It’s always interesting to see a new app come along and try to carve out a space for itself. Samplist enters a not too crowded space in the iOS music app space. Even so, I’m not sure how it’s differentiating itself from what’s in the market now. According to the developer, “Samplist is a MIDI sampler instrument which allows you to chop a sample into different parts and play them with the on screen keyboard or a MIDI keyboard.” All of which is fine, and it has some fine features that you’d expect from a developer who understands what’s important for seasoned iOS users. Such as …

  • Audiobus
  • Inter-app Audio
  • MIDI in, both wired & via Bluetooth LE
  • Sample import from Files app or “Open in…”
  • Export slices as Zip file to other apps
  • Each slice has its own Filter, Envelope & Realtime pitch shifter.

That was the feature set from the initial release, on the 23rd of this month. On the 24th there was a bug fix release, and then today, there was version 1.1, which brought …

  • Slices cannot go outside the screen anymore. They’re limited to the sample length.
  • Increased the zoom size.
  • Split the sample into equal regions.
  • Split the current selected sample into half.
  • Renaming a sample which has a preset, now renames the preset also.
  • When you tap ADD SLICE, it ads it after the current selected slice.
  • Fixed the faders. You can drag them easily now.

So there’s obviously some serious intent to make good on the promise of “More to come in the near future”, which was from the developer.

As ever, I like to see apps and developers bring good apps and meet both the needs of the community, and get rewarded commercially for their efforts. But for that to happen apps need to fill a space in users’ workflows that makes sense. I hope that Samplist will do that in the very near future.

Samplist is on the app store and costs $4.99