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Looper's Delight
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hi folks, i've been floating here around the edges, too busy to reply but i gotta chime in... LP-1 vs RPTR i really dislike these "what is better" discussions because to me it like asking...what is better? a dog or a cat? ice cream or chocolate cake? smoked herring or pickles? i've found that what is better depends on what you are doing, like so many things in life....microphones for example! now, of course both devices are expensive and it is hard to explain to the spouse that you're buying a $1000+ item just to try it. but, that is kinda what i do. don't get me started on how many thousands i've spent on amplification systems for the cello (and you can't return custom installed pickups). here is my opinion though about the debate, if there is one... sound quality-wise the LP-1 wins hands down over the RPTR. i am a dedicated RPTR user and i know i got rid of my LP-1, but i actually think that feature-wise, LP-1 is a superior box. you can do more kinds of looping with it. its like a swiss army knife of looping. as for why i got rid of it - right now i am focusing on a very precise, specific kind of looping that is entirely midi sequenced and the songs already composed. to do this i need a combination of computer and hardware looper. both the RPTR and the LP-1 have drawbacks for what i'm doing. i chose the RPTR in the end for 4 reasons. 1) i've invested 5 years in mastering it and feel confident with it onstage. i'm even intimately familiar with how it fails so when it does, little can throw me. 2) the interface of the RPTR is nice and big and fisher-price-like. that makes it much easier for me to see out of the corner of my eye (because of my cello, i can't have gear in front or below me. i have it off to one side) and 3) the midi implementation was more developed in the RPTR. i couldn't use my LP-1 for a long time because it didn't have the midi capabilities i needed. i think it does now, but i'm not about to switch anymore. and 4) i want the $1000 to spend on another experimental cello pickup system! now, about the RPTR upgrade.... there are some great improvements in there. from what i heard, i am the sole person in the universe having trouble with it, because i might be the sole person in the universe controlling two RPTRs with sequences of midi commands from Ableton Live (anyone else out there??). i find that hard to believe, but whatever. that said, there are some big improvements that i am really happy with...and if you are not controlling your RPTRs with sequenced midi commands, you will never notice the problems... - indication of muted track if a track is muted, the volume indicator flashes red at the top. yay!! sometimes midi triggering misses and i could not tell, inbetween songs which tracks would still be muted as the next song started. with the red indicator light, i can tell right away if a mute did not get unmuted. also there is a new midi command that sends an "unmute all" message. so i just send that as a matter of course in the batch of commands at the beginning of every song. - reset "button" my midi sequencing can occasionally make the RPTR wig out. but both my RPTRs have always wigged out every now and then (i'm not going to describe this again. just search the archives if you really want the details). in the past, the only remedy when it would get stuck was to power down. now there is a snazzy midi command that you can send, and it does a quick reset which clears the seizure. - sticky settings across power cycles!!! love this. if you setup pan settings in a song, they will stay that way until you change them. - erase single track midi command previously you could only erase the whole loop via midi. now you can erase each track individually via midi (yes, you could always do it via the front panel. but that was effectively useless for me) - multiply by x you can send a midi command to multiply your loop x3 or x4 or x5 or whatever. in the past, you could only multiply x2, so i used to screw up songs all the time by accidentally sending the command the wrong number of times and screwing up the math. now i just send one simple command. ok...back to work with me. loop, zoe