Bento: just installed 1.5.32 and it seems really good!
Just want to share some positivity about the latest Bento update. I’m genuinely impressed by the features and overall direction 1010music has taken here. A lot of community requests seem to have been addressed, while the update also introduces some really interesting workflow ideas.
For me, Loop Groups are easily the biggest addition. They open the Bento up to working with a huge number of loops and samples at once, with resampling and recording built right into the workflow. It feels like you can build entire ensembles on the fly now, which makes the device considerably more powerful. For those who don’t know: loop groups let you now sequence looptracks. Each looptrack is essentially an entire 16-track loop recorder (or an entire Blackbox). It’s wild how much you can now achieve with resampling on this device…
The step sequencer was actually something I wasn’t particularly interested in beforehand, but it has surprised me. It’s refreshing to be able to quickly jump into it, start a beat, and then switch over to the regular sequencer for more detailed editing. Being able to work unquantized or select individual instruments and push them slightly ahead of or behind the beat is especially nice. The combination of that flexibility and the ease of use is something I haven’t really found on other devices. It honestly pushes the Bento much closer to being one of my favorite drum/beat machines, even if the feature list might look incomplete on paper compared with some competitors.
Another surprise for me has been the DJ effects. They really open up the performance side of the Bento. The master filter and delay sound good, and being able to swipe between different delay feedback/time settings makes it very easy to create those small variations and transitions that make a live performance feel alive. If 1010music can get the whole device really stable, I think the Bento could become an excellent live-performance instrument.
And of course, everything that was already great is still there: the granular track, great-sounding wavetables, sampling, looping, etc. Multisampling in particular is a huge part of the appeal for me. Being able to pack a surprisingly large amount of your hardware and software synth collection into such a small box is fantastic. Combined with Loop Groups, the Bento is becoming a seriously powerful groovebox.
I’ve only spent about a day with this update, so I’m sure I haven’t encountered all the bugs yet. One very encouraging thing is that my most hated multisample bug seems to be gone — or at least I haven’t been able to reproduce it so far. Previously, individual samples inside a multisample would sometimes fail to play properly, play only very briefly, or sound broken. That was pretty much a dealbreaker for me because it affected one of the Bento’s core features.
I have noticed one or two issues in the step sequencer, but so far they look more like UI or relatively straightforward logic bugs rather than fundamental problems. Hopefully those can be cleaned up in one of the next updates.
Overall, though, I’m really positive about where the Bento is heading.
How are you finding the new update?