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MIDI EDP/Repeater (wasRe: Repeater - "conditional stop")



I've been told that this would be something pretty easy to configure in 
MAX.  Not sure if there's a PC version yet, but I bet there is an 
equivalent.

Maybe not, because I keep hearing this request and never do I hear of 
someone doing this.  It's something that's been in the back of my mind, 
but frankly it's not that important.  I can get most of the MIDI 
looping functionality out of my E-MU XL-7 that I need.  I've heard 
others say the Roland MC-505 makes a good live MIDI looper with it's 
dedicated UNDO button.  No easy UNDO function on the XL-7, but it does 
have an ERASE button that lets you hold it down along with the bad note 
or track and make it go away.

I've also been told that the best off the shelf live MIDI sequencer 
software is MOTU's Digital Performer.  To be honest I have not explored 
it for it's options.

What the main downfall from making any of these things EDP like?  One 
word: Feedback.  100% feedback no matter what.  Seems like a function 
that could be easily implemented in the MIDI realm.  My guess is that 
manufactures don't even know people want it, or not enough of us do 
want it.  Maybe it's a job for a small developer.  I used to be friends 
with Jeremy Sagan, the man who wrote Metro, an amazing Mac based MIDI 
(and now audio) sequencer.  He was really open to stuff like this and 
came up with "Rhythm Explorer" soon after I showed him a photoshop plug 
in called "Texture Explorer" that's a part of the Kai family of 
Photoshop plug-ins.  Unfortunately, I've lost contact with him.  Though 
I found out he now distributes the software himself.  If enough of his 
users requested a function like this I'm sure he'd be up for it.

Mark Sottilaro

On Sunday, July 27, 2003, at 04:39 AM, Mountain Man wrote:

> Well, yeah, but I'd be willing to pay at least $50 for such a feature.
> That would keep some starving music gear-hacker off the street long
> enough to do this "quick and easy" mod, wouldn't it???  <g>
>
> Speaking of midi loopers, I continue to be amazed that no-one has
> created a box that does EDP/Repeater-style looping for Midi.  It seems 
> a
> much easier task than looping audio.  Is there a perception that 
> there's
> no market for it?  Or is there something out there of which I'm not
> aware?  (please, please, please say "yes" !!!!)
>
> Thanks,
> Elby
>
>
>> At 01:20 PM 7/26/2003, Nic Roozeboom wrote:
>>> I imagined it would be only a matter of time before someone would
>> announce
>>> they had hacked OS1.1, and made all sorts of improvements... such as
>> being
>>> able to configure one track as a MIDI looper...
>>
>> yes, it's amazing. It can't be that hard. Maybe you could take it on?
>> After
>> all, the Repeater is only a fully custom piece of hardware with its
>> own
>> unique system architecture, and code running straight on the silicon
>> probably without any commercial OS in between. But that just means
>> you
>> gotta know how the hardware works to write the code and there's no OS
>> there
>> to do anything for you. Of course, no documentation is publicly
>> available
>> on the hardware architecture or the programmable logic parts. But
>> heck,
>> with a little patience, a multimeter, logic analyzer, scope, and a
>> year or
>> two of spare time you could probably figure out most of it. Then I
>> guess
>> you would have to decompile the machine code from the roms into
>> undocumented assembler or maybe even C code. I don't know how well
>> decompilers work, but probably the result will be messy and difficult
>> for
>> humans to understand. Hey, but no matter, if you had all the time to
>> figure
>> out the hardware, you've got time to unravel the code too! I bet it
>> would
>> be fun. Once you've got that figured out, then you can go about adding
>> your
>> own features. Careful now! this ain't wimpy windows programming.
>> Real-time
>> embedded coding without a net! Everything you do has the potential to
>> throw
>> something else off, so you need to keep an eye on every clock cycle
>> and all
>> the possible states you could be in. Judging by the kind of bugs they
>> had,
>> there probably aren't many cycles left to play with, but there must be
>> a
>> few here and there. The Electrix guys only went a year over schedule
>> and
>> still had bugs trying to do this, so it can't be that hard really. Oh,
>> by
>> the way, did you catch the time when Electrix mentioned they were out
>> of
>> code space? Ah well, there are probably a few features in there you
>> don't
>> use anyway, so rip 'em out! Assuming you can actually figure out which
>> part
>> of the code they're in...
>>
>> Sounds like a great project!
>>
>> kim
>>
>
>