Traxxpad: Portable Studio

by Eidos

Product Features

• Work with 1,000 different different sound effects
• Sample additional sounds through the PSP's microphone
• Any composition can be exported into a WAV or MP3 file

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B000PC8JUQ
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4 x 0.5 inches ; 4 ounces
• Media: Video Game
• Release Date: June 26, 2007
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #25,307 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Traxxpad, ia an application which transforms the PSP system into a powerful piece of professional music studio equipment. Now you can create, mix and sample tracks on the go with your PSP. Traxxpad blends the power of sequencers, drum machines, and keyboards while simultaneously making the equipment easy to use and accessible, allowing anyone to create, mix and sample their own tracks at home or on-the-go. Music making can be as fun and easy as simply pressing buttons, or as in-depth and detailed as the user wants to make it.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fun toy for curious non-musicians, crippling flaws prevent real application, August 20, 2007

By 

M. Benigni (United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Traxxpad: Portable Studio (Video Game)

Traxxpad is great in concept, and *so close* in execution that it's all the more frustrating to watch it fall short at every turn. It's a lovely program and all, with some decent content, but the problem remains: it's not a game per se, and won't offer the lasting fun of a good game, but it cuts too many corners to serve any actual purpose for the musicians/DJs it targets.

Most of the reviews online target gamers, and focus on whether or not fiddling with this application will be enjoyable. Maybe I've been working with music software too long to provide a meaningful opinion there. If I want to have fun, I'll play a game. I wanted to know whether Traxxpad would allow me to use the PSP to do any meaningful work where/when a desktop or even laptop would be too cumbersome. The verdict at this point is no. Here are the reasons, and it's a little sad to see them enumerated like this, as some could have been very easily addressed. (I wonder whether Eidos ever put this in the hands of actual musicians to get their feedback.)

- Quantization is primitive, and NOT OPTIONAL. Quantization is always on, always set to 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, or 1/32. Have fun programming triplets...

- No reverb. Obviously, a full suite of FX wouldn't be a realistic expectation for a program of this scope. But beats comprised of quantized runs of short samples (and the "sustained" variety have no fades) would benefit HUGELY from even the cheapest reverb algorithm. VST's of these, and likely source code as well, are available for FREE all over the web. Ommission of reverb was a senseless mistake and someone's ears should have alerted them to that.

- Major workflow problems that should have become apparent in testing. For instance, no Undo button and therefore, jumping through hoops to, well, undo anything you don't like. Samples are replaced, not on the sample page, but on the kit page, which is unintuitive and requires many more screens and button presses than necessary. Every change to a kit takes you through a sequence of confirmation screens and then dumps you back out to the main view, so if you need to build a custom kit, you can expect it to take more or less forever. Issues like these can be dealt with if you're endlessly patient and have no alternatives... but they're not really acceptable.

- No MIDI. Exporting your work for further refinement in other PC/Mac applications is a great angle. Do some work on the train, get home and see where Garage Band or Sonar or whatever takes you. Traxxpad touches on this by letting you export MP3, but really, who wants MP3s of comprimised 11K or 22KHz samples? If they'd used MIDI (and perhaps they even do, under the hood) and allowed the user to import/ export as such, there may have been further uses for this product.

- Tiny displays. Minor annoyance, but I can't imagine why they used so much of the screen for superfluous junk instead of making the actual work areas (timeline of beats etc) much larger.

High hopes for Traxxpad II, maybe? But as it stands, this is mainly just a curiosity.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not bad, but nothing my laptop cant do on free software..., July 8, 2007

By 

J. Evans (Iowa) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Traxxpad: Portable Studio (Video Game)

When i caught news of traxxpad, i was kind of excited because i am really into music and the ability to mix on the road or in flight sounded pretty sweet. Traxxpad gives you basically what you get from free software that you get when you purchase a new computer. This is not a must have by any means, but if are all about music like i am, it is fun to play around with.

Also, I find it really funny that the first guy to post a "great" review of Traxxpad is the senior marketing manager of the company. Possibly a little biased.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars a fun if perplexing rhythm/mix toy, April 27, 2009

By 

J. Vance "noise maker" (MN, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars 

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Traxxpad: Portable Studio (Video Game)

Yes, its a toy but a fun one. I thought the controls were easy to jump into and just starting playing, but if you scratch the surface there is a lot to obsess over and tweak. No, its not Pro Tools but limitations are the stuff of true inspiration. When you get bored with the built-in patches upload your own and you can fart around endlessly... kinda dated DJ culture interface but almost comical at this point.