Novation Circuit Tracks: Groovebox Sequencer With Synth Tracks, MIDI Tracks And Drum Tracks Electronic Music Making

Product Information

Battery life is around four hours, which isn’t massive, but USB power certainly means more options for powering the unit on the go. Where the original Circuit used a combination of AA batteries and an optional external PSU for power, Tracks now features a built-in rechargeable battery and draws power using its USB input (a USB-C plug adapter comes supplied).

In a particularly nice touch, samples can be assigned to each step, rather than full tracks, meaning it’s possible to trigger considerably more than just four sounds using these drum tracks. For melodic sequencing duties and flexible hardware control, this is one of the best devices on the market. Two audio inputs let you bring all your sounds into Circuit Tracks to send to FX and mix alongside its internal sounds. With compact, hard-wearing, and high-quality build ­– and a built-in rechargeable battery – you can make the most of its numerous features wherever inspiration strikes you. This unlocks full sound‑design control over the built‑in sound engines, which are surprisingly deep dual‑oscillator wavetable/virtual analogue polysynths, with effects and loads of modulation.Also it makes things more complicated because MIDI 1 and 2 are actually channels 3 and 4 unless you change it in settings (and most people do). My home set-up: The Novation Circuit Tracks, surrounded by a Korg Volca Bass, the 1010music Blackbox, a small Launchkey Midi keyboard, and a Yamaha mixer. Total control of your setup - Pilot your studio with two dedicated MIDI tracks, capable of sending notes and CC automation. As well as existing tools for programming gate, polyphonic velocity, sub-steps and length or direction of patterns, Tracks adds a dedicated step probability editor.

Douse your sounds in lush reverb and delay, make your mix pump with sidechain, and add punch with the master compressor to round things off. I have to give serious respect to Novation for how much they improved the original Circuit with firmware updates, with each one bringing several requested features and modes that were missing on release.Yes, there are products that will do each of these individual things for cheaper, and in some cases better, but as a rounded and versatile package this is unrivalled. I would have also preferred some type of performance FX option, which is provided in rival units such as the MC-101 (with its Scatter FX) and Electribe 2 (with its mini Kaoss Pad. Novation Circuit Tracks is an all-in-one studio unit that includes everything you would need to design, create and perform your music. Ideally I would like to see a way to either record to the internal SD card or memory, maybe WAV, FLAC, OGG, MP3, whatever format. Because of this, I would recommend investing in a case or separate bag when traveling with the Tracks.

The pads’ RGB control is taken full advantage of by Novation, with different colors corresponding with different tracks, menus, and settings. This is the pack that changed my mind on what the Circuit can sound like, and actually convinced me to upgrade from the OG to the Tracks.What reservations we had at launch mostly focussed on areas where Circuit felt a little shallow; synth design was limited to adjusting unlabelled macro knobs, and there was no user sample upload. Use the sequencer to create 32-step patterns which can link up to 256 steps sequences for each track. Load in over three minutes of audio per pack from a microSD card, then shape your samples to perfection across the drum tracks. This is the only element of the original Circuit that’s been outright removed, and honestly, it’s not missed – the audio quality was decent, but not great, and there are very few situations where headphones or connection to a proper set of speakers aren’t far better options.

The reorganisation frees up half the pads within the drum sequencing views, and these are used to display a palette of 16 sounds. A feature added to the original Circuit after we reviewed it was micro‑steps, dividing each sequencer step into six sub steps. As it happens, the Tracks has no way to edit presets or samples (the knobs allow only for tweaking a subset of parameters while performing), but you can edit synth presets and samples by using Components, a web-based tool that (annoyingly) requires you to log in and use a Web MIDI-enabled browser (I use Edge on the Mac). The Circuit Tracks is a worthy successor to the infamous Novation Circuit, providing better accommodation for the original device’s many firmware additions as well as adding full-fledged production hub capability.Note: Maximum power consumption is required to be screened onto the product next to the power jack and must be consumption and not the specification for the power supply. I’ve experimented with adding a small Midi keyboard to it (it has two Midi Out/Thru DIN plugs and a Midi In for the keyboard), and hooked up both a Korg Volca Bass synth and a tiny sampler (the 1010music Blackbox) to test out those Midi ports.