Rompler

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Rompler is a nickname for an electronic musical instrument that specializes in the playback of samples stored in ROM chips. Romplers lack the ability to record such samples and have limited or no capability for synthesis. This is in contrast to samplers, which let the user record samples as well as play them back, and sample-based synthesizers, which play back samples but have the ability to modify sounds through synthesis technologies such as filters and LFOs. The term rompler is a portmanteau of the terms ROM and sampler.

While romplers cannot record custom waveforms (samples), they can reproduce the samples they contain as well as any sampler. Because romplers lack components necessary for sampling (a preamp, an A/D converter, RAM, and a media drive or slot), the chief advantage of romplers over samplers is cost.

The E-mu Systems Proteus line of products and the Roland U-20 are well-known romplers. Romplers are often packaged as sound modules. Almost all digital pianos and many electronic keyboards made for the home market (such as the Yamaha PSR-290) are romplers.

Early grooveboxes (those which lack a synthesis engine), almost all drum modules (sound modules specializing in percussion sounds) and most drum machines use sample playback technology and therefore qualify as romplers, though they aren't often referred to as such.

Because the rompler moniker betrays the fact that an instrument uses sample playback technology but lacks the ability to create samples, the term is never used in the marketing of electronic instruments thusly designed.