Sixteen pads, one page.
The Sample tab is a drum machine you can play with your thumbs or a MIDI pedal: sixteen pads, a kit library, trim and envelope per pad, and a quantizer for when the timing has to be right.
05.1The grid
Sixteen pads in a fixed 4×4 grid. One page — there are no banks and no second page, so everything you can play is on screen at once.
The header row carries, left to right: the word SAMPLER, a LEVEL knob (0 to 2, default 1), a QUANT knob, the quantize grid chip, the PRESETS chip for kits, a REC indicator that lights while a pad is recording, and STOP ALL.
Along the bottom, the hint says it all:
Empty pad: load or record · loaded: tap = play/stop, hold to edit · MIDI notes 36–51
An empty pad splits into two halves — LOAD and REC. A loaded pad shows the sample name, its length (for example 1.4s), a dimmed waveform with everything outside the trim faded back, and a bright cursor sweeping through while it plays.
Long-press any pad for the menu: Load sound…, Record mix or Stop recording, and — on a loaded pad — Edit…, Clear and MIDI Learn: pad N.
05.2Getting sound into a pad
There are three ways to load a file, and they all open the same Files picker: the LOAD half of an empty pad, Load sound… in the long-press menu, and Load file inside the pad editor. Anything iOS can decode is accepted.
Samples are capped at 12 seconds — a longer file is truncated rather than refused. And there is no drag and drop into NAMper: every import goes through the picker.
Recording into a pad
The REC half of an empty pad records straight into it. Only one pad can record at a time, and the take is named Rec N. With the engine stopped it refuses with Audio is off — tap the power button before recording.
It records the main output mix, not the raw input — so the rig, the looper, the other pads and any backing track all land in the sample. That is useful for grabbing a chord straight off your processed tone, and a trap if you meant to capture a dry source. Mute or stop everything else before you hit REC.
05.3The pad editor
Long-press a loaded pad → Edit…. The sheet is headed PAD N with the sample name and its length.
The waveform has draggable trim handles at the start and end — drag the start in to cut off a slow attack, drag the end in to shorten a long tail.
The ADSR envelope is drawn on top of the waveform and edited by dragging three round handles: Attack, Decay and sustain and Release. A readout above shows the values, like A 0 ms · D 120 ms · S 100% · R 0 ms.
Two knobs: Gain (0 to 2) and Pitch (0.25 to 4, shown as 1.00x). Pitch is a resampling rate, so it changes pitch and speed together — a tape-style shift, not a formant-preserving one. Half speed is an octave down.
MODE and TAP
Two pairs of chips decide how a pad behaves under your finger. MODE is One-shot or Loop; TAP is Retrig or Latch. The rule is simple: a pad set to Loop or to Latch toggles start and stop on each tap, and a One-shot / Retrig pad restarts from the trim start every time you hit it — ordinary drum-pad behaviour.
| MODE | TAP | What a tap does |
|---|---|---|
| One-shot | Retrig | Plays once from the trim start, restarting on every tap. Drums, hits, stabs. |
| One-shot | Latch | Plays once; a second tap while it is still sounding stops it. Long one-shots you may need to cut short. |
| Loop | Retrig | Loops until you tap again to stop it. |
| Loop | Latch | Loops until you tap again to stop it. Beds, drones, rain, vinyl crackle. |
At the bottom, Preview auditions the pad with your current settings and Load file swaps the sound without leaving the editor.
No choke groups (an open hat will not be cut by a closed one), no per-pad pan, no reverse, no velocity layers, no per-pad output routing and no momentary gate-while-held mode. Pads play at their set Gain and stop when the sample or the envelope says so.
05.4Kits
A kit is a snapshot of all sixteen pads — every trim, envelope, gain, pitch and mode setting — plus a private copy of every pad's audio. That copy is the point: once a kit is saved, importing over a pad, clearing it or deleting the original file cannot hollow the kit out. Load it back in six months and it still plays.
