Customer Reviews

Traxxpad: Portable Studio

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

I noticed Traxxpad some time ago but didn't make an impulse buy. I thought that it might me a neat "toy" for my husband and later tried to find it again, seaching in several different stores.

Amazon came through for me...and now my husband thinks he's the next big recording star.

I purchased this product for my older teenage son...he is in to mixing music. He loves this product! Definitely a great purchase!

I made some nice beats over and over with traxxpad, and fast too. It's really perplexing how they could have just added a couple more features and made the menus so you don't have to continuously go back and forth when you want to load new sounds etc. It seems this tool is full of these sorts of little bugs that would be easy to fix yet cripple the program so much. I used this for a while and even tried to compile a whole song with four beats put together, turns out there is no feature to let your sequences finish their notes when they switch so there is a hard cut off when the sequences end, pretty much cripples actual song making. It would be awesome if they would fix all these bugs and maybe even give it MIDI support via the usb port (dream on). Oh yeah, and it wouldn't hurt to make it so every note doesn't have to be perfectly lined up in the boxes, it can really make your beats not fit properly when you want it too. Other than this though this is still one of the most intuitive beat programs I've ever used but easily could have been much better, what happened?

I'll keep it short. This game is not much fun. Not entertaining, not exciting, doesn't really simulate a music instrument or beat pad. I have only tried it 4 or 5 times, but it's not pick up and "create" play so don't expect that. I was hoping it would be like "MTV Music Creator" on the Playstation 1 and 2, but no such luck.

Try these games for more entertainment on your PSP: DJ Max Portable (soone to be released in the USA, but available now on import sites from Asia.)

I love this thing and no I'm not hating or anything. The traxx pad is great but if your looking for something that allows you to go all out and make something heave in detail and what not. Then don't get this I love music and all but when I get an idea for a beat, tone, song the traxxpad always lets me down. I love eastern music and underground and this contains everything a western or experienced mainstream lover would want. But for some one that makes crazy beats its a headache. do note that you can recored your own sounds and what not but need a microphone psp sound recording cam. and instruments.

This is not a game and it is not a portable music studio. This is to music what fingerpainting is to Matisse. It is largely dense and inaccessible and, while pretty, nothing seems to make much sense.

I used the Music Maker on the old PS1 and had more fun and success than with this.

I've been playing around with this on the bus...i listen to the music around me, the beats and the rhythms, kick 'em around my head...and by the time i get home at night i've got something layed out on traxxpad.

the day I found out i could get my sounds directly from the computer to the psp without a mic that was a good day, now I can use my own samples.

watch the youtube vids for a real look and listen.