i am not the most patient person, but please take all the time you need to deliver a good product. this has so much potential and it would be a shame to rush it
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Long time MCL user and beta tester. Would really love to help testing MCL incorporation, been looking for a stereo companion to my MD for gigging for quite a while. TBD-16 seems like a natural fit to me.
@tact.ill Thanks a lot for the patience and for offering to help test.
Over the past two years I’ve built around 50 devices across several revisions. We’ve now arrived at Revision E, which includes two of the most requested changes: a separate headphone/cue output and a second stereo input (so 4 channels of audio input in total). I expect the new hardware to arrive the week after next.
There may still be a few smaller detail changes before we lock things in for the first production run, but we’re getting very close. We also decided to take our time, because the final revision of the main processor we use, the ESP32-P4NRW32X, is expected to arrive at the end of June. We received the first batch this week, and we want to validate it properly before we commit to the first production run.
To give some context: most of the R&D and prototype assembly happens in my small studio and is essentially a one-person operation, with crucial support from Robert, who works with me not only on the firmware but also on the electronics.
For the first batch we’ll set up a small production space here in Berlin. I’ve done series production for the Automat Toolkit in Thüringen for the past 10 years, and I’m also drawing on experience from my time at Supernova and KORG Berlin, where I worked on prototype production and bringing products into series production.
Alongside the physical assembly setup, we’re also building a set of custom software tools for testing and production, so every unit can be verified consistently before it ships.
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Awesome thanks for the additional insights. I am located in HH, GER, would appreciate to help where and whenever I can 
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Located in Berlin, happy to help test (and build out some sound engines, if interested! :))
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Is the ‘reserve soon’ only a newsletter or a sort of Queuing List?
can’t wait for the tbd. any idea when pre-orders will start?
There were lots of posts around superbooth. Now it is August instead of June, and the 2 most recent questions are about some timeline and all have gone unanswered. I would love to invest in a hardware machine that can have self written apps, I think the idea is brilliant.
but I now wonder if there are serious delays or if anything can be said about when the “reserve soon” button is actually going to flip to a pre-order button. Is it days, weeks, months or years? I don’t need a precise answer or promise. However, there are alternative routes to invest in, so I would really appreciate an indication if this is still expected somewhat “soonish” or if there are major delays and i can better first try out something else.
I am pretty sure the previous two posters in this forum would like to hear something similar as well.
I’m in no rush for it personally..maybe would be a nice Xmas present as long as It will be avail eventually but no major news since early june. I’m sure they want to release a steady machine
I don’t recall where I saw it, but september was floated as an option a little while back
Edit: found it further up in the thread:
Thanks for asking, and sorry for the quiet period here.
After Superbooth, we decided to make a few more hardware changes before committing to the first production run. The main reason was that Espressif, the supplier of the main chip, was not yet shipping the final revision in quantity. They started doing that in July, so we wanted to validate the final parts properly before moving ahead.
We also changed the codec, which brings some important improvements: a separate headphone / cue output and an additional stereo input, so 2 x stereo inputs instead of 1 x stereo input. This needs some extra testing, but we think it is well worth it.
Most importantly, we did not want to ship a “MK1” unit while already knowing that we would update the hardware only a few months later. We have seen this happen with other manufacturers, and we do not want to do things that way. We would rather take a bit more time now and make sure the first units are something we can fully stand behind.
We are also using the time to add more firmware/software features that were originally planned for later.
Our current aim is still to ship the first units in late September / early October. I don’t want to call that a hard promise, as we are a small operation and quality is the top priority, but we are definitely not talking about a “years away” delay.
I also went to Shenzhen about a month ago to meet some of our production partners in person. The final production, assembly and testing will happen here in Berlin, and we want to make sure every part of the process is set up properly.
So yes, it is still moving forward and still “soonish”, just with a bit more careful testing before we open pre-orders / ship the first units.
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Looking forward to it. The cue out and 2 stereo in is a good change for me.
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Thanks for the update. I am looking forward to September / October. Planning to make a midi sequencer for the device so I personally am not needing extra audio channels, but I am pretty sure that people will be happy with that.
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Hi everyone!
I hope this hasn’t been asked before, but are there any plans to implement internal multitrack audio recording directly to the SD card? I know this workflow from the 0RHACK patch on the Critter & Guitari Organelle M and it’s a killer feature there.
Thanks in advance,
Max
Hi @Mackimera,
I recently added a recording/capture feature to the firmware. Right now you can record either one of the inputs, the master bus, or a single track, and the result is one WAV file.
If I understand the 0RHACK feature correctly, what you are looking for is simultaneous multitrack/stem recording, where several tracks or buses are recorded at the same time into separate synchronized WAV files on the SD card. Is that correct?
That would help me understand the exact workflow you have in mind.
In general, the TBD platform is very flexible and can be extended far beyond what is included in the core firmware. You can add your own features or even build a completely custom firmware from scratch. For the core firmware, though, I’m trying to keep the feature set focused rather than adding every possible workflow directly.
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Yeah that’s correct. Servando might know this.
Here is a quote from the Orhack developer from the critter & guitari forum:
"These last few days I’ve worked on integrating the multitrack recorder which will record 32bit stereo wav files (chain-a, chain-b, chain-c, chain-d, send-fx or the entire master chain). You can choose whether you want multitrack recording or just the master.
It will allow us to perform a track live then take the recorded stems and shove them in our DAW of choice for easier editing, mixing, mastering…"
Maybe this could be implemented in a future firmware update. Thanks a lot for your reply!
The Organelle is just a different class of device i terms of available compute.
The TBD 16 doesn’t run on a Raspberry Pi with 512MB or 1GB of RAM.
We have a beautiful 768KB of SRAM 
And 4 Tracks are also something else than 16 Tracks.
On the other hand our current firmware can do things I never imagined we can add…
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Haha, sorry for my cluelessness! As you can tell, I don’t know anything about programming or technical stuff. But maybe it’ll be possible after all. I was just dreaming a bit.
No worries. The TBD 16 is there (almost) to be a canvas for everyone to dream up new ways of making music.
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Excited about this. The open hackable aspect is super cool, intrigued to see what the community will come up with.
Has there been any changes made to that aspect of it? APIs etc?