Open the browser with the PRESETS chip; the sheet is titled Sampler Kits. Tap a row to load it. The row menu has Rename, Update with current kit and Delete. Deleting a kit never removes audio that the loaded pads or another saved kit are still using.
The footer of the sheet says why: Kits live on this device (they carry their audio files). There is no share or export for a kit, and the full backup export leaves sampler kit audio out — it carries parameters and references only. Copy the samples/ folder in the Files app if you need the sounds on another device.
The four factory kits
| Kit | The sixteen pads |
|---|---|
| Drums — Digital | Kick 808, Kick punch, Snare, Clap, Rim, Hat cl, Hat op, Ride, Tom lo, Tom mid, Tom hi, Cowbell, Clave, Shaker, Zap, Sub boom |
| Drums — Analog | Kick round, Kick tight, Snare fat, Clap warm, Rim wood, Hat cl, Hat op, Crash, Tom lo, Tom mid, Tom hi, Conga, Bongo, Shaker, Perc snap, Sub warm |
| Drums — Acoustic | Kick, Kick soft, Snare, Snare ghost, Sidestick, Rimshot, Tom hi, Tom mid, Tom floor, Hat closed, Hat pedal, Hat open, Crash, Ride, Ride bell, Tambourine |
| FX & Textures | Riser, Downlifter, Impact, Laser, Sweep, Vinyl stop, Cym rev, Sub drop, Stab, Bleep, Alarm, Crackle (looping), Wind (looping), Chime, Robot, Rumble |
A deleted factory kit stays deleted — it does not come back on the next launch. Rename or update one rather than deleting it if you only want it out of the way.
05.5Trigger quantize
The QUANT knob is a strength, not a switch. At zero it reads OFF; above that it shows a percentage. At 100 % every hit lands exactly on the grid; at 30 % only the slightly-early ones get pulled into line and your feel survives. The default is 0, off.
The chip beside it sets the grid, cycling 1/4, 1/8, 1/16 and 1/32. The default is 1/16.
Both settings are global — not per kit, not per pad. Loading a kit does not change them.
Quantize only does something audible when all three of these hold, and the screen does not tell you so:
- a tempo is set — there is no grid otherwise;
- a loop is running — the looper supplies the phase, so the grid knows where beat one is;
- you are recording — either the Perform recorder, or a loop track whose source is the sampler.
Turn the knob up while jamming over nothing and you will hear no difference. That is deliberate: a pad that waits for the next sixteenth before it speaks feels broken under your fingers, so free playing is always left unquantized and the correction is applied only where it ends up on a recording.
05.6Playing the pads
By touch: a tap plays or stops the pad according to its MODE and TAP settings, and a long-press opens the menu.
By MIDI: notes 36 to 51 play pads 1 to 16, following the GM drum convention — note 36 is pad 1. This is always active and needs no setup, on any MIDI channel, unless one of your own mappings has claimed that note first.
Velocity is not used. However hard you hit a controller pad, the sample plays at the Gain you set in the editor. Set the levels once in the pad editor and they stay put.
A mapping you create on the Control tab calls play/stop, so it respects Loop and Latch — one footswitch press starts the loop, the next stops it. Raw MIDI notes 36–51 always retrigger from the start. If you are driving looping pads from a pedal, learn the mapping rather than relying on the built-in note range.
05.7Where the pads go
Pads sum straight into the main mix — they do not run through the guitar chain, so your amp's gain and your reverb never touch them. The LEVEL knob in the header sets how loud the whole sampler sits against the rig.
They are also available elsewhere in the app as a source:
- As a chain input — pick Sampler pads on a rig's IN connector or on a parallel branch (chip SMPL) and the pads run through that rig's effects.
- As a loop track source — set a looper track's IN to Sampler (chip SMP) and you can loop a beat you tap out on the pads.
- As a compressor sidechain — a Comp block's Sidechain menu includes SMP, so the kick can duck the guitar.
STOP ALL in the header releases every playing pad at once — the panic button for a latched drone or a loop you cannot find.