Despite the lack of a few key sampling features, like slicing, it’s my favorite sampler besides Koala. The pads are great, the 16-pitches and beat repeats are also great, and the Drum Sampler FX are pretty deep once you dig in.
Built-in mic, battery, speaker, super-fast and easy sampling (2 button presses and the sample is ready to play back).
And you can easily slice samples anyway. Manually, after a lazy-chop, it’s fast enough not to take you out of the zone. And now it does USB audio both ways, you can just use Koala to chop, and then sample back to the Move’s pads.
No, usually I use it alone. I tend to load up longer samples via wi-fi and mangle them on-device. But I have used it with koala a few times and it’s a very nice pairing. Koala’s sample chopping and editing is so easy.
If I have an idea for something more complex, that I can’t do easily on the move, I make a note and push on, then just do it in Live later. (Puns intended)
Sampling definitely isn’t a top priority for me, at least in terms of raw features. 80% of the time I’m playing live into the pads looking for an interesting groove, chord progression, or melody. I’m a Push user and I know Koala fairly well, so I have options if I want clean time stretching, zero-cross looping, precise auto-chopping, etc.
With that said, I’ve gone in directions on Move that I COULD have with any other device, but just didn’t. Maybe it’s something simple like replacing a factory snare with my own hand clap — Push can do it, but the required setup usually “inspires” me to leave well enough alone. With Move, it takes five seconds to capture the clap, and by the end of the first minute I’ve duplicated it three times with different pitches and Drum Sample effects on each, resampled the hit, and leaved heavily on the lo-fi stretch to make a TRULY UNPLEASANT sound.
I don’t really buy into the “limitations breed creativity” argument in 2025 because you can basically have anything you want at any price point, depending on which compromises you’re willing to make. It’s more a question of, “Am I having fun within the limitations?” So far, Move’s limitations haven’t stopped me from having fun.
I think it’s more a question of how you use sampling. There isn’t any one right way to use a sampler.
I don’t sample from records or make loops or chop up breakbeats. But I use a lot of sampled instruments on the computer, Kontakt libraries and things like that. Bread and butter stuff like electric pianos, organs, orchestral instruments, etc. I also have a lot of synths and acoustic instruments, percussion and things in my studio that are fun to sample. So I’ve been using Move primarily to sample kits of my own sounds into drum racks and sequence them.
The ease of use and the power of how many voices you can have are its biggest strengths to me. My only other real sampler is an Octatrack and I think Move blows it away for actual sampling (not for looping, live fx, scenes, etc).
OT can’t play back samples polyphonically.
If you’re just doing simple drum machine style one shot playback, 8 tracks of the OT is equivalent to half of one Drum Rack on Move.
On Move you can sample into a pad effortlessly without having to worry about saving or naming. You can even sample over an existing pad and the previous file will still be on your Move so there’s no risk of losing recordings like there is on the OT. I mean look at this post from earlier today as a testament to how convoluted basic sampling is on the OT.
The biggest advantage of the OT for sampling is the proper 1/4" mono inputs rather than the stereo minijack (I hate it) and the fact that you can record 4 channels at once which isn’t something very important imo if you’re just sampling different sounds and building up kits and libraries.
But really it’s the whole package. The sampler and the power of the sequencer combined, the form factor, and Live integration. If it was just a sampler module with no sequencer I would have no use for it.
yeah at first I was quite excited about the move, then not so much after messing with one early on, now back to looking at it seriously again as the form factor is so enticing.
I should mention that the flip side is true too. I like Drift but if it just had Drift and Wavetable with no sampling capability it would be a lot less interesting to me.
So overall, sampling has never been a big part of my workflow, but Move has gotten me really into sampling and it’s 90% of what I do with it. And all of the really good things I’ve made with Move that I’m actually going to use on an album are sample based.
I should also mention as far as power and limitations go, the best things I’ve done with Move tend to all be a single clip on a single drum rack, usually not even using all of the pads!
The Move starts the transport when you press a pad to resample, so it can capture perfectly-timed loops if the external synth/source is synced with midi or Link
I’m curious, does threshold sampling on the digital t start shortly before the threshold or right on it? (Or is it configurable)
With a line signal or instrument signal that would be fine, since no signal is so quiet. But capturing acoustic sounds with slow attack can get a pain.
To low → other sounds and noise can trigger it. To high and you cut the quiet attack off.
“Good” is subjective based on the sampler features that matter to you. The one thing I really miss from sampling on Move, is the chops based on time/regions. A simpler Simpler, would probably give me personally all I need.
But, lazy chops, usb sampling, resampling, p-locks for the sample start point is a pretty healthy feature list.
So I’d go as far to say that Move is a good sampler.
It isn’t. are you presuming that I was daring you? just post it. if it wasn’t so deep for you, you’d just do it, right? You don’t need our permission. But consider that your own interests will probably determine your purchasing decisions. I’m not here to sell you the move
I’m a big fan of Benjamin Brodie’s YouTube channel (I don’t get on YouTube on my production computer or I would have linked to it)
Benjamin fills out his scenes and puts out regular content. I think that’s pretty exemplary of where you can take things. And I like his music!
I use threshold sampling on my Circuit Rhythm , so I thought I’d miss it on Move. But I actually don’t feel the need for it at all, as Move just sets the sample start point to the transient. Sure, you may get a second or two of wasted recording, but that doesn’t bother me.
I haven’t found that to work with my device. It starts sampling when I resample, but I can’t get it to work when trying to sample something externally via midi or link. I’ll try again though
Yeah, I agree - hard to describe just based on specs or whatever but … as a coherent whole, it just really, really works.
I got mine relatively early expecting that it’d be a couple of versions before it really hit its stride. But nope. Lots of little things / limitations I thought would bug me about it turned out not to really matter in practice.
I’d still like to see more Simpler type functionality, but that’s mainly because a 16 slices mode has such an obvious place to slot in alongside 16 pitches that I think to me it’ll feel like a missing feature unless/until it’s added. Doesn’t really affect how enjoyable the box is to use though.