£849 / $899 / €979, 1010music.com

I think it’s safe to say we’re living through the golden age of grooveboxes. Elektron recently released new versions of the Digitone and Digitakt; Novation now has two Circuits; the MPC now supports Native Instruments plugins; Ableton put Live in a standalone version of Push, and built a portable sketchpad called Move; Polyend has the friendly Play+ and nerdy Tracker+; Teenage Engineering has everything from $90 pocket calculator-inspired musical toys to $2,300 Casio VL-Tone-inspired musical toys; and there’s so much more that I didn’t even mention.

• READ MORE: Elektron Digitone II: A polyphonic powerhouse synth that goes far beyond FM

Unfortunately for 1010music, this is the crowded market into which it has launched its £849 Bento. A market with tons of options at various price points, covering FM synthesis, virtual analogue, sampling and everything in between. So, no matter how good the Bento sounds on paper, it’s going to have a tough time standing out.

Go granular

The first thing you need to know about the Bento is that it’s a sample-based groovebox. It features multisample and granular synth engines, but ultimately, everything here is based on WAV files. That means you’re not gonna have to spend hours getting under the hood of a virtual analogue patch or experimenting with different FM algorithms.

There are some seriously powerful sound design tools at your disposal, though. The granular engine is more or less the same as on the brand’s Lemondrop synth, but without live audio processing and it defaults to two-note polyphony. You can load up two WAV files, there are two LFOs, two envelopes, a modulation sequencer, dual filters, a supplementary basic oscillator and a powerful modulation matrix. It’s enough to turn basically any sound file into a compelling pad or lead sound.

The only issue here is that granular synthesis is extremely CPU intensive and 1010music is pushing the limits of what the processor here can handle. On the Lemondrop, the company gives you four-note polyphony out of the box. But on Bento, you’re limited to one granular track and two notes by default. There is an option to switch to four-note polyphony, which works well if it’s your only track. But the moment you add the overhead of other instruments, sequencing and mixing, the CPU starts to struggle. It’s still more capable than what you’ll find on something like the Polyend Tracker, however.

Even though 1010music has the wavetable-based Fireball in its Nanobox lineup, there is no wavetable engine in the Bento. Since that is just another form of sample-based synthesis it would make sense to bring it to Bento, and I’ve been told it’s a highly-requested feature. Unfortunately there’s no announcement to share at this moment.

Sample and loop

The other engines at your disposal are more straightforward. There are multi-sample-based melodic instruments, which run the gamut from warm and realistic, through to cheap Casio awkwardness. Some patches include over 100 samples, giving you impressive depths of expression. The quality of patches ultimately boils down to the quality of the source samples, though, and how many of them there are.

These tracks also have a robust modulation matrix, though they have only a single LFO and envelope. There is a compelling digital overdrive effect too that crushes things into oblivion in a way that demands you use it to make industrial and gabber tracks.

Then there are one-shot kits, mostly used for drums and percussion. Loop kits are essentially the same as one-shot kits but, you guessed it, they play loops. This is currently the only place on the Bento where you can sample incoming audio, but more on that later. There’s also a slicer track for chopping up samples, though cutting up audio is a bit clunky unless you’re just going with the grid.

You have all the same sound design tools at your disposal basically in all of these sampling engines. The problem is, they all feel unpolished at the moment. For example, there’s no way to trim samples right now. So, you’ll need to either add your samples as pre-processed, perfect loops to the SD card, or absolutely nail recording them into the looper instrument.

Currently, there’s also no way to record samples to the one-shot kits, or build multi-sample instruments directly on the Bento, the way you might with 1010music’s Tangerine. The company told me they plan to make Bento a “full successor to the Blackbox and Tangerine”, which implies expanded sampling capabilities are in the works. The company also confirmed that the ability to build your own multisampled instruments is on the roadmap for firmware 1.2 (currently scheduled for release ahead of Knobcon on September 5). But right now Bento is more sample player than actual sampler.

The one place you can actively sample, the loop kit, is a bit of a mixed bag. On the plus side, you can set up processing beforehand so, the moment you finish recording a loop it will start playing back an octave lower, low-pass filtered and through a ton of reverb, if that’s what you want. On the downside, I find getting the timing right when recording loops very difficult. Even when relying on a threshold to automatically start recording, there seems to be a short delay that consistently cuts part of my first note.

Sequencing with the 1010music Bento

The place where Bento is currently the weakest in my opinion, is the sequencing department. In general it feels kinda clunky and rigid, with everything quantised to the grid. It gets the job done, but it’s incredibly basic and I don’t find it particularly fun to use. Part of that is down to personal preference. Bento tries to walk a line between DAW-less and DAW-mimicry. The large seven-inch touchscreen makes navigating the user interface a breeze and offers a lot of information at a glance, but it also led 1010music to build a touch-based piano roll sequencer that would feel at home in FL Studio or Ableton Live. When I sit down with a groovebox or a hardware instrument of any kind, the last thing I want is to be reminded of my computer.

There are also no advanced sequencing features here like parameter locks or even automation. No generative or euclidean options, no ratchets or substeps. The only option you have besides velocity and note length is per-step probability. It’s possible that some will find this stripped-down graphical approach to sequencing refreshing, but I find it largely frustrating.

There are some decent live performance features here though, with the ability to quickly mix and match up to eight sequences per track similar to Live’s clip launcher.

My final thoughts on the 1010music Bento

There are a few other things that bear mentioning. The hardware itself is a delight. The eight endless encoders are firm, the 16 pads are above average, the buttons have a satisfying click and the screen is bright. In general, it feels built to last.

My biggest critiques on the hardware front are relatively minor: the labels on the ins and outs on the back are borderline impossible to read even in ideal conditions, and the three-hour battery life claim seems rather optimistic. Even with the screen set to 30 per cent, my anecdotal experience was closer to two hours.

While other portable devices like the Move or OP-XY have built-in microphones and speakers, the Bento does not. That means you’ll at the very least need a set of headphones when you’re jamming on the couch. And if you wanted to loop yourself banging away on some fence posts, you’d need to bring a mic.

There’s also no way to preview patches, so going through the 160(ish) factory presets looking for the perfect bass is exhausting. And, if you tweak a patch to your liking, there’s no way to save it as a user preset that you can use in other projects.

1010music’s Bento has a lot of potential. But right now, that’s mostly what it is — potential. The firmware feels incomplete. The sequencer is barebones, and even the sampling features of this “sampling production lab” are extremely limited. If the company adds wavetable synthesis, enables sampling in all the engines and improves its sequencer, the Bento could be a contender. Right now, it feels out of its league.

Key features

• Granular synth engine
• 4 different sample engines
• External audio processing
• 8-track sequencer
• 8 sequences per track
• Ableton Live-style clip launcher7-inch touchscreen
• 16 velocity-sensitive pads
• 3 minijack stereo ins
• 3 minijack stereo outs
• 2 TRS MIDI inputs / 2 TRS MIDI outputs
• 2 USB-C ports (including host)
• 3-hour internal battery
• Dimensions: 20.4 x 21.8 x 5.1 cm
• Weight: 936g

The post The 1010music Bento could be a big league groovebox… one day appeared first on MusicTech.