Re: Repeater spotted!

[rich <rich@nuvisionsca.com>]

Howdy folks,

Cliff and I went to the Namm show together, and headed for the 
Electrix booth first thing.  I just had to see if they had a 
functioning unit there to get my hands on.  here's the lowdown from 
our short excursion into Repeaterland:

Yes, it is pre-beta software.  By self admission, they are not 
releasing until March.  The demo guy was pretty up front about this, 
and obviously a little upset that he had to demo a machine that was 
still buggy, and not fully functional.  I was a little upset that 
Damon was not very forthcoming about this info on the list, 
especially since there is a group buy formed.  Power supply? 
bullshit...The demo guy said "We totally underestimated the 
complexity of this machine".  On the positive side, All of the boxes 
are sitting in their warehouses, fully built and ready to go, they 
just need to finalize the software, load it in via the CFC cards and 
off they go.

so...march then...maybe.

other than that, the state the box was in was:

Only one loop was active, and only two tracks of that one loop were 
available.  BUT...even with that and bugs...this unit is FUN!!!!!!!

They had a demo setup with a guitar into POD into the Repeater.  I 
layed a volume swelled pad/drone on track 1, then switched to track 2 
to lay in a more percussive riff.  Now, these are seperate!  Yay! 
two loops going simultaneously.  hit the pitch button, engage track 
one and alter the pitch of track one up an octave.  Pitch is shown on 
the front panel in semitones.

This was a new one for me...I thought that you could change the pitch 
or time on a loop, but that all four tracks would be affected.  Not 
so, to my delight.  Wow.  four independent tracks!  On just one loop! 
well, not quite...there's only two active tracks on the pre-beta 
software at this point.

Now i hit the pan button, engaged track 1 and shifted track 1 to hard 
left.  engage track 2 and panned it hard right.  Zowee!  Then i 
engaged track 1 and track 2 and then started twisting the pan around. 
Wow.  the two loops started fluctuating around in the stereo field. 
Did this mangling for about 20 seconds before i freaked out the 
software and it got stuck.  oops.  reboot.

The time stretching is quite dramatic.  I originally recorded at 120 
bpm, and you can go down to like, 4 bpm, which introduced possibly 
interesting artifacts, especially if post-processed.  think fat boy 
slim, here...

One of the more interesting things i saw in the demo they did was 
that the pitch shifting can be preprogrammed, so when you lay that 
guitar riff in, what comes out on the first playback of the loop IS 
PITCHSHIFTED.  cool.  you don't have to wait for playback and then 
adjust pitch.

there is more to the box, even in it's current state.  i am going 
back on saturday and maybe sunday, so if anyone has very specific 
questions of something i can try out for ya, let me know.  i will not 
ask them anything about ship dates and such, since i don't really 
feel like grilling Damon and the rest on behalf of LD.  i'm sure he 
will hear enough of it from the list.

seeya!

rich



>Pre-beta?? The last word from Damon was a problem with the power supply
>suppliers the box was supposed to be out at least a month ago. What's
>the hold-up, electrix? we're jonesin for our gear fixes... nothing worse
>than a looper with the dt's...
>
>-><-
>
>On Thu, 18 Jan 2001, Om_Audio wrote:
>
>>  Saw and played with the infamous Repeater at NAMM- all I can say is 
>hold on
>>  to your hats and get ready for the ride! Software was pre beta but man 
>o man
>>  what a great box-
>>
>>  Cliff
>>
>>