RE: Looper crossfade advice

[Jeff Larson <jeff.larson@sailpoint.com>]

> So, I was wondering - is there an alternative solution, to getting

> nice smooth crossfades at a loop boundary, without recording outside

> the loop?  What do hardware loopers do here?

 

I think the most common approach to this in current loopers is to give

the performer an option to transition seamlessly from Record mode to

Overdub mode when the recording ends.  There is then no fade-to-zero at

the end of the loop, the current sound carries over seamlessly to the

start of the loop.  The performer then has control over when they

stop the overdub.

 

This does require an extra user action to end the overdub.  But it

gives them control over how long the recording "tail" is.  For

example a very short tail may be all you need to avoid a fade bump in

a drone or pad sound, but if you had a cymbal crash toward the end of

the loop you would want that to fully decay so the tail must be longer.

 

Automating the end of the overdub would be cool, but I'd recommend

having a parameter that the user can set to control the tail length so they

can adjust it depending on what they're playing.

 

> but a user was commenting that he can clearly hear the

> following downbeat after the recording of a loop

 

I'm not sure what you mean here, but if the performer is playing

something percussive and the end of the loop is followed immediately

by a sound with a sharp attack that you don't want to include in the

recorded loop...yes, that's the tradeoff of seamless overdub.  In

these cases though, the fade-to-zero is often less noticeable because

the sharp downbeat takes the listener's attention away from the fade.

This is why it is best if the record tail is user controllable,

sometimes you want it and sometimes you don't

 

Jeff