Chase Bliss recently announced that it was ending development of the Chompi sampling keyboard, saying that they were pushing against the limits of what the hardware was capable of.

Since then, Chase Bliss and Chompi Club have released the Chompi’s firmware under an Open Source license, and TemeculaDSP has turned it into a free plugin, Nibbi, that you can run in your DAW as a VST, Audio Unit, or AAX plugin.

Record and sample sounds, play them across the keyboard, layer tape-style loops, and get weird with lo-fi saturation, wow and flutter, delay, reverb, and filters.

While a big part of the appeal of the Chompi is its immediacy and tactile control of sound, the decision to open source its firmware promises to give the design new life.

Availability:

Nibbi is available now as a free download.