Re: Building a rackmount looping computer as an alternative to the Receptor for Mobius

[Per Boysen <per@boysen.se>]

On Oct 17, 2005, at 20:01, Kim Flint wrote:

> 8< 8< 8< 8<....
> And so it is with Looping. We want our looper instrument to work in  
> a reliable real-time fashion. We are constantly tapping buttons and  
> executing functions on our looper in time to music, and we want it  
> to respond reliably every time.


Thank you, Kim! This is exactly why I do NOT use software for "sound  
mangling" of my direct instrument signal ("software monitoring"). I  
do  a lot of "software looping" though, but then I take care to only  
apply sound mangling plug-ins to the loops or other audio streams  
(bus, aux send loop etc) that do NOT carry my direct signal. This is  
also why I like quantization of actions in software (not of the music  
or my playing). Sometimes I set the quantize value to 32nd or 64th  
notes and hit the button just a little early. This is a little  
frustrating but nothing we can ever hope to get away from. Speaking  
about using synced software plug-ins, I think it was a big relief  
when Ableton Live received Plug-in Latency Compensation with the  
latest upgrade! But for this to work you can't slave the software, it  
has to be used as the clock master. Finally, I do not have any  
problem with the timing response of the EDP.

This is interesting: The other day I was discussing latency with one  
of my live looping students and this percussionist did not see it as  
a problem because "in classical training you must learn to adjust the  
general timing of your playing" (to compensate for natural latency in  
the big concert hall with audience, different instrument groups and  
the director spread out over a large area, thus not hearing an  
acoustic sound at the same time). Symphonic musicians have to adjust  
for the best timing at the listeners position. But myself, I'm not  
good at that. To me all the joy of playing just isn't there when my  
instrument sounds later - or earlier - than I'm used to. I've always  
used small guitar amps close to me on stage and like to practice  
saxophone against a flat glossy painted wall (yellow sounds best...  
he, he.... just kidding ;-)  I don't like latency afflicted hardware  
either, for example the Line-6 POD 1.

Greetings from Sweden

Per Boysen
www.looproom.com (international)
www.boysen.se (Swedish)
--->  iTunes Music Store (digital)
www.cdbaby.com/perboysen