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Re: Considering building an ultimate looper...



Hey Bob,

Sounds like a cool project!  Most of my wishlist would likely be in the realm of bells and whistles rather than core competency, but here it is nonetheless for whatever it's worth:

Favorite features from Mobius that I wouldn't want to lose:
  • Active development and awesome community - This is THE number-one selling point.  If I have a problem, I can e-mail Jeff directly, and 99% of the time he fixes it or helps me trouble-shoot.  Occasionally, feature suggestions I've made have even been implemented, and that makes me feel very loyal.  And even though he does it for free(!), I and most of the Mobius core group would happily pay for the product simply because it's always improving, and we're grateful.  Most hardware units (the looperlative excepted) cannot claim this kind of constant development.
  • The ability to write my own scripts to add fun behaviors and share with the community - A chunk of my set (and Per's) depends on auto-panning, tremolo, pitch adjustment, and other scripts that are not part of the Mobius core product.
  • Sync features with other software / hardware units.
  • Multiple ins/outs with easy setup - on this point, it would be great if the hardware looper could also function as a USB/Firewire audio interface and allow the user to insert VST/AU effects and instruments into the signal chain as well as record audio on seperate tracks.  That would be something I've yet to see another looper accomplish!
  • MIDI control - It's always a plus when I can use one MIDI controller to control several things simultaneously.  Obviously this would be added to whatever hardware controllers you're building.
  • Visual Feedback - I have no suggestions on how this could be implemented, but the lack of visual feedback has scared me away from most hardware units.
Bob Weigel wrote:
Like I say, my intent, if I delve into this, it to produce a product that has enough hardware to easily add innovative features as people request them....hence developing this indeed into an 'ultimate looper'.  That's the goal.  Will I accomplish it?  I dunno.  You certainly won't if you don't aim for that though.

If I had claimed to have already posessed such a thing I can see order for some of the discussion. :-)  As it is I'm just trying to express desire to build something that will have the features of increased track accessibility, smoother control at low volume levels, elaborate yet intuitive speed/meter control and some other features which I don't want to discuss at this time like I say because a few surprises at release time *are* nice for the designer.  But as I said to some also would love to hear people's wish list of course so as to make this a product which fulfills all forseen needs if possible.
Hence...the use of 'ultimate looper'...once again.  I really dont' *get* the rub here.  It's almost like people think I'm insulting the looperlative by insinuating that it leaves something to be desired or something.  It's a GREAT sounding product...for probably a large percentage of the people out there.  Of course if this winds up being very near the price point then it won't look quite so good I suppose in comparison.  But that's all to be seen.  So please..at this point just send me suggestions if you'd like to see this happen.

The unit will likely use AD products btw.  Considering whether it will be necessary to employ a TigerSHARC or if a SHARC will be adequate headroom.  As I tried to note, the PIC chip will only do the button and controller processing, displays, etc.   -Bob

andy butler wrote:



Bob Weigel wrote:

So anyway I'm fairly fresh with PIC programming from that project at


A more powerful chip needed for the dsp surely?

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.  


128 steps, as Jeff points out, when smoothed  is ok for most audio applications.
Except that it's not good enough for a slow fade to zero.

I do a lot of shaping the sound with quick pedal movements, and the 'shapes' produced just aren't as smooth as they could be using 7-bit res, even with smoothing. ( with the smoothing fine tuned it's acceptable though)



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. 


The sync in the JamMan is primitive and glitchy.
There's often a little scratchy sound at the loop-start, even when just playing the loop.

One of the "hard problems" in making a looper is how to handle overdubs while synced. Just try it with the JamMan to hear how bad it can be.

Actually this sounds like exactly the sort of problem you'd enjoy solving :-)

...but maybe you don't want to overdub onto the loops ??

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


>From watching the video of your client, what you're basically intending is something like "8 stereo JamMans" in a box, all of them in Loop Mode.
Just using each loop to record one layer only.

That doesn't sound too hard to implement, so I'd support your optimism in thinking it's easily possible to do.
As you described from your experience, it's much easier to design when you know all the requirements at the start of the project.

I think some of the more "unbelieving" comments on the list here are provoked by the "Ultimate Looper" moniker. There's a lot of people here who would find the "8 stereo JamMans" approach somewhat lacking in the features that they rely upon.

If you want to make the "Ultimate", then it's going to take a lot of time and sweat, possibly starting with a review of the ways in which people use their devices to create structured music.

As a designer, I'm sure your familiar with the term "feature creep", where a program picks up extra features during development, ultimately making it almost impossible to make it bug free. Be warned, a looping device attracts feature creep in a big way. Loopers think that Beta Testing is an excuse to get their ideas put into the machine :-)

Good luck with your venture.

andy butler

( yes, I was tester for the EDP )