1010music's Bento Box, their flagship sample production lab, is the natural progression and summation of some of their previous feature-packed products, more specifically their Blackbox sampler. At 8" x 8.5," it's bigger than any other 1010 device and contains many of the winning features from other 1010 products like their nanobox lemondrop granular synth and their Bluebox mixer, and adds upon and addresses some of the wish list features many have had with some of the other desktop boxes, like having a built-in rechargeable battery (yes!), and a bigger screen. It's smaller than an Ableton Push or MPC, and I found the overall size great; perfect for portability. It feels good in hand—or on lap—it's lightweight (at about 2 lbs.), and the build quality of the unit feels great. The enclosure is on point, the knobs are solid, the velocity and pressure-sensitive pads are perfectly responsive, and it can be charged via USB (and host via USB, too). Located on the back there are plenty of ins and outs (3.5mm for audio, headphones, and MIDI) for interfacing with other devices, though they are a bit hard to read as the text is embossed in the black plastic of the case as opposed to being screened on in another color. It's easy enough to label these on the back of the unit to remedy this, as I did, and I would recommend doing so. As for the screen, Bento's got a really nice looking, very visible, full color multi-touch (you can use two fingers to zoom!) 6" x 2.5" display, which is a pleasure to use (for the most part; I'll get to that), indoors or out, and offers up a lot of information. Overall, I really like Bento's construction and makeup for music making; the mix of pads and knobs, along with the screen and specs are perfect for playing and portability, and most importantly, Bento sounds great.
As for how it functions, it's a little more of a nuanced answer. As of this writing, Bento is not a finished product—it's past its infancy, but not yet into adulthood—and it seems a lot of features will be added in future firmware updates. There are still some things (like Song and Scene) that are laid out on the hardware side that aren't implemented yet on the software side, so these are easy to predict as forthcoming, but other features that I'd love to see, may or may not make their way into Bento. This is something to keep in mind, and only time will tell how it all plays out, but 1010 is run by people I believe in and their track record speaks for itself. Also, as of this writing, there is no full manual for Bento, but there are a few video tutorials, definitely enough to get started with and go deep on your own, as using Bento is intuitive enough, and navigating and exploring is a snap. There's a lot in Bento, and I feel confident in saying that I pushed nearly every button, pressed every arrow, turned every encoder, touched the screen all over, to find my way to make music on Bento and discover its power and navigation.
Bento has eight endless encoders, the touch screen, four directional arrow pads, twelve navigation pads (Tracks, Inst, Launch, Seq, Song, Scene, Mixer, FX, Proj, and Rec, Stop, and Play), and sixteen touch and pressure-sensitive pads. Sometimes you use the arrows to get somewhere or select something, sometimes the screen, and sometimes the encoders. There is some overlap between the various methods, but there were times/screens where the arrows would move things around but the encoders did nothing, and likewise, times, like while choosing an instrument, where only scrolling and touching the screen would navigate where needed, when it felt like the knobs might be easier and better to use here. It could be because of what is upcoming in Bento, where the knobs or arrows are going to be functioning in a certain way for something else, but that's hard to know, and it did sometimes feel strange to be on a page where some of the navigational tools had no effect on anything. Either way, all navigation modes feel great, and even when figuring out how to move around, it worked really well. Nothing is too complicated or too deep in terms of access, something I really appreciate to get/keep a flow going.
As for its mode of operation, there are eight tracks in which you can put five types of instruments: One-shot (like drum kits, which have up to sixteen different sample slots), Loops (again, up to sixteen sample slots), Multi-samples, Granular, and Slicer. You can load all sorts of presets that come with Bento, and the ways you can customize each sound and preset are vast. Level, filter, overdrive, modulation (for almost anything), pitch…if it's a parameter that is standard for tweaking a sample, grain, or instrument on a DAW or groovebox/workstation, it's probably in there (or forthcoming). Navigating through these and adjusting each is intuitive, even with some of the navigation gaps, and makes working with Bento really pleasurable. You can also add reverb, delay, and a modulation effect (phaser, chorus, or flanger + distortion)—each of which can be modified greatly—on a per pad or per sample basis, and there is global reverb and delay. There is no preset saving right now, but I'm going to assume that is on the list of upcoming features.
As for global settings, you can configure each project's root note, choose from twenty-three scales, select a swing amount, and set its tempo. The instrument presets that come loaded into Bento cover a lot of ground and sound great. From pads to synths to basses to Foley, I expect the library for this will only get bigger and stronger, though it's already off to a decent start, and you can customize the instruments immensely. I would love to see arpeggiation and a hold/latch function added.
The Mixer screen is where you can adjust output and track levels, along with reverb (which has a freeze function…nice) and delay levels for each track, and mute them as well. Talking about a freeze function, you can freeze a note by hitting an up or down arrow while playing a pad for a keyboard type instrument, and while this feels more like a glitch, it's a nice feature to have. When you do it this way, it also changes the octave of the instrument, so you need to move the octave back to the original position and hit the frozen note to unfreeze it (unless you also want to change the octave), though this can be done while the note is frozen.
