheel every time you want to jam. And the Perform mode can be a more fun and fluid way to get results than manually programming lots of variations and fills.

That’s not to say that all is perfect. Some gaps that Polyend had talked about addressing a year ago are still evident. MIDI and Synth tracks are not affected by all the goodness in Perform mode, except for the Stutter effect, which works on the main mix. This is particularly problematic if you wanted to use the Transpose functions. Polyend also said they were reworking the chance feature, which currently can only do one thing at a time. And it’s still a faff having no USB storage mode to avoid having to remove the SD card to get samples into the unit: significant considering Play can’t sample, slice or edit in the box. I also think that the inability to tweak sounds as they play takes away from Play’s playability as an instrument. With no movement on some of these areas, I guess development resources went into the new device instead.

While there are areas that could be improved, Play+ is a wonderful thing, very much enhanced by the powerful and great‑sounding synth engines.

But while there are areas that could be improved, Play+ is a wonderful thing, very much enhanced by the powerful and great‑sounding synth engines. I treat it like a studio companion which I can collaborate with: it helps me come up with the core beats and foundations of a track which I can then noodle over with other instruments.