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Looper's Delight
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Hello everyone! The Electro Harmonix 2880 Super Multi-track Looper was delivered to me recently. I am very happy with it, so here is a small review for anyone interested in this new looper. The 2880 is well designed and well build, with quality knobs, pots and faders. It is smaller and lighter than I expected and this is a plus, at least for me. This is a user friendly machine - especially those who are familiar with any multitrack recorder or mixing console will feel at home right away. It is great to have faders and pan pots for each track/loop and control these parameters in real time. The audio fidelity is great, no nasty compression, no hiss, no artifacts, no degradation. The two inputs have lots of headroom before clipping and they sound good with various sources. The converter sounds nice - no cheap digital nastyness here. The panning is accurate and clear and the faders have that nice feel you expect when you need to do smooth fade ins/outs, small changes or big moves. Electro Harmonix made a powerful looper. Multiple mono or stereo loops can be recorded of four different tracks and you are free to mix everything down to a stereo track to have the other ones available for additional work. You can move the faders and pan pots during mixdown and everything will be recorded onto the mixdown track just as you hear it. You can also record onto the mixdown track as many times as you like and keep the previous stuff there, too. Loops can be pitch shifted at any time with the octave button and you are also free to do bends up and down with the tempo slider. The reverse feature is also great. Pitch change and reverse can be active at the same time. Overdub and punch in actions are easy, with very simple steps to follow. If you are experienced with overdub an punch in, there are no problems at all. From the time you memorize the foot controller, the 2880 becomes an instrument of its own - as with any other dedicated looper machine out there. If you are thinking of buying the 2880, I suggest you spend the additional money to get the foot controller too, because it really makes live work easier and more fluid. You can't do everything on the fly without the controller, except if both of your hands are free. Midi works just fine and the 2880 can sync succesfully to a sequencer or a drum machine. If you need this feature, it is there, simple and effective. A metronome with its own level knob is also included. It sounds like the clear sharp sound of a turntable needle. No fake plastic snare here. This click sound can blend smoothly into the loops to assist the performer, but it doesn't ruin the feel or the moment at all. The metronome is output through the headphones jack, allowing for further dub style processing. ;-) The usb port is very welcome. I think everyone will appreciate this. You can move audio files to/from a computer. The compact flash card is displayed as an external hard drive. The files are the standard .wav and can be easily moved, for backup or further process. Generally speaking, the 2880 gives the musician the control and the power to do things as fluidly as possible. Feel free to ask questions. :-) Greetings from Athens Costas http://www.costasandreou.com contact@costasandreou.com