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Re: TC Electronics D-TWO
I've had about a week with a D-2 and it is impressive, but not all that
easy
to get control of. OF course, it sounds wonderful, in the tc style, and
the
advertised features work quite easily: You can tap in a distinct rhythm
pattern, select an exact number of repeats, up to 10, and fine tune the
ducking feature without much of a struggle. But for looping it's a bit
more
complex. You can set up a tip-ring footswitch pair to tap tempo and
bypass,
and the bypass can be set to work like a hold button if you're at 100%
feedback. But what I prefer for looping with a delay line is to have a
pair
of control pedals, one assigned to input level and one to feedback, and
to
do this, as far as I can tell so far (and I haven't actually got it
working
yet), I'll have to add a dedicated stereo volume pedal in front, and use a
configurable MIDI foot controller on which I can set up a cv pedal to CC
50...this # can't be reset on the D-2. There's a list of maybe 25-30
control
destinations, each with a fixed controller #, so I'm in for a long session
on
the floor reassigning all the already-used switches and pedals on my
FC-200
and their destination #s on my other gear so the pedals don't do anything
to
the D-2 when aimed at something else.
The Rhythm feature is cool, but has some quirks that surprise me: It's not
a
cross-feed delay like the rhythm feature on my current looper and favorite
delay line, the Korg DL8000R, so it seems to not repeat the very first
iteration of the pattern exactly, takes one loop to settle in...or so it
seems so far; I'll have to study this more.... Also, I'd expect a rhythm
pattern to follow a newly tapped tempo, but as soon as you touch the tap
tempo footswitch to change that, the unit switches out of Rhythm mode into
straight delay. If you want to speed up or slow down an existing pattern,
you
have to retap it in, or dial in a new global BPM from the front. I may
discover that I can do this with MIDI foot control, but the normally very
knowledgeable folks in tc's tech-support area don't seem to know this
puppy
well enough yet to tell me how, and it ain't in the manual.
Noentheless, the D-2 is an inspiring tool, lots of fun right out of the
box.
I'll letya know when I get all the pieces together whether it does exactly
what I want...like the now-discontinued DL8000R, which I highly recommend
keeping an eye out for. It seems obvious to me that tc checked this piece
out
thoroughly when designing the D-2. So far I'm not sure it's clearly
superior.
I expect it to be, but, like I said, I haven't got it working yet!
David Coffin