What does the Shredder engine actually do?
1010music has rolled out firmware 1.5 for the Bento, its compact sampler and groovebox, and the headline addition is Shredder: a new track type that fuses sample slicing with granular multi-sample playback, according to Synth Anatomy, which first reported the update on July 24, 2026. Shredder debuted on 1010music's flagship blackbox 2 at Superbooth 2026 before making the jump down to the smaller Bento, giving owners a way to chop a sample into pieces and then stretch, freeze or smear those pieces using granular synthesis, all inside one engine.
What are the new DJ-style effects?
The other marquee feature is a set of DJ-style multi-FX, controlled through two touchscreen XY pads. Seven effects are on the menu, Repeater, Gater, Filter, Bitcrusher, Echo, Echo HPF and Flanger, and each one exposes two parameters you can smear across the pad in real time, the kind of live-performance move usually reserved for a DJ mixer's FX section rather than a tabletop sampler.
What else is new under the hood?
Firmware 1.5 also gives the Bento USB-C audio for the first time: it can receive one stereo channel and send three stereo channels over the same cable that carries MIDI in both directions, useful for anyone routing Bento into a laptop session or an audio interface without extra cabling. The one-shot step sequencer now stretches to 256 steps with per-step probability and micro-timing, a new Loop Groups function lets several loops fire together on cue, and multi-sample tracks can now have their individual WAV files edited and copy-pasted between track types.
Why does the price cut matter too?
1010music paired the update with a price cut on the Bento itself, down from 1,049 euros to 868 euros in Europe per Synth Anatomy. Free firmware plus a lower entry price is exactly how a smaller manufacturer competes with Elektron and Polyend for the same shelf space, by making an existing box do more instead of asking owners to buy a new one.
