Soundpaint has been free since 2021, and for most of that time it had one problem for anybody making beats: you couldn't load your own sounds. It was a player for 8Dio's libraries, not a sampler. Version 5.0, out September 23, changes that, and it's still free.
## What's new The headline is Brush, a built-in sample editor and mapping system. You set start and end points, loop points, and map your own multi-sample instruments. There's a time-stretch engine, Time Pro, that detects the BPM of what you drop in, plus tune, filter and ADSR controls. Per Synth Anatomy, this is the first time users can really build their own instruments inside it.
The arpeggiator got rebuilt: up to 128 steps, and you can subdivide those into as many as 2,000. Each step gets its own length, stutter and glue, and there are chord, swing and inversion modes. New rack tools include round robin (four modes), Vintage Drift, Micro Tune and a 505 rack. New effects: boost, a transient shaper, pump shape, a limiter and an expander. It runs on macOS and Windows.
## The catch For the first time, Soundpaint is selling a feature. The new Looper, five parallel tape-style loopers that can pull from your mic, system audio or video, is $69 at launch, $99 after, and 8Dio says there won't be a sale later. Everything above it is free.
## Why a beatmaker should care Look, Kontakt is still the standard, and nobody's switching a whole template for a free plugin. But if you're starting out, a free sampler that loads your own chops, maps them across the keys and stretches them to tempo covers a lot of what you were about to pay for. Round robin matters too. Hit the same drum sample sixteen times in a row and it sounds like a machine gun; small variations per hit make programmed drums feel played.
Real talk, the tool isn't the hard part. Chop something, flip it, and clear it before it leaves the house.
## Sources - Synth Anatomy, Sept. 23, 2026: Soundpaint 5.0, free sampler plugin gets major update - KVR Audio: Soundpaint 5.0 Released - New Built-in Sample Editor - Soundpaint: soundpaint.com