Jordan McDonald has updated Compa: Groovebox Companion, available for $24.99.
What’s new in version 1.4:
- COMPA 1.4 is a major sampling and performance update, free for existing owners. Capture new sounds, turn spoken words into playable phrases, scratch your tracks, and meet RD303: a bonus bassline synth included at no extra cost.
- On iOS/iPadOS 27, capture audio from supported apps or a web player into CHOMP Clips, Arrange, Takes or Quota DS. Hold a pad for a quick sample, or use tap-to- start/tap-to-stop while you switch to the source. Audition a new pad, then resume sampling without reconnecting. Share links from other apps into COMPA’s web-source queue. Optional video capture keeps the picture with your sample.
- Transcribe audio, search the words, highlight a phrase and send it to a CHOMP pad. Audition selections, refine their start/end points and fades, or use Q-Chop for sentence and segment cuts. Transcripts are saved with their sources. The movable, resizable workspace includes reading layouts and independent light/dark transcript backgrounds. Use Apple speech recognition or download a local Whisper model; keep working with an Apple draft while Whisper finishes.
- Perform with Deck A and Deck B using Files, song clips or CHOMP samples. Scratch the platters, set eight hot cues, find BPM and cue suggestions, loop, adjust pitch and channel levels, and shape the mix with EQ, filters and crossfader curves. Pad Scratch gives a selected sample its own turntable with Cut, Brake, Echo Out and EQ. Record the result to a new pad. Performance controls support MIDI mapping.
- Meet RD303, Raw Dog 303 – a bassline synthesizer included with COMPA! It comes with a 128-step sequencer, pattern library, pattern generation, modulation, stereo effects, and note/knob automation recording. Play it natively inside COMPA or load the included RD303 AUv3 in another compatible music app. No in-app purchase, subscription or separate unlock.
- Perform linked video samples and export MP4 with audio. Develop parts step by step with Guided FETCH. Use scale-aware MIDI clip editing, route CHOMP Live FX to its master or a bus, and connect these workflows with Quota Stems and Quota Kits.
- Compatible MIDI devices no longer need a built-in profile for ports, channels or sync. Create custom cards, assign audio-interface returns, and save routes, controller mappings and bank settings with your Session. Route MIDI from instrument AUv3s that produce it. Notes, Clock and Start/Stop have separate controls, and the MIDI Matrix is directly accessible again.
- Fixed an AUv3 host issue that could stop sequencer audio when opening CHOMP or changing the audio setup, requiring a restart.
- Fresh CHOMP recordings keep their captured pitch and speed. Resampling preserves tuning across repeated takes and honors Auto Trim without rewriting the source. Auto Match is for imports; Restore Original can recover previously matched takes.
- Safer pad clearing, a clearer trash target and expanded pad-edit Undo; improved landscape touch handling and message dismissal.
- Keyboard highlights clear after release.
- Arrange audio-file imports land in Arrange. Move/copy clips and regions, drag in files, and read names in separate headers.
- Improved selected iCloud-file downloads, import progress/errors, file-versus-folder guidance, normalization, export saving, recording placement, scene following, Session recall and compact layouts.
Give your groovebox a compa. Tailored hardware controls, sampling, sequencing, AUv3 hosting, and Ableton Link Audio. Works with or without hardware.
Your groovebox and your iPhone, one USB cable Compa turns the phone or iPad into the brain your gear never had: it plays ideas into it, samples it back mixes it, and svncs the whole rig.
Audio in, processed audio back out, MIDI both directions, over the sinale USB connection your gear already has. No interface, no adapters. Monitor where you want: keep the gear as the input and send the mix out the phone’s own speaker or headphones, or return it to the device.
Every instrument Compa knows gets a card built from what that box actually speaks: real parameter names real ranges, values that match its own screen. All five of the SP-404 MK2’s effect buses from one place, its looper, its pads played chromatically,
Compa joins the Ableton Link session on your network and sends MIDI clock and transport out over USB, so an SP-404 MK2, T-8 or P-6 locks to the same tempo as every Link app around it. And Link Audio: stream Compa’s mix over the network into Ableton Live with no cable and no interface, for layering and capture.
One set of chords becomes a whole loop: CHORDS, BASS, MELODY, DRUMS and TEXTURE, all in key Every part has its own SOUND row, so send any part anywhere: Compa’s built-in voice. an AUv3 instrument you have loaded, or a connected USB device. Genres per part. 11 for bass, 9 for drums, 6 chord vibes, 4 for melody. Hit LISTEN, play a phrase, hit SPEAK, and Compa answers in key on the next bar. YES loops the answer, NO throws it away. ROAM evolves a loop instead of replacing it. REROOT swaps the chords under your melody. Export the whole loop, or any single part, as a standard .mid.
A 303-stvle library of 229 patterns across 21 genres. FETCH writes new ones. VARY evolves what is there. LENS bends it toward another genre, and SEND to FETCH hands your bassline to the co-composer to build chords and melody around it. Step sequencer with 16, 32 or 64 steps, per-step ratchets, swing, one- tap rhythm fills, and access to vour device’s own internal patterns.
Hold an empty pad and it records until you let go, Chop three wavs: EQUAL slices, TRANSIENT auto- detect, or LAZY tap-along. Drop a whole chop set onto one Selector Pad, up to 128 samples under one finger, and play it round robin, random, or swept by knob or MIDI CC. Per pad: pitch, 3-band EQ sidechain duck, choke groups, reverse, normalize attack, release. Tap patterns in live, every pass overdubs, 32 slots with count-in and quantize.
Import Koala packs, Ableton Drum Racks (.adg), MPC and Force programs (.xpm), Quota Stems folders, or point it at a folder of one-shots and Auto-Kit lays them out. Importing is included.
Sixteen effects built in, running QuotaFX’s own kernels over the whole session mix: your pads, your gear, and every app you have loaded. Filter, crush, reverb, stutter, gate, delay, backspin, tape stop, viny and more. Slide to ride it. hold to latch, stack as many as you want.
The whole app as a patchable mixer. Your hardware up to 8 AUv3 instruments each on its own channel AUv3 effects as inserts. 16 buses with sends, and a live oscilloscope so you can see what your gear is actually sending,
Roland SP-404 MK2. P-6. T-8, S-1. J-6 and E-4 Teenage Engineering EP-133 K.O. I1. Akai MPC Sample, Live IlI, XL, One G2 and Key 37 G2. the new USB-C generation. Earlier MPCs do not carry class- compliant audio over USB. Deepest control is on the SP-404 MK2. P-6 and T-8.
Chompa records and plays on the iPad itself, with or ithout gear. FETCH drives instruments: aim its parts at your gear or a loaded AUv3.
Watch the tutorial videos HERE.
For more information on Compa, click here:
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