u/Glittering_Computer9

For context, this is my setup. TP-7 is usually doing the tx-6 thing with the sidekick over usb, which is buggy but I can confirm it works the same, just no mix down mode. TP-7 can also power it for an hour or 2. OP and KO typically usb'd together with midi I/o going to a hardware synth.

I see so many posts on here asking about this product and whether it's actually useful. I can confirm that it most certainly is, even if it still has a ways to go on the software side. After using it for a while in combination with lots of other gear, I'd like to offer some clarity as to what I think it's best at and where I think it falls short (as of 1.1.11), but by no means is this post intended to dog on this product. I honestly love it and find myself using it every time I make music, but I do think its software lags a bit behind compared to the rest of the field line up.

This feedback is intended to be constructive to anyone from te who might be reading it (1.2.0 plss and ty) and instructive to those who are curious. I'm not going to talk about the price because it's pretty irrelevant to me now as an owner, as I do find it worth it in my workflow. To make things simple, I've divided my thoughts into theexcellent, the meh, and the absolutely needs to be updated.

the excellent

I still don't fully understand what te were smoking when they thought up this little thing. It is insanely flexible as a device, and I'm still always impressed that te was able to make a field recorder/cdj that fits in your pocket and is built like a tank. There's a lot that it's really really good at, so I'll save you some time and list what I think are its most ideal use cases.

• regular old field recording
• end-of-chain stereo recording (especially for live sets)
  • genuinely replaces the laptop running a daw recording a stereo mix down
• Multi-channel recording other dawless gear
  • my setup in the comments is really fun for this
• a physical vault of all your important recordings (underrated imo)
• cue points and midi cue (implementation is excellent)

a few surprising ones that I've learned in the past few months

• an excellent ble midi transport controller for a daw
  • there are just enough buttons for you to map record, transports, jog seek, track selects, mute, solo, and record arm. over bluetooth. this actually a crazy utility in a professional studio.
• interfacing with vintage mixers and tape machines
  • 6 mono ins/outs from the combo jacks and over usb is insanely clutch for running your multichannel digital recordings through older multichannel machines.

The fact that it is really excellent at these things keeps it constantly in my setups. The things it doesn't do so well aren't enough to ruin it for me, but do keep it from fulling living up to its feature list imo.

the meh

• the wheel
  • pretty surprised that the wheel position doesn't consistently line up with internal recordings (in terms of where on the wheel a certain second marker would be), it's a small thing but really holds it back from a scratching perspective
  • my wheel doesn't make noise in mic recordings but it definitely does for others
  • no spinning disk midi control implementation (it would be sick if te just made a tp-7 dj app)
• the looper
  • super usable on its own, and surprisingly granular in terms of loop in, loop out. fun to play too and one of the main reasons I bought it, you just can't quantize them. This makes it next to impossible to keep in time consistently with literally any other looper or piece of gear locked to a grid when looping.
• being a 'pocket player'
  • no bluetooth playback? I get the wheel and precision and all that, but for a 'pocket player' that has a bluetooth radio built in, I'm super surprised that they didn't activate it.
  • since there's no hold switch function like on old iPods, the buttons and rocker get pressed too often. It's a pocket listening experience that at best feels a little bit silly and at worst, unusable.

To be honest, aside from the looper, none of these things I mind all that much. The next list however, are the things that make using the device feel a bit arduous at times.

the absolutely needs to be updated

• the app...
  • for such a capable device, especially one with so much going on under the hood, I'm surprised that the app hasn't expanded to help you manage the devices library, or even just been updated to make the original transcription use case less clunky. Some dj specific features (stem separation and re-uploading, track analysis and tagging) would be much appreciated to help us take advantage of the hardware.
• when it dies, the date automatically resets to January 1st, 1980...
  • like why. actually the biggest headache for trying to keep recordings even the least bit organized on the device
• usb stability/general stability
  • unfortunately, it is still a pretty buggy device 3 years post release. It really happens when connecting to anything over usb, but everything from my Mac playing music, to the tascam model 12, to even the new ko-sidekick struggles to maintain a solid multichannel usb audio stream.
• the library
  • please just let us jog through folders, + and - for a device that can hold 128gb of music is painful.
• the wheel spinning up lagging behind midi start sync
  • this one is tough, because it really breaks the track edit feature when trying to line your next take to the original recording. I realize that start from record and start from utility are free from the tape spin up, but can this just be a global setting?
• sample rate selection
  • 44.1khz would be really nice, considering it works with op-1f. my mpc one would really appreciate it (sidekick should get this too lol)
• why can't we trim recordings or record set bar lengths?
  • this is really a quality of life thing, but since playback can be set to loop, this would instantly increase it's usability as a playback device
• still only 3 tracks to the computer?
  • not being able to use all 6 tracks still doesn't make much sense to me

Sure there are other wishlist items I could probably name, but these are the ones that seem like essential fixes. I really want to give credit where it's due because in concept alone, the tp-7 justifies its usefulness. It really bridges the gap between dawless and in the box workflows and would be appreciated by anyone who makes music. Let me know down below if you have any dream feature requests or if there are any essential updates that y'all think this needs in 2026. Also, feel free to ask me anything you wanna know about it! I'm pretty in love with it overall and feel like I understand all of its capabilities pretty well.