You Rang?

[The Man Himself <altruist@shoko.CALARTS.EDU>]

On Tue, 18 Mar 1997, Mikell D. Nelson wrote:

>   What would you guys like to see? Please tell me. I would dearly love
> to hear from you on this issue. 

My two main gripes with the Rang are the sample rate and the lack of a
continuously variable feedback control.  Count me in as someone who'd much
rather have a shorter loop time with higher fidelity.  Also, the feedback
control issue is pretty important, as far as I'm concerned, because being
able to continuously change it in the midst of a loop is a one of the
crucial basic techniques involved in realt-time looping (at least as far
as my own work has gone).  Now, it *is* nice to have a feedback control 
that is automatically scaled back as newer layers are added -- this is 
a feature on a few Vortex patches, and it lends a very organic 
quality.  But there are some applications where a continuously variable 
feeback scale just can't be beat.  

With regards to one of the proposed Rang updates, it would be cool to have
a number of different feedback "scales" to choose from, but would a person
be stuck with this after the loop has been engaged?  If not, this could
create an undesirably static quality in the loop at work.  What about the
possibility of setting the output level control in such a way that it can
control more than one feature, i.e. could be switched between volume
regulation and feedback control?  That would be great, in my book. 

I was also a little discouraged that the pitch/speed change feature could 
only be engaged by stopping the loop, making the switch, and then 
starting it up again.  I understand that there's a limit in terms of how 
many features can get their own dedicated footswitch, but I'd much rather 
have seen a single pedal dedicated to the pitch change, as opposed to, 
say, the one-shot playback function getting its own switch.  Still, the 
Rang is the only one of the Big Three that can pull off that trick, and 
it's quite a cool one at that.

These are about the only major suggestions I'd have.  Even in it's present
form, I think it's a really neat unit, and the live slant of the
construction and the selectable input gain stages are particularly nice
touches unique to the Rang.  I'm glad to hear that a software upgrade is
in the works as well. 

All for now,

--Andre