Rompler

Sample-playback engine for drum kits, one-shots and sliced loops. Any Rompler-hosting track picks a bank and slice inside the currently active sample kit and plays it back with its own filter, envelope, pitch, and optional looping.

Available on: Any track 1–15. Factory default setup puts Romplers on Track 7, 8, 13, 14 (shared kit). Built on: CTAG RomplerVoiceMinimal by Robert Manzke — filter, envelope, pitch, slice playback, and ping-pong loops.

Character

A sample-playback voice with an independent filter and AD envelope per track. The Rompler tracks share one active sample kit from the SD card — each track plays a different slice out of that kit. Load or change the kit from the Project menu → Select kit.

Gotchas before you tweak:

  • BitCr (bit-reduction knob): knob is visible but produces no audible crushing. Downstream DSP/mixer/codec path recovers the dropped bits — same issue as MonoSynth’s Bit Red. Flagged for the DSP owners.
  • Speed and Timestretch (playbackSpeed, tsmode, tsamt): intentionally not exposed in the current macros. playbackSpeed was dead DSP (the rack wrapper never wrote the user value); tsmode/tsamt need their own UX design and will return under a focused “Timestretch Rompler” macro when the DSP is ready.

Parameters

Two macros ship for the Rompler — pick the one that matches how you want to perform:

  • ro-basic — 8-knob minimum surface across two pages. The default. Use for quick drum / one-shot use.
  • ro-full — 15-knob complete access across four pages. Use for deep sound design with the filter, envelope and loop modes exposed.

Both macros share an identical Page 1 (SAMPLE) and Page 2 (TONE) layout so swapping between them leaves the first eight knobs untouched.

ro-basic — two-page minimal layout

Page Knob 1 Knob 2 Knob 3 Knob 4
SAMPLE Bank Slice Start End
TONE Pitch Decay Cutoff Reso

ro-full — four-page complete layout

Page Knob 1 Knob 2 Knob 3 Knob 4
SAMPLE Bank Slice Start End
TONE Pitch Decay Cutoff Reso
SHAPE Attack FType BitCr EG2FM
LOOP Loop PPong PPSta —

What each knob does

Knob What it does
Bank Which 32-slice bank within the loaded sample kit. Rompler DSP supports up to 32 banks.
Slice Which slice (0–31) within the active bank.
Start Playback start position within the slice (0–100 % of slice length).
End Playback end position within the slice. Set to 127 for full-length, lower values for chopped playback.
Pitch Pitch offset from the incoming MIDI note. 64 = no transpose; higher = up, lower = down (±5 octaves).
Decay AD envelope decay time. Exponential curve: short values for drum-like decays, high for long-sustaining samples.
Cutoff SVF filter cutoff frequency. Logarithmic curve — filter opens smoothly toward high frequencies.
Reso SVF filter resonance.
Attack AD envelope attack time. Tiny for percussive transients, high for pad-like fades-in.
FType Filter mode: OFF / LP / BP / HP.
BitCr (Visible but currently inaudible — see Gotchas.) Intended bit-reduction amount.
EG2FM Envelope-to-pitch modulation amount, bipolar around centre (wire 64 = 0 modulation).
Loop Loop the sample indefinitely (toggle).
PPong Ping-pong loop mode (forward-then-reverse). Only effective when Loop is on.
PPSta Ping-pong start offset — where the loop returns to on each bounce.

All Rompler tracks share one kit, so reloading a kit swaps every Rompler track’s pool of samples at once. Think of the kit as the “drum machine” and each Rompler track as a dedicated pad inside it.

See also

Origin & credits

Custom CTAG sample-playback voice (synthesis/RomplerVoiceMinimal.hpp / .cpp) by Robert Manzke (2020, GPL 3.0). Uses Mutable Instruments pitch-shifting helpers (mifx/pitch_shifter_mono.h, MIT) and stmlib filters.

  • DSP sources: synthesis/RomplerVoiceMinimal.hpp / .cpp, mifx/pitch_shifter_mono.h, helpers/ctagSampleRom.hpp
  • TBD-16 wrapper: rack/RackRompler.hpp / .cpp