Chase Bliss has announced that they are no longer pursuing an v1.5 update to the CHOMPI sampling keyboard.
“You may remember we made an announcement last year that we would be starting to manufacture CHOMPI ourselves going forward. The plan was to make a backwards-compatible CHOMPI that would have slightly different hardware from the original but the same processor, so that no matter what CHOMPI you bought you would have access to the same firmware.
Well, that turned out to be a pretty bad idea.
The main reason is that we started to bump into the limits of what that processor was capable of while making the new TEMPO firmware. The manufacturing process was also turning into a bit of a puzzle, and so we found ourselves in the position of essentially recreating an existing product that was already maxed out. It would have been time-consuming, expensive, and limiting for future ideas. It just didn’t make sense.”
The company says that it is exploring the possibility of making the firmware open source, saying that it’s ‘the right move’.
Sad news for Chompi owner …
Cool to see a company open sourcing firmware on products that they are retiring. More companies should do this.
Seems they simply choose the wrong processor. Its a pretty, very instagrammable, device but perhaps a couple cents from the gimmickery shouldve gone to the processor. If I ever invest in one of these things it would be one that you can upgrade the computer inside, say by using a raspberry pi or teensy, and instead of a closed source engine do a “playground” engine instead.
I find very interesting that some of the hottest devices right now are those that look like a Gameboy but are very powerful open source devices. I bought one for my son and its basically a gameboy with Android from factory but you can flash Linux really easily and do stuff like Word and excel, or a mediaplayer, Kali Linux device to learn hacking, remote surveillance display for cameras… and you wouldnt tell by just looking at the thing itself.
So since it has an ARM phone chip, Linux DAWs like Ardour, LMMS, or even REAPER (which has an official ARM Linux build) would run properly without translation overhead. So how about running a strip version of such daw with a different HID (knobs faders pads) and you can have an instrument that could run stuff like Surge XT, Vital, Dexed, helm… ot counting the daw built in tone generating devices and fx. We already have such devices like Zoia, Organelle and Bela (PD/Supercollider stuff) but might be not user friendly. This is why the Polyend Endless looks like a promising device.
From a BOM perspective any old Android handheld you already have lying around, or a cheap secondhand device, has vastly more CPU/RAM headroom than a purpose-built $200 sampler chip. My idea is the same theme as the M8 Headless : small hardware synth companies hit a processor ceiling, but general-purpose ARM handhelds you already have (or can get cheap) blow past that ceiling trivially. Worth keeping an eye on the Chase Bliss GitHub if/when they actually publish it.
you’re describing Zynthian which exists.
I cannot believe how emotion-based these companies are. “We learned some things, stuff was realized, it morphed into something totally different”,
This is how a child rationalizes stealing from the cookie jar. They gambled on the well monied gear-heads wanting a cherry-hill switch keyboard sampler designed for girls because the modern culture is so hyper-feminized.
If you can’t make your Ipad do what this thing does, you’re money will evaporate.
Yeah, we want synths that are masculine instead, ones that require a drop of blood each time you go to adjust the filter, lots of camo design, lots of testosterone, lots of GRRRRRRIIITTTT.
Jordan Peterson called and wants his comment back.
(the blatant misogyny here. what the heck makes anything “designed for girls?”)
“Designed for girls”, “modern culture is so hyper-feminized”, “how a child rationalizes” – If a whimsical music toy triggers an identiy crisis like this, you might have some issues that neither a sampler or an iPad can fix.
Idd! Glad someone pointed it out (I wasn’t gonna).
OT : I do think the Chompi is an interesting marketing case. The cute-toy and now ‘sorry’-story, people insta-buy it. I’m sure behind the scenes it is a massive success tho 😉 (aka: Money was made).
“Designed for girls”? That has to be one of the most spectacularly brain-dead takes I’ve read in a long time. The fact that your mind immediately equates a product you dislike with women says far more about your own misogyny than it does about the company. You had every opportunity to criticise the engineering, the workflow, the feature set, the pricing, or the design philosophy. Instead, you reached for a tired sexist cliché because that’s apparently the limit of your intellectual range.
The irony is staggering. You accuse the company of being emotion driven, yet your entire argument is an emotional outburst fuelled by prejudice rather than analysis. You couldn’t construct a coherent critique, so you blamed women. That isn’t insight. It’s the reasoning ability of someone who never progressed beyond schoolyard stereotypes.
You didn’t expose the company. You exposed yourself. The moment you wrote “designed for girls”, you announced to everyone that your analytical toolkit consists of misogynistic clichés, lazy thinking, and recycled culture-war nonsense. Anyone capable of genuine critical thought would have dissected the product. You reached for sexism because you had nothing else.
Congratulations. You managed to make a hardware review read like it was lifted from an incel forum. That’s not because your opinion is controversial. It’s because your argument is so intellectually bankrupt that the only thing holding it together is resentment and prejudice. The company may have made questionable design decisions. You just demonstrated that your own reasoning is far worse.
Check Mate
The explicit conceptual pairing of curved lines with femininity and angular or jagged lines with masculinity has been formalized in Western art theory and aesthetics for at least 270 years, originating visibly in William Hogarth’s The Analysis of Beauty from 1753.
don’t Techno for an answer – you’ve whooshed over the entire “Designed for girls”, “modern culture is so hyper-feminized”, “how a child rationalizes” antics… you are defending a likely incel with a 1753 reference & hoping that it has some relevance. It doesn’t. your share is as reductive as Eau1983’s trivial claims… I don’t see folks on here crying over the perceived gender of any synths form factor… love that you presume that your retort it has check-mate potential – when no one would actually mate with you or your zeta male bromo above… (pawns oft have a dragging desire to be queens – but simply can’t due to their fear of the mighty synthesister).
You sound like someone I know that regularly gets twisted about everything for no real reason. That person lives in a bubble, not saying that you are, of course.
Re iPad… isn’t that a completely different thing? Or is it because both have a processor, driven by software, and so … they’re same thing?
Would you say the same thing about a cheaply made guitar vs something from a professional luthier? Like, if you can make music whistling, or humming, you can’t music at all?
I’d love to hear _your_ music, honestly. From the sounds of it, you’re making the most of your iPad (or whatever) in ways that completely destroy the need for a processor based instrument of any sorts. Can you share?
Wow dude, I would guess whatever media you are consuming is making you super emotional while telling others they are being emotional. Not a great sign. Time to rethink some things.
Obsession with feeling tough (or objects feeling tough?) is just a projection of your insecurities. No secure person writes like this on the internet. Let others enjoy things even though you’re having an identity crisis over a toy that brings others joy.
I would use the words “rinky-dink”. These kinda products seem to have a huge novelty factor. I’d admit, it certainly drew my attention. So glad it was expensive. So glad it was sold out that night i had a 5th of vodka. It wouldn’t have been my worst mistake/misdemeanor.
The game uses vertical space more creatively than expected.