When the $600 CHOMPI sampler, the debut product by fresh-faced model CHOMPI Membership, was printed on Kickstarter in March final 12 months, it shortly turned one of many platform’s most-anticipated merchandise of 2023. Nonetheless, early CHOMPI homeowners, together with musicians/product reviewers Ricky Tinez and Hainbach, have already discovered some points.
Each Tinez and Hainbach have posted their critiques of the CHOMPI sampler, which is about to begin transport as soon as all pre-order slots have been crammed, to YouTube prior to now two weeks. In these critiques, it’s clear that the varispeed recording operate, which helps you to sluggish a pattern up or down and report over that new model, is successful. Nonetheless, that is quashed by bugs, recording difficulties, usability points, and a scarcity of options, they are saying.
In case you’re not clued up, the CHOMPI sampler is a characterful chromatic sampler and tape music instrument that echoes Casio’s 1985-launched SK-1 sampler synth. That includes a definite sampling engine, versatile multi-effects, tape-style looping, and customisable aesthetics, it affords “instant enjoyable”, says CHOMPI Membership.
In keeping with a YouTube overview by Tinez, nonetheless, some points boring this sense of enjoyable. There’s frustratingly no option to change the amount pattern management, and he doesn’t like the truth that there’s no sequencer. Additionally, sampling by means of the on-board microphone might be troublesome as a result of a loud Shift button, he factors out.
One other difficulty with recording your personal samples, Tinez highlights, lies within the reality it’s important to maintain down the report button whereas recording, forcing you to play one-handed. It’s additionally exhausting to differentiate which degree parameters for the filter, for instance, are as a result of a scarcity of labelling, he says.
It’s not as if CHOMPI Membership is blissfully unaware of those points, we should add. As seen in Tinez’s overview, the model reached out to him to put in writing, “We’ve been compiling a stable checklist of points and have requests over on Discord as properly. But it surely felt prefer it could be price mentioning immediately as we’re presently engaged on the subsequent firmware replace. Along with some bug fixes, the replace may also embody impartial quantity and pan management per pattern. In addition to some deeper MIDI implementation config choices.”
Hainbach’s overview is, on the entire, extra optimistic. Nonetheless, along with his typical glad smile, he does come throughout obstacles, having to refer again to the handbook repeatedly to beat these issues. He additionally factors out, as does Tinez, that the shortage of labelling on the unit makes studying use the CHOMPI sampler a steep studying curve.
It’s not all doom and gloom for many who have pre-ordered the CHOMPI sampler, nonetheless. Hainbach is a fan of the simplistic side of the sampler.
“When you’ve arrange a bunch of loops, it may be enjoyable,” he concludes within the video. “It’s a must to use your ear and your creativeness and there’s no display – there’s no approach you’ll be able to truly edit something – so it’s a bit like a quite simple MPC in that regard. The simplicity […] forces you to only roll with issues as an alternative of overthinking an excessive amount of, which is one thing I all the time take pleasure in.”
“I like the consequences part, the looper – that’s completely improbable. It is extremely tape type and the jog wheel is the right interface for that. For a primary product, that is spectacular.”
Try the CHOMPI sampler for your self at Chompi Membership.
Get the newest information, critiques and tutorials to your inbox.