AW: Loopy Llama - question from a concerned user

["Rainer Thelonius Balthasar Straschill" <rs@moinlabs.de>]

You wrote,

>It actually used to immediately overdub after closing the loop and I
changed it last week to be more "DL- >4 like".  I was considering making
it a preference (a checkbox or something) and I definitely will 
>soon....

Or, still better, if it's within your own design specification, give us
two buttons (a la DL4).
As you mentioned below that you do not own a hardware looper yourself,
may I just describe the transport buttons of the few hardware loopers I
own/have owned:

Headrush: two buttons, one for start/stop, one for record.
State           stopped stopped/empty loop      playing recording
overdubbing
Start/stop      start loop              (nothing)               stop
loop    close/play loop end overdub
Record  overdub loop    record loop             overdub close/ovrdub
end overdub

DL4: three buttons - start/stop, record, play once
State           stopped stopped/empty loop      playing recording
overdubbing
Start/stop      start loop              (nothing)               stop
loop    close/play loop end overdub
Play 1  play once               (nothing)         restart/play1
close/play once end overdub/play once
Record  overdub loop    record loop             overdub close/ovrdub
end overdub

Repeater: three buttons - start, stop, record
State           stopped stopped/empty loop      playing recording
overdubbing
Stop            (nothing)               (nothing)               stop
loop    close/stop loop stop loop
Play            play                    (nothing)             restart
close/play              end overdub
Record  overdub loop    record loop             overdub close/play
end overdub

The fact that the Repeater can't go from record to overdub is imho one
of its greatest shortcomings. Otherwise, I like the interface.

Just worth mentioning: your implementation of the reverse function is
outstanding! This is something I always longed for.

> right now my priority is a Mac version - which is almost done except
for a bug with the tempo light.

Why bother? The Mac people got Augustus ;)

>True, it is a pity about losing the loop with tempo change, but I am
unfamiliar with time stretching
>methods...except that it seems like you need a fairly complex algorithm
to do it with any quality - the
>default time stretching in Pro Tools kills me.  For the near future I
plan on being able to double or cut
>in half the tempo...and "trigger" the loop from the beginning.

Well, it needn't be this high-end. I've come to live with the Repeater's
time stretch algorithm.
Apart from that (and the fact that implementing an entire pitch
shift/time stretch algo is rather a big task indeed) two ideas I have
for this issue.

1) Would it be possible to implement a kind of "varispeed" function? I
assume this is a bit tricky, as you may not be able to change the
sampling rate in the VST domain, so you'd have to skip or double
(interpolate) samples. Still, this might be not too hard if you do not
care to implement an intelligent algorithm for this.

2) With 1) in place, would it be possible to send values (in cents or
something) to another VST plugin doing pitch shift in series with the
Llama?

So what I think is:
A Llama and, say, a Waves Shifter in series. You record your loop at
120bpm, then change to 180bpm. Now, the Llama does not send every third
sample (but still keeps it in memory) and sends a value of 700 cents to
the Shifter as its parameter for pitch shift.

Actually, while I know how the Repeater reacts to tempo changes (by time
stretching exclusively, it can't be set to do varispeed just like the
way when it's not locked to MIDI clock and you give him the varispeed CC
signal), and how the digitech RDS2001 reacts to tempo changes (it
actually doesn't have a tappable tempo, but by adjusting the loop
length, you get varispeed effects). Have to check how the Eclipse and
the Vortex do it...

Thanks again for your time and effort!

        Rainer