One thing I noticed in the Cuckoo video, the guy from 1010 said that customers should be receiving units in a matter of weeks.
Then later in the video, he referenced that things like the midi and audio tracks and scenes, will be built out “in the coming months”.
Don’t know if he maybe just misspoke but I was thinking, wow are they literally going to be shipping these out to customers with totally unfinished firmware and features??
Yes. Welcome to 1010Music’s standard practise of releasing unfinished software and acting entitled that their customers will beta test it for free. It may be finished one day, or it may be left incomplete with bugs and they’ll claim it’s meant to be like that.
It’s a shame because the instruments definitely have a lot of potential and could be incredible if they didn’t keep abandoning them. I really like the ideas and they can be surprisingly powerful in some ways.
But Razzmatazz still doesn’t have any way to chain patterns so you are limited to a 4 bar loop with no song mode at all or probability for variations. It also has a bug with an annoying buzz at the end of kicks which they have alternately claimed not to be able to hear / admitted is a bug and said they will fix / attributed to the distortion algorithms and claimed is intentional (customers have proven it is a bug to them over and over).
The Lemondrop is a lovely little machine but still has multiple bugs, and the processor is underpowered for its specs so it will crackle at times within its own parameter limits. They like to blame these sorts of issues on the memory card / sample format, despite multiple people pointing out it happens with some of their own factory presets, with the card that they include in the box.
I like the look of Bento a lot. The graphic design aspect of it is miles better than previous interfaces. They’ve apparently listened to the stream of people who wanted to be able to swap firmwares on the Nanoboxes, in terms of including multiple functionalities in the same box.
But I 100% won’t be buying this because I fundamentally don’t trust that they won’t abandon this one too.
I have really mixed thoughts on this practice from small companies. On one hand I agree, it’s a bit deceptive. But on the other hand, they are operating on a much more limited budget. Not that that is really a good excuse, but I can see how when you’re trying to compete with something like the MPC, it’s going to be hard and you have to make concessions.
The same thing has become common in video games and especially with early access. If a big company did that, I’d feel pretty insulted (see Cyberpunk release), but for a smaller company like this, it’s probably best to understand that you are indeed helping fund its development.
I’m hoping someone who is pretty familiar with the current mpc line will be able to give an unbiased comparison. Not like “let me feel better about where my thousand dollars went” look for the positive type review, but a hard hitting 1 to 1 comparison of the features and workflow.
There’s a youtube guy whose name I can’t recall that sets up his comparisons like street fighter II battles and does the whole “round 1, fight” kinda bit. I find the feature to feature comparisons without all of the “they sent me this for free” part is more illuminating and thus I don’t get hung up on the wrong aspects of the product.
If this isn’t able to substitute and replace the primary ways I use my mpc it’s going to become a very difficult sell, for me. I’m not asking 1010 to make an mpc contender, but I don’t really need an mpc and then half an mpc, I really just need to know how close this could come to replacing my mpc and if it has elektron-like features in the same box.
If I could find something that had enough of the criticals from both, I might be willing to make some compromises.
very acurate description on 1010 music on unfinished nature on how they operate.
In 1010’s defense - this also happens with some of the bigger names, and there’s often an v1.1 that appears update in the first week.
I recall the MC-707 couldn’t even sample with the stock v1.0 firmware, and that was almost immediately patched in
Played a little with it at SooperBooth, actually quite good impression. Great look and feel, graphical interface is new and shiny. Very playable. Physically it’s all plastic and less heavy/metallic than B-Boxes, but it’s Roland-like sort of plastic. All is ok.
Just received an email from Gear4music informing me that the MPC Live 2 has just dropped in price to £699 undercutting the Bento a lot. Now more competition for the Bento.
The blanket statement that 1010 abandons anything is just not at all true.
If anyone cares to do some research, watch Blackbox videos from launch through to the 3.0 firmware. It’s quite an impressive transformation.
I sort of think the only thing the MPC competes with - is itself.
Your average “I want a sampler for beats” guy walking into GC isn’t ever going to buy a thing called Bento Box from a company he’s never heard of
And for gear heads, there seems to be two camps; MPC lovers, and those that wouldn’t touch one if you gave it to them.
How did you find the waveform zooming on the touchscreen? Laggy at all?
Yeah I tried MPC a couple times didnt gel with it, hoping this Bento maybe the right one.
Not wanting to derail but what are the most critical remaining blue/blackbox bugs (as opposed to missing features) in your view? Genuinely interested in an informed perspective.
Agreed.
I will not purchase any more 1010 products, until they finish the ones I have already.
LemonDrop keyboard display is buggy as hell.
Notes disappear when still playing, or stay displayed on, when they are no longer playing. Why won’t they fix this?
No arpeggiator for held notes.
Blackbox is unable to pause and resume playback, from where it left off.
No way to scroll to the middle of a long sample, and start playback from there.
That is such a basic feature for something that is capable of recording up to 4 hour long samples. What the heck?
I understand that you can only have one granular track per project.
If this was a Kickstarter type of product, it should have a definitive timeline of features and firmware updates. And making one understand you’re co-funding the development. And stick to that timeline. But I’ve been reading so many awful stuff about 1010music it’s really a turn off. I have their Bluebox but it’s just a mixer, so I don’t need many features update from it. Never bit the bullet for their musical devices until Bento arrived. But, let’s see. Ain’t gonna jump into it immediately.
right, I asked about it a year ago when Tangerine was new and that’s the answer I got from “Lucas (Support)”:
Neither (meaning T and BB) can quite do this in a fluid way. You can get close using slices but it will not stop exactly where you stopped and pickup thereafter
So now I just copy my long sample onto a few pads and trim it as required there but yes, it’s a somewhat peculiar and time-consuming workaround 
On 1010music web support page Steve replied to my comment with this “ Don’t be surprised to see some of bento features make their way to other products. When we released tangerine, we ported the expanded multisample support to all of our samplers. I can’t promise specifics or a timeline, but it will happen.”
I do believe they will come back to updates, as we all know hardware is where they make money, so for such a small team developing another product line is essential to survive, now they’ll have some more time, I am positive we will see some updates soon across product line.
Oops, did not pay attention. I eventually got to this screen for a couple of seconds. Did not notice anything special, maybe a little lag, not sure…
