1010music's nanobox tangerine is a cutesy sampler that can fit in your back pocket
The latest brightly coloured little box from the folks at 1010music promises to put the fun back in sampling
1010music's nanobox range has already brought us three superbly tiny synthesizers: the lemondrop granular synth, the razzmatazz drum synth and the fireball wavetable synth.
The latest addition to this adorably pocket-sized family is tangerine, a compact sampler instrument outfitted in a resplendent orange. tangerine is intended to deliver powerful sampling capabilities in a portable package that's perfect for slotting into a mobile music-making set-up or simply saving space in your studio.
With tangerine, 1010music are harking back to sampling's golden age in an attempt to recapture the fun and simplicity of classic hardware samplers. tangerine can record, slice and loop samples, easily create and play multi-sampled instruments and hook up with the rest of your set-up via MIDI for live looping and performance.
tangerine is operated via a 2" colour touchscreen displaying eight sample pads, next to four hardware buttons and two knobs. The device offers 24-voice polyphony and 16 velocity layers for each sample. Each pad can handle single or multiple samples triggered from the touchscreen, tangerine's internal sequencer or through an external MIDI controller.
The sampler is geared towards those who want to make complex multi-sampled instruments without the faff this might entail in the DAW; with that in mind, tangerine hosts a multi-sampling 'wizard' for automatically sampling and mapping the sound of external synths and drum machines, while each sample can be sliced either manually or automatically, tweaked through a variety of parameters and processed with the onboard reverb and delay effects.
tangerine is equipped with a 3.5mm audio in and out, 3.5mm TRS MIDI in and out (it comes with an adapter) and a clock input. There's no battery, unfortunately, so you'll have to power it via the USB-C connection.
The sampler arrives with an onboard MicroSD card with 85 presets and 4GB sound library, in addition to a 1.7GB multi-sampled piano instrument from the makers of 'industry-standard piano libraries'.
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tangerine is priced at $399 USD. Find out more on 1010music's website.
I'm MusicRadar's Tech Editor, working across everything from product news and gear-focused features to artist interviews and tech tutorials. I love electronic music and I'm perpetually fascinated by the tools we use to make it. When I'm not behind my laptop keyboard, you'll probably find me behind a MIDI keyboard, carefully crafting the beginnings of another project that I'll ultimately abandon to the creative graveyard that is my overstuffed hard drive.