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Re: Considering building an ultimate looper...



I'm a designer/inventor.  The last project I did that involved other 
people I developed the entire project and we jobbed it out for 
production to a company that the sales guy 'checked out'...and they 
didn't even have any electronic engineers on staff we later found out as 
they totally hosed us (Miller dial...an old american company that has 
apparently hired a bunch of drop outs from overseas.  Unbelievably 
stupid story...)   Meanwhile the other guys in the company made all the 
decisions over booze and since I don't drink I guess they ignored all my 
recommendations; 4 of which totally killed the finances.  I only got 
paid for a thousand something of my work on the prototype.  It was an RV 
jack controller device that would remember unhook position for a 5th 
wheel, level precisely using only 10 bit read w/out a voltage ref..  
(bit of a trick :-).  amazing what you can do in s/w.   They initially 
told me they'd only need it to roughly level within a couple 
inches..then an inch...then suddenly we need 1/4"! and we had already 
had them do the design leaving out the voltage reference  required to 
improve the resolution.  Anybody want to guess how I managed to get it 
to hit level without any hardware changes? :-)  ).

So anyway I'm fairly fresh with PIC programming from that project at 
least.  And I'll be using a pic processor to do some of the stuff in 
this one probably.  (switch debouncing/processing, volume control track 
etc.  btw..one of the very important features of this unit will be that 
it has my single pedal volume control interface.  We probably can get by 
with 10 bit A/D there because if need be, there will be a movement 
sensing in s/w which gates the selected CV's directly to the pedal 
voltage!  This allows for absolutely smooth transitions to extinction.   
The only 'glitch' will be if someone decides to run it to very very near 
extinction but then stop at which point the 10 bit converter will 
appoximate and in a second you'll hear a discernable change in volume as 
the analog switching kicks over to the DAC output.  But anyway we're 
going to make this a *very* nice unit for controlling in a live 
performance. )

The whole objective also is to make this more like the Jamman which 
nicely syncs loops so that you dont' have to press buttons precisely.  
We may have it with a couple *modes* and call that 'tight' mode or 
something and have an 'open' mode which allows people to do polyrhytmic 
overlays if they want :-). But minimally we want it to  be capable of 
tight looping regardless of when the user hits the start button.

A host of other nested possibilities with tempo tapping/sliding are 
being considered also.  And some other options that I probably shouldn't 
mention at this time :-). -Bob

Krispen Hartung wrote:

> You are going to fund this personally? Are you a lawer, doctor, or 
> investor? That's a lot of software and hardware development hours.
>
> While you are at it, please create a VST version of the box. I wish 
> everyone did this.
>
> Kris
>
>> On 2/16/07, Bob Weigel <sounddoctorin@imt.net> wrote:
>>
>>> The looperlative lacks some basic features that pros want.  I've got
>>> several people asking me to build a device that will not only have
>>> individual outs so that tracks can be mixed in a studio environment, 
>>> but
>>> can *also* be controlled in a performance environment individually
>>> without midi (ie. perfectly smooth volume transitions etc.)   I'm
>>> talking to some companies and seeing what it will take to tool up to
>>> produce a conception like this since Bob at looperlative seems too busy
>>> to get back to me about the possibility of modifying his product to do
>>> these things.   I would also hope to beat the price point by a good
>>> margin since the parts obviously aren't that expensive going into a
>>> project like this.  But we'll see how much design hassle is involved
>>> these days.  I've not done anything for a couple years.  Should be
>>> fun.   Let me know if you are interested in updates and I'll put your
>>> request in a folder. -Bob
>>>
>>> >
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>
>
>