chop chop ✂

dig · chop · download — pull samples from any audio, right in your browser.

→ chochop.vercel.app

chop chop is a small web tool for turning any sound into a pack of samples: load or record some audio, dig out a handful of slices, chop them into shape and download them as a ZIP of WAV files ready for your sampler.

Everything happens in your browser. No uploads, no accounts, no tracking — see Privacy.

How it works

1 · Dig

Ask for something like “8 slices of 2 s” and hit Dig. Choose how to dig:

• random — random spots, each starting on a detected hit, without overlapping.
• spread — one slice per equal stretch of the whole track, but musically: chop chop detects the tempo and beat grid, starts each slice on the strongest bar line in its stretch and rounds the length to whole beats (the toast shows the BPM), so slices land on the downbeat and loop in time.
• in a row — back to back from the cursor (click the waveform to place it).
• sigil — a playful ritual: draw a symbol with mouse or finger and let it choose. The sub-pixel, sub-millisecond jitter of your strokes is hashed (SHA-256) into a seed that scatters 1024 random points over the audio; Dig takes the windows where they pile up most. Nothing is kept or sent.

Star ★ the slices you like and dig again: starred slices stay, the rest get replaced. Changing the seconds resizes every unstarred slice on the spot.

2 · Chop

• Drag the middle of a slice to move it and its edges to resize it.
• Double-click the waveform to add a slice of the chosen length; drag over an empty area to draw one by hand (hold Alt to draw on top of another).
• Per-slice settings: name (8 characters), mono/stereo, speed (×2, ×1, ×0.75, ×0.5, ×0.25, tape style — ×2 is the classic sampler trick: store it at double speed so it takes half the memory, then pitch it down an octave on the sampler for that lo-fi grit), fade in/out, volume and reverse.
• Volume per slice: Original, Normalized (peak to −0.3 dBFS), Loud (default) or Max. Loud and Max push the slice into a look-ahead limiter, so quiet tails come up while peaks stay under −0.3 dBFS — closer to the level of commercial sample packs.
• Slots are pads: tap a slot (finger or mouse) or press its key to hear it instantly. The active bank maps to a 4×4 block of keys — 1 2 3 4 / Q W E R / A S D F / Z X C V — shown on each slot. Slices are pre-rendered in the background so pads respond right away.
• Crop here (in the slice panel) keeps only that stretch of the audio and discards the rest — handy to isolate one part of a long recording before digging into it.

3 · Download

Give the pack a name and hit Download ZIP. You get a ZIP with one folder named after the pack and the 16-bit / 44.1 kHz WAV files straight inside it, each named with up to 8 characters and numbered in order (RAIN01, RAIN02…).

Choose 8, 12 or 16 slots per bank above the slot grid to match your sampler (for example 8 for a Bastl Wave Bard, 12 for a pad group on a 12-pad sampler, 16 for a 4×4 pad grid); it sets how the slots and pad keys are grouped. The pack name also seeds the sample names (RAIN01, RAIN02…); slices you rename by hand keep their names.

The transport bar shows the total length of your slices.

Getting audio in

• Open WAV, MP3, AIFF, OGG, FLAC or M4A — anything your browser can decode — or drop a file onto the page.
• ● Record, captured as raw, uncompressed audio with the browser's voice processing (noise suppression, echo cancellation, auto gain) turned off. Leading and trailing silence is trimmed automatically; recordings are capped at 5 minutes.
  • A browser tab — whatever plays in another tab (YouTube, SoundCloud, Bandcamp…). Pick the tab and tick “Also share tab audio”. Desktop Chrome/Edge only. Some sites (e.g. Spotify, Netflix) block capture and only give silence; chop chop tells you when that happens.
  • The mic — objects, voices, the street. A gain slider (0 to +36 dB, adjustable while recording) brings up quiet phone mics and more of the room.
  • This computer — everything your system plays. Share the entire screen with “Share system audio”. Works in Chrome/Edge on Windows and ChromeOS; on macOS it depends on the macOS and Chrome versions.

Keyboard shortcuts

Key	Action
1–4 Q–R A–F Z–V	Play the slots of the active bank (like pads)
Shift + D	Dig
K	Star / unstar the selected slice
Space	Play / stop
Delete / Backspace	Remove the selected slice
← →	Previous / next slice
Cmd/Ctrl + Z	Undo the last dig, crop, removal, recording or file load (also offered in the notice)
Esc	Deselect
Wheel	Zoom · Shift + wheel: scroll
Double-click	Add a slice of the chosen length

Languages

The interface is available in Español, Galego and English (switch at the top right; the choice is remembered, and the first visit follows your browser language).

Browser support

Made for desktop browsers. Editing, listening and downloading use standard Web Audio and should work in current Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari (it's mainly tested in Chrome). Recording a tab or the system audio needs desktop Chrome or Edge; recording the mic works wherever the browser allows microphone access.

Example: loading a pack into a Bastl Wave Bard

1. Download the ZIP and unzip it.
2. Open the Bastl sample loader and drag the WAVs into a bank, 8 at a time.
3. Click “Generate firmware file” and copy the .uf2 to the Wave Bard in boot mode (hold SHIFT while powering it over USB).

This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