It’s more like an elderly relative in a care home that no one visits.
Some of the shortcomings could be mitigated with an external sequencer but the MIDI setup is infuriating. If they’d just allow midi number per pad, I’d be able to send it all the patterns I have, and also allow sending notes to a pad for pitched percussion, melodic stuff etc. Not a huge ask but would be transformative.
Their fixation on midi learn only is really limiting. Making the user set up the CCs over and over per kit is ridiculous.
Even having velocity implementation - which is excellent btw, a lot of different modulations can be patched to it - makes it seem bizarre that most of their own kits don’t have it enabled.
Keep learn and add a fixed midi chart. That and allow CC access to the distortion page / comb filters, set up page etc would make it really special.
Add a basic pattern chaining mode for songs. It’s silly they have defended limiting it to a 4 bar loop.
What’s the point in having slice mode with no way to add markers, or a sampler that doesn’t even have start and end point cropping? What purpose does that serve?! Their set response is use your laptop. In which case, why buy a £400 box at all?
As it stands, it’s deficient as a stand-alone and too closed off to allow it to effectively interface with something else to support it. It could be amazing and a cult classic but as has been pointed out, there is no content coming out for it and a ton of frustrated users.
Q is do they want to make an effective instrument or a novelty toy? Is it supposed to be a self-contained unit or part of a system? It doesn’t work adequately as either, and their attitude that ‘it’s not meant to do that’ clearly won’t wash.
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