The Rare Data workshop journal
The work behind the tools.
Why these projects exist, what changed along the way, and the ideas that connect the music, the hardware, and the software.
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Oct 4, 2026
COMPA 1.4 — From the Sound You Hear to the Part You Play
COMPA 1.4 is out. Capture, dialogue sampling, DJ decks and the new RD303 bassline synth make more of the journey from an idea to a playable part happen in one session.
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New everyday prices for Quota — and Voice is now free
DS and desktop FX are now $19.99 each, Kits is $9.99, and the Collection is $39.99. Voice joins Stems and HQ as a free app. Permanent prices. No subscriptions.
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What Shipped at Rare Data: Q3 2026
A quarter of instruments and connections: COMPA on iPhone and iPad, Quota’s desktop releases, and a standalone Link Audio path out of the Akai Force.
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From a Raspberry Pi Sidecar to COMPA for iPhone and iPad
The hardware changed. The job—help the groovebox without replacing it—did not.
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Why I Wanted an Effect Rack You Could Actually Play
Chomp Mode came from a performance question: what if an effect rack gave your hands room to play several moves at once?
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Your Samples Should Outlive the Machine You Started On
Portability is about keeping the decisions with the sounds: pad placement, trims, and the parts of a sequence a destination can understand.
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I Made the Akai Force Send Audio to Ableton Over Wi-Fi
Force Link Audio keeps the Force standalone, keeps the pads alive, and publishes its main stereo mix as a Link Audio channel.
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The Transcript Sampler Became the Performance App I First Imagined
The original idea was simple: read the words and get the sample. DS 1.5 gives that phrase somewhere to go after the first chop.
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A Drum Stem Still Wasn’t Enough
Getting the drums away from a song helps. Sometimes the next useful step is getting the kick away from the rest of that drum stem.
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The Roland T-8 Joins Raspberry Pi Compa
July brought T-8 recognition, USB audio capture, clock and pattern control, then playable bass from Push 2 and a step-sequencing workflow built around the messages the T-8 actually accepts.
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A Front Door for Rare Data
Spent the day building Rare Data a proper front door — a press page, an actual press kit, and a rewrite of my own story while I was in there.
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Raspberry Pi Compa: Recall, Link Audio and Network MIDI
After Link clock came a more useful companion: recover the take, keep recording, move audio over the network, and choose whether a controller plays local hardware or the computer.
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Bringing the SP-404 MKII and P-6 into Ableton Link with Raspberry Pi
Compa 0.1.1 gave the Raspberry Pi a Link-clock bridge for the SP-404 MKII and P-6: join the network session, then send MIDI clock to the connected hardware over USB.
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PyLinkAudio Brings Ableton Link Audio Into Python
A pre-alpha set of Python bindings for sending and receiving Link Audio on macOS and Linux.
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Stop Scrubbing, Start Sampling: RARE DATA Launches Quota Mini
Today, I am incredibly proud to announce the official release of Quota Mini, the new flagship software from RARE DATA designed to change the way producers, video editors, and content creators work with dialogue.
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