The Launch screen will be familiar to anyone who's used to launching clips in Ableton Live in Session View. There are four clip slots per track, and though I'd like more, one problem if this increased would be that the screen real estate would make it so you would have to scroll down, so not all clips would be seen, or all of the clip squares would have to be smaller to get them all on one page, though this would make them harder to see and trigger correctly. As for triggering, launching multiple clips at once would be easier if you could group them together and hit one of the pads in the group to trigger the clip group it's in. Add to that, the ability to be able to easily toggle on and off the groups would add some flexibility to it all. Ditto this for having mix groups as well. Also, it'd be great if on the Launch screen you could easily copy/paste clips to duplicate them, move them around in their clip hierarchy, as well as delete clips. As of now, you're stuck with them once they're created, whether a clip is empty or not.
The sequencer is really the heart of Bento, and each instrument can be sequenced on its own, with up to four different sequences for each (the four clip slots). You can add steps one at a time, or record steps as you play in real time. You can edit each step via its start point, length, location, velocity, and probability, and you can also edit the sequence's global parameters: quantize size, step length, and step count, as well as clear steps (and sequences) and double the overall sequence length. The touch screen allows you to zoom in on a selection, and even select multiple steps for clearing, which is nice, though programming a sequence one step at a time, especially if you want a detailed drum sequence using all sixteen samples, can be a bit tedious, especially with fingers. I wound up using a stylus to select steps/events, and that made it easier to set everything up. One issue that I have the way it is now is that when you select a step, it either creates or erases it; there's no way to select an already created step via touch for editing purposes. You either need to scroll through the steps to get to the one you'd like, or you need to edit a step at the outset of its creation. Also, while you can swing a project, I'd love to see per step swing. I love having everything all nice and tidy on a grid, but the ability to make syrupy, stuttery, off-kilter grooves with mictro-tonal (another wish!) melodies would be sweet. It would also be great if on the Sequencer page you could scroll through every track (and each track's four sequences) instead of having to navigate back to the Track screen to select the desired track in order to view its sequence, then go back to the Sequence page.
One thing I really wanted was a way to audition a sample without needing to play the track, which was a problem if there was a sequence for any track or instrument recorded, as that would start playback for everything. But in order to do so, you have to hit play, starting any sequence. Ditto for auditioning loops. Also, you can't sequence loops at this time, which would be nice, even if potentially overwhelming sonically, as loop length could mean that samples pile up on one another. You can do this now during playback, and it can be quite interesting to do so.
I really wanted to try out recording directly into Bento and slice, dice, and mangle up recordings and I did this with both audio (just some random song part straight out of my computer) and capturing audio with a Shure SM58 microphone. The input level was pretty low with the mic, so an amp of some sort (or a more powerful mic) could be helpful, but after turning the gain and overdrive up in Bento, the sample was plenty audible, and it was, of course, really fun tweaking the sample; modulating the pitch, adding ping-pong delay, and a bit of filtering. The ability to create and save presets, tracks, and instruments in this way is something I hope gets streamlined more as time goes on, as it's one of the things I'm most excited about with Bento. I really want to use Bento as a field recording sample player.
As a granular instrument, if you've used the 1010 nanabox lemondrop, you'll be good to go right away, as it's got the same granular engine. With two samples that you can play, filter, modulate, customize, mix with a VCO, and overall debauch, it's a flexible and feature-laden mode that really benefits from having a larger screen, as does the Slicer. Slicing up audio and manipulating it was pretty effortless, using the Scan function, where it looks for transients to mark transitions. Playing in Slice mode, especially with audio I captured (random bird calls and a Sprinter van that was backing up with its backup warning surprisingly loud), was a powerful and satisfying way to make strange melodies. Using the Loop mode for live looping also proved fruitful, even as less an instrument and more of a sketch pad. There's no overdub feature, so you need to add a new track for each idea, but with sixteen slots for this, there's plenty of room to stretch out. It isn't quite as flowy as being able to overdub and noodle endlessly on a single track, but for getting ideas down and building on them, it works pretty well.
Other things I'd like to see which I haven't mentioned yet, the first of which I hope will be coming soon, is an undo function; I really miss that one. I'd also love the ability to record automation, and to mute and solo samples and individual sample tracks in the sequencer.
I always like 1010 products, but Bento even more so. Again, it's not fully bloomed, but what's already in place is impressive, and I really love the hardware side of it; it just feels right. I've worked (or tried, rather) on quite a few other machines in this realm and none have had the ease of workflow or comfort of playing that Bento has, especially for how much it offers, and promises to offer. It seems like the sky (or CPU, really) is the limit here, and I'm super excited to see what 1010 does here, and to grow with Bento.
Price: $899

1010music.